2010 – Dave’s Five

Earlier this month Ok, to begin with…’s editor Tom suggested that as writers we would all produce a post based on our ‘Top 5 of 2010′. His instructions were vague enough to include the sentence “Anything at all, Damn” (that may be taken out of context). And since I have nothing but contempt respect for him, I immediately started working on what you find below. Though I will admit, I wasn’t too sure what he wanted.

Does he want me to post about the most internationally significant events of the year? Or the worst celebrity break-ups of the year? I certainly wasn’t sure… What I took from his instruction was that I should list 5 events that had a profound, or near enough, effect on me while the earth made it’s most recent loop around our sun, however, most or all of the significant social or event experiences of this year that I’ve experienced have included another Ok, to being with… writer in one way or another, and I’d hate to write a redundant or repetitive post! Especially when they can probably do them more justice.

So in no particular order and with no particular theme, I give you my official five ‘things’ of two thousand and ten.

Aging

Everybody has aged this year just like every other year that they were alive and everybody takes that news differently, most people I know prefer to avoid discussion of subjects like ‘age’ and ‘birthdays’ because for some reason they fear the natural development of their life, they fear the change.

There are a lot of cycles in life, lots of circular motions that move at different rates like planetary bodies orbiting their star. I’ve been through quite a few of different orbits in my life, different jobs, changing passions and growing relationships, including those that have faded away. But as time passes and there are more and more years left in my wake I find that the way I tackle each of these cycles in life has changed. The changes were subtle as they happened but have left me interpreting events and people in drastically different ways.

Sure, the insane energy levels I had as a child have withered away and I feel tired more often than I feel alert, but I’m also slower to anger, I give every situation more thought, care and attention than before. It’s like that old adage about stopping to smell the roses, and now I almost feel like I can watch them experiencing the forces of wind in ultra-slow motion.

Aging is something I’ve done every year of my life, and it’s something I’ve always relished, but this year in particular it feels like it’s finally accomplishing something.

(Not quite) Natural Disasters

Before we begin let’s just establish that I’m definitely not a climate change alarmist, but I’m also not dumb enough to sit in a garage with a car engine running so I’m not blind to the fact that every action has a reaction and that some of those reactions can be invisible to casual observance. There is no way that we as a race can say that we have no effect on Earth by the way we act, just like there is no way you can say that Wildebeest don’t have an effect on the Serengeti. I’ll go further to say that I’m not blaming our actions on all of the disasters that occurred this year, but some subtly in ways we don’t realise, and quite obviously one of the worst.

In January Haiti was thrashed by one of the deadliest earthquakes on record, completely devastating the capital Port-au-Prince and causing an unparalleled loss of life, a loss of life that was caused more by the lack of facilities to care for the victims as it was by the quake itself. Which was shown clearly when It was followed in February by an even higher magnitude quake in Chile that took many fewer lives despite being one of the largest in recorded history.

April saw another earthquake, this time hitting China, and the volcano of which we do not speak it’s name (but that’s just because we can’t pronounce it) caused unprecedented havoc with air traffic across Europe. Not long following, in July, the earth finally fell silent and from above monsoons rained despair and misfortune upon millions of Pakistani.

The thin blue line of atmosphere that surrounds our planet is, for all it’s power, a relatively delicate and fragile thing that requires more care than we’re giving it, and while we can argue endlessly about how much we are and aren’t affecting it, it’s hard to get angry at a giant oblate spheroid of rock hurtling around Sol at a hundred thousand or so kilometres an hour. With such amazing energies at play it’s easy to forgive the layers of molten core and spinning mantle for having a stretch and a twist every now and then, after all it does give us somewhere habitable to live. What’s not so easy to forgive though is people. Greedy, stupid, careless people…

Deepwater Horizon was, and still is, the master clusterfuck of 2010, of the 21st century so far, and one of the biggest in our race’s short tenure as so-called-masters of this planet. I’ll admit to pulling up to a pump once every couple of weeks and pumping the refined product of crude oil into the tank of a car, sure 98% of my driving is for work, but that doesn’t absolve me of responsibility just like it doesn’t absolve anyone else. We put this power in BP’s hands, we gave it to them to abuse, just like we gave the gold-plated Ferrari’s and giant skyscrapers to the oil barons.

