More Space

The Lil, originally uploaded by &Naomi.

Western Australia is an enormous place. Perth often describes itself as the most remote city in the world; for all I know that might even be true. As I rode along the river path yesterday, I wondered to myself why that didn't make our life here feel more like an adventure. Back in '06, when I was temporarily working at that minesite, I just loved the wide open space and I was exhilarated at the thought that there was nearly nothing between me and the big brown central part of Australia. Why does a similar thought now make me feel so sad and lonely?

I know that we are lucky to be here. Hayden is lucky (along with being talented and clever and extremely hardworking) to have found a job so soon after getting made redundant. We are lucky to be fit and healthy. I am lucky enough to be studying something I really enjoy. We're living in an enormous house (well, enormous for us. It's considered averagely poky in WA). That's lucky, isn't it? But knowing you're lucky is not the same as feeling it.

We have more space here than we know what to do with, but what I recently realised was that the space we make use of in this house every day is roughly the size of our flat in Townsville. What I want to try to do over the summer is to spread our life out a bit. I want us to relax and take in the big space that's all around us. To try to love it and live it, rather than being intimidated by it. I'm going to re-arrange our house a bit, to make better use of all these extra rooms we've got. I'm expanding the garden. And I'm going for bigger space around my blog photos and words.

Do you think it'll do the trick?