November 24th 1994

November 24^th 1994

What’s significant about this date? For me it’s when my life
changed from being a part of “WE” to being only an “I”

On this day I separated from my wife of 24 years and
embarked on a life as a single entity, I have previously
touched on my feelings about this and I have no intention of
boring you with details.

In this post I will endeavor to tell the tale, ever so sketchily
of the 11 years since then, again I will not go into enough
detail to intentionally bore you;

My first mission in life was to personally confront all my family
and friends and tell my tale of woe to them face to face, don’t
ask why this needed to be done this way, it just DID.

OK, for some people this would not have been such a huge chore,
but I’m blessed with family and friends who are spread from
one side of this huge continent to the other, so this little project
took a month in time and about 7500 miles in distance traveled
to accomplish.

As promised not too many details, suffice to say I told and
retold the story of my heartbreak about 20 times, with snippets
thrown in to “anyone” who would listen.

OK, mission accomplished, my friends and family now know all
the tragic details, now WTF am I going do with the rest of my
life, seriously, this was the first time that I’d even considered
what to do after the “mission.”

As a couple we had wintered in Queensland for quite a few
years so I just automatically headed for there, the last on my
list “to tell my story to” was my Dad, as he lived in Queensland
that was another reason I suppose.

I chose to put down my first set of roots at a lovely little
fishing village called Tin Can Bay.

I just rolled into town, booked into a caravan park, and sat
back to see what would happen next, I’m not kidding about that,
my life over the next couple of years “just happened,” and I
went along for the ride.

The gods were kind to me in that, the caravan park I had
chosen?? Was a lovely Park and was filled up with lovely
people who nurtured me, whether they knew it or not, and
brought me slowly back to life.

I spent 3 mainly happy years there before the need for a
little more space became important enough to bring about
a move, (I/we had spent 15 years on a farm before the break
up, so living 10 feet from your neighbour was strange to me.)

An unfortunate part of my personality is that I’m introverted
and don’t make friends easily, so the close confines of the
Park were ideal, it’s hard to ignore people from that close
range, so I developed a new set of friends despite myself!

The last 8 years have been spent in Gympie, where with a very
few exceptions, I have again successfully hibernated from the
prying eyes of almost all people.

But now comes the “Cinderella” stage of my life, for the past
few months I have ventured into the Blog world, cautiously at
first, but with ever expanding abandonment, to my surprise
and joy I have found a new set of friends with whom I feel
totally at ease.

There is a small down side to this situation, that is, that our
contact is electronic via cyberspace rather than physical,
(in the nicest possible way) another aspect is that such a lot of
them live in other countries making the meeting up even less likely.

I do however consider this a small price to pay for the joy, and
sadness, that comes from my contact with this new group of friends,
the Blog community.