3D Cinema

It would appear that not even Michael Bay could make movies big enough and ridiculous enough with his “artistic style” so we’ve had to add an extra pseudo-dimension to cinema in order to push crappy film-making, drive up ticket prices and allow the consumer electronics market to sell you an entirely new TV that’s barely any different to your current one except that it can make you and your friends look like even bigger dicks while using it.

Not only did Hollywood (is it just me or is it referred to more as an evil benevolent entity than a location) rehash a poor cinema idea from the 50’s with new films but now we start having films being converted from their original glory into horrific parodies of their former selves. The only good thing that will come of this is another chance for me to see Star Wars in the cinema again.

But this kind of hype is nothing new, it’s been happening since print/visual media has been in use, no doubt Ugg used to paint the the best possible renditions of battles with mammoths on his cave walls in order to convince his cave-mates that it wasn’t a monumentally stupid idea to come with him. And I’m sure that they were as disappointed when they got impaled with tusk as anybody who saw Avatar. Yes, I realise that you have to take into account all the people who raved about how spectacular Avatar looked, but most of them likely have about the same level of intelligence as the aforementioned cave-people.

City Life

I mentioned previously that 98% of my driving is done for work purposes, and while I haven’t collated all the data to provide that number as precisely as I have, it’s definitely close. I’ve changed from a person who drove everywhere and walked when essential (usually drunk) and I had no problem with that. Now however it has all changed, because my beautiful wife and I have moved into an apartment in the CBD.

Sure we don’t live in the biggest city on earth, or in Australia, but living so close to all the required amenities has had a profound influence on the way I live my life. More than just a swankier address and a really easy post code this change in geographical location has also been a complete change in lifestyle.

Starting simply, I walk. Everywhere! All my groceries, all my shopping, and anywhere I could possible want to eat out is no more than 20 minutes walk away, and most of it about 5. It has allowed me a freedom from the car and the traffic that used to dominate every trip I made away from home and imbues every adventure out the front gate with something else that is very special, exercise.

On top of all this incidental exercise and environmentally friendly travel my social life has changed drastically. It’s so easy now to pop out for dinner that we don’t even think twice about it, and we’re so conveniently located that having a party is no more difficult than sending a few text messages and buying some ice. I feel almost changed on a fundamental level, the old Dave would much rather spend a Saturday night huddled up watching TV than trekking out to a bar, and he would much prefer cooking and eating at home, with a bottle of wine by his side, than finding his way to and from a restaurant.

But all that has changed, convenience has created a social animal that craves the company of others and loves heading out to discover new things.

And you…

Yes, dear reader. The beginning of this year saw Ok, to begin with… kicking off with steam, and the writing team were busy! Busy meeting a personally agreed upon schedule, in order to perfectly present the amount of awesome content produced just right so as not to overwhelm you with it all.

I know without doubt that while some of those posts were quite silly, some of them stand out like the Great Red Spot on Jupiter itself, they represent a a great inner light and talent and they reflect what were previously just somebodies latent gifts. Despite everything she brought Ok, to begin with… what the rest of us posted were mostly pointless rants and over the top egoism… though there were certainly some gems…

A great example being this post, and one of Drew’s more recent being Passing in the night,  and while Sarah may be the (excuse the term darling) idiot savant of the crew, and Drew may be the dreamer, our Tom is the educated one, the journalist, which is why his opinion on the dreaded shuffle made us smile and the lowering of his guard to write the almost self-analytical piece that I would have titled ‘I’m not a hipster, I swear’ were backed up by his true inner ability to write, and to write exceedingly well, even if at times doing so with what seems like zero effort.

Ok, to begin with… It has been a varied and inexplicable beast, like a band that could never find it’s niche… For those reasons it has never found it’s place, which is why the blog itself fell into disarray, because while the blog was trying to find its place some of us were just finding work, and others found new lives blossoming right in front of them, while some, were just figuring out just where they belonged.

And this… the two thousand and tenth rotation of our earth around it’s sun (since an arbitrary point in time based loosely on rough information given in the most successful fantasy novel of all time) has been a year of change and growth for many, and while Ok, to begin with… may have hibernated through the winter, there is definitely something special to be shared from the brilliant minds of my co-bloggers as it awakens for the Australian summer…

I’ll try to keep up with them (as always, overcompensating with my overuse of commas and parenthesis).