Missing the Big Smoke

I've been back a few hours but the twanging of the heart strings because of missing Sydney won't yet totally dissipate. I have a lot of work to do although G has pretty much emptied out mum's old apartment including most of the furniture. There are a few bits and pieces left. What in the main remains to be done is for me to go through the papers and clean out what's unnecessary.

While it's good to be home and I appreciate being able once again to sit down at my own desk and use my own computer in peace, I miss driving up to see mum in the mornings because I know that I won't see her for about 3 weeks. (I have to go back to Sydney once more before the big move, to take mum to a specialist.) In the meantime I will get back into the daily groove. But I miss my friends and I miss seeing mum. It's about all I can bear at the moment so I didn't do any work shredding today. I'll rest up with a few gin-and-tonics this afternoon and start on the papers at mum's place tomorrow.

I might watch some television. I will certainly be on social media. Twitter and Facebook really came into their own in a big way when I was staying in Sydney on this last trip. I would return the rental car to the hotel's parking garage after seeing mum and then hole up with a six-pack of beer for the rest of the afternoon just running through the tweets and catching the comments that people left on posts. In cases like these social media is hard to beat because it brings the world closer to us than any other medium (it is social MEDIA after all: an interface between two different things, in this case between an individual and the world). For that I am grateful. And I'm also grateful to all the friends and acquaintances who left their remarks on my blogposts.

And this is the thing that's so difficult up here on the good old Sunshine Coast: staying connected. I crave connection with people. In a way I have been deprived in a real material sense of social connection since moving up here in 2009. (Has it been that long? Yes it has.) Social connection is such an incredibly important thing. Without it I have resorted more and more to the use of social media, so that using these interfaces has become truly habitual. I honestly cannot think how I could live without them. Truth.

So here's to the Big Smoke. Here's to Leviathan (as John Birmingham called her). Here's to my city of origin. Although I was born in Melbourne I lived in Sydney from the age of 10 days until I relocated to Japan in September 1992. And I moved back there after September 2001 when I left Japan. She is my soul's other half, the repository of my dreams and so many of my memories. I will be coming back soon, and permanently.