Mailbox Monday

This particular shot was taken recently, during a brief visit to my stomping ground of the past eleven years. What we were doing when we found this particular specimen of the mailbox genus was, and still is, one of my favourite pastimes. Driving around looking for anything interesting that takes my eye.

My friends in Armidale were great for this hobby. Weekends were mostly boring spaces of time reserved for being hung over, or working towards the next bout of being hung over, or generally complaining of there being nothing to do. Not many of them had cars, so when an opportunity came up to get out to a national park or just cover some country away from the highways, I could usually count on having at least somebody to take along for the ride.

The best adventures had no set destination. I would have a direction in my head, and a clear idea of where the surrounding main roads were, and that was all that was needed. You could wander around on small roads between the properties for half a day, and then branch off toward a highway when you were done exploring and be home to dodgey up a curry for everyone before dark.

I'm looking back at those days with an unfair lust at the moment. The lust is because I was confident in my knowledge of my surrounds, familiar with the country. I knew without a doubt that I could point my car in a particular direction and have a rough idea of what I was going to find on the way. It was also that I was in control of the game. I was the driver, I was trusted by my passengers that I would know where I was going, and most likely find something different and interesting to beat the boredom on the way.

That kind of lusting is unfair to myself, and the good thing is that I know it. I don't have the confidence in this far larger city to find my way about efficiently. What's more interesting to realise is that I miss the control. We go for a drive, and me being new to this place I just get to sit back and take it all in. It should be great, but suddenly I've become the passenger when for the past eleven years I've been the one that picks the direction. My mind interprets this as a loss of control, a flaw because I do not have the knowledge of this area yet. It's downright irrational. Of course I can't replicate the local knowledge of eleven years in a place I've only been in for a couple of months. Step one is realising the problem. What the hell do I do next?