I was in a reflective mood the night I typed this up and aside from fixing some bad grammar and spelling mistakes it remains as I first wrote it. I'm not sure this says much of my character but it certainly says a 'bit'. I feel kind of naked posting this up as a blog for any and all to read but hey, a bit of nudity now and then can be good for your health I guess.

I started life a black sheep and spent a lot of my youth unguided and lacking a sense of direction, I was odd basically, harmless but odd and always preferred my own company, I started talking very late but started walking very early, I lived in my own little world. I had a strange mix of interests, drama was my favourite and infact only subject I enjoyed at school, I failed everything I didn't like, I once beat my school and all the other schools in my district in an interschool science convention but only because the goal interested me. I only apply myself to what I 'enjoy' just because I can do something doesn't mean ill do it. I could be an easy A grade student one day and a snoozing F grade student the next.

For the lack of attention I showed at school my parents had my IQ tested and it turned out that I was actually really fucking smart, I wore that like a badge of honour but never really did anything with it. I may have been intelligent but in some dumb way the fact I was proven to be brainy made me all the more lazy, as if I didn't need to prove myself. Basically I wasn't a guy who really cared what I was doing or for that matter what I would end up doing.

Being without goal and certainly without discipline I decided of my own accord at 17 I would try out for the army. I did so well on the tests that I was offered among other things to be trained up as a commando (that's actually what it was called), it meant a fat pay check and the added bonus of being a 'cool' guy who could learn to kill bad guys for a living, what more could a teenage boy without aim in life want right?

But it wasn't to be and instead lead to a crisis of conscience that ended up with my becoming a Buddhist monk instead, the opposite extreme. I'd made a decision, I wasn't going to be tough and cold, I was going to be soft and warm.

I was a monk for close to a year before I came to a head, the life worked for me. I could stay there in the forest forever, peacefully live out my days in seclusion. Die old and stress free. 'But' I was only just out my teenage years (turned 20 while I was there) and had experienced too little of life to retire from it and so it was time to go back.

Since then I've gone from a worker to a boss, I've worked in retail and I've helped build sky scrapers in Perth city. I've been friends with some wonderful people, some fun loving people and I've been friends with criminals and thugs. Somehow I feel like I'm suited for all but belong to none.

I've been back from the monastery for about 2yrs as I'm writing this and although I'm a much more balanced person then I used to be and have a few close friends and am seeing a beautiful woman both inside and out I am 'still' some what at a loss. I don't know what the future will make of me, I scarcely know what to do with the present day. I hope to learn. I intend to learn.

Ooookay, thats enough self indulgent keyboard taping for one night, peace.


- Tom