Aussie on Walkabout

never ending journey…

Commenced two years ago by accident.  I was your average stressed out NYér- a well paid slave to the corporate game.  And what a game it was!  After a decade in the media and advertising world I was the Global Digital Director at Moet Hennessy, part of LVMH.  All my dreams come true.  Moving across the United States in 2007 from SF to NYC with no money and no job I cold called all the big agencies, landed interviews at five, got offered jobs at three, and accepted the digital planner role on Coca Coca at Mediavest World Wide.  

Fast forward ten years and rewind to Police escorts to the Super Bowl, front row seats at Kanye, Five Star weekends in Bermuda, Louis Vutton bags on a whim, and all the Dom Perignon you could wash down your Nobu dinner with. Sex in the city 2.0 meets Mad Men with more women in lead roles.  It took ten years before the cracks started to show.  And my dream gave way to the proverbial nightmare.  The little girl from the Australian carnival finally had it all. And it all wasn’t what it was cracked out to be on the hollywood movies I watched growing up.

It was all a perfectly controlled experiment.  Till I got addicted to the experiment itself. Thats when it got out of control.  For I found not a singular set of linear experiments like school days, it exploded and exponentially expanded madness with each breathe in NYC. Experiments bubbled into a million more, blankets of stars in a sky, sand on beaches, opportunities to go astray in Manhattan.  Like a cat into the night…

This made me deeply unhappy.  Multiple failed relationships, too many nights out on the city that never sleeps, and the restlessness that comes with uninspiring bosses who hide behind corporate logos.  Well developed habits shared with all the WallStreet cliches from strip clubs to cocaine.  The fact I was in my prime childbearing years and a female exec meant nothing anymore.  As often happens it took a earthquake to make me wake up one day and look blurry eyed in the mirror and ask “Who the fuck is this”… After one too many cold and blizzardly winters I bought a no return ticket and packed up a bag for Indonesia.

What entails is my walkabout. Has not been a smooth ride and certainly throws new shade on the concept of ‘living on the edge’.

The problem with edges is they survive on sharpening.

My mystic map is one of unknowns, getting lost in dangerous lands, and the occasional trapping by nymphs. Maybe I read too much Hemmingway, Joseph Campbell, and Homer. Listened to too much Guns and Roses and the Doors. Chased too many Kangaroos and dreamtime. I have some rough edges that could do with smoothing. A heavy heart after of years ego driven madness. A longing to see what lies beyond.

When I was 8 god came to me when I was taking a bath and asked me what I wanted. I said “big boobs and everything”… Born to a carnival, orphaned at 13, boarding school, living in Japan, living in SF/NYC. An ordinary life was never in stars for me.

Way beyond the limitations of ‘ordinary’ or ‘orderly’. I smile with delight as I throw myself in the chaos of the void, knowing I’ll find my wings to fly. But how far, at what cost… We shall see.

For now breaking free from the concrete jungle and escaping into the real one. The rest is up to the universe and me.