without our feather, we can fly

I moved to Melbourne two years ago today. It feels as though it has gone quickly and yet so much has happened. Right before I moved, I had a farewell and forty party, which, while cheesy on the alliteration front, seemed an obvious choice if one were to name such a party. I looked around at all my friends and family and thought, why am I leaving? Everyone I love is here. These are great people. But it was time for a new chapter.

My wise friend, Mark, suggested I write a blog so that I could share my experiences in a new city. Sometimes it feels conceited to be writing down my thoughts and putting them up in a public forum. Why does it need to be public? It could just be a journal for me. Nevertheless, I am doing it and I will continue to, if somewhat sporadically, blog. What started with discoveries of my new location seems to have segued into a more existential exploration of the deeper recesses of my mind, peppered with a new cafe or trip out of town. I'm ok with that. Without wanting to sound like a valedictorian speech by crow-barring a quote in, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. a physician by profession but also one of the best regarded American poets of the 19th century said, “Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” 

I am working on my next entry, inspired by a newfound addiction to a game app, Fort Conquer (unlikely, I know, but I'm ok with it). My thoughts around the monsters in it have taken on their own monstrous proportions and I am following a circuitous thread that needs to be reigned in. If threads can be reigned in. It is coming. 
  
There is something to be taken from every new experience. Sometimes the decision whether to embark on a new experience or to embrace the current one can feel fraught. At least for me. Holding fast to that which is good was part of my primary school motto which has strangely leaped into my head as I write. We can cling to what we know and fear taking risks. But eventually there is peace once the decision is made and with it, the knowledge that a new chapter brings new insight, adventure, feathers in our cap and people who open our eyes a little more. I know more than I knew before.