A whole new story.

Arriving home from the walk to school with my son this morning, I am drenched. If there's one thing I personally am always unprepared for here in Brisbane. It's rain.

Most days I'm leaving the house with a wide-brimmed hat and sunscreen to prevent getting burned from a scorching summer day. As I searched fruitlessly for an umbrella, my wife loaned me her pocket Oroton umbrella, my son dancing up the street under his bumblebee umbrella.

Today I feel an unusual sense of calm, perhaps it's the rain, or the cool breeze or just the second coffee taking hold. Hard to tell.

As I look up from the laptop in front of me, I see the lawn I prepared and laid, the sandstone blocks of the retaining wall, holding the garden my wife and I have planted together. I can also see the twenty-something something flowers I picked up for two bucks each at Bunnings. To my left is our swimming pool, which wraps around the deck. There was a mistake on the plans as we prepared the build and at the last minute, the plans had to be engineered with additional piering to support the design we had planned.

Perhaps this odd feeling is gratitude? Contentment? That's most likely why it feels so strange. I've found that in the quest to do more and be more there is little time for such indulgence. I regularly look back at work, which I was so proud of at the time. To my eye today, it's no good. I've found the feeling of being content very uncomfortable. Like I'm slipping.

I've spent a lot of years beating myself up, as my therapist said to me, you've turned those neural pathways into superhighways. They are the main road, the fastest connection between two points. Not always the best way.

On Saturday night, we slept on a camping mattress at the home of my wife's parents. We lived with them for almost a year while we built the home I'm currently sitting in. Now it feels like a blink of the eye, but sleeping on the floor in that single room we called home for those many months reminded me how far we have come.

In the time it's taken to write these few paragraphs, the rain has now settled in. With no wind, it is simply pelting straight down bringing with it a slight chill.

Today I have to jump into some new video projects, a new EPK for a theatrical production in Sydney and a live video tour for a private school in Brisbane that we are planning. Right now, I think I'm just going to enjoy this cup of coffee and watch the rain for a few minutes. I hope you make time in your day to just enjoy watching the world go by.

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