What it looks like when you blow up the earth

Witnessed recently at Bulga open cut coal mine.

If there is a blast nearby to where you are working at the time, you are evacuated to a safe position, where you can sometimes witness the shot being fired. Sentries are placed at the perimeter of the safe distance so that nobody can enter the shot zone. Radio silence is called, so that all two-way communications are ceased except for the shot firers. You can tune in and listen to it all being called and counted down while you sit back and watch.

The best thing here for me is that not only am I being paid while I have been evacuated from my workplace, I get to see some truly awesome sights (not to mention pass them on as best I can)!

Once the sentries are in place - which are just guys in four-wheel drives at every entry point to the shot zone - an all clear is given and the shot is counted down from ten. Depending upon your proximity to the shot and how deep it is into the cut you will hear it go off as a boom and a rumble. The higher up it is (this one is on the top of the cut) the better the sound seems to travel. The ground will shake for a period. Then it's called as all clear and off we all go back to work.

At work

Meet Shooter. He's one of the guys I work with in my cleaning job at the mines. Shooter is dressed in what we typically have to wear to scrape grease and shit from places it has accumulated in massive machines - a disposable overall suit. He is doing what we spend a lot of time doing: sitting around waiting to work.

Shooter makes my day. He's a motor-mouth. He says things before thinking and is as funny as hell. He's refreshing because you can't take things seriously around him. Young, full of himself... you can't help but love the guy.

Coping mechanisms

For the last week or so I've been unusually happy. Something snapped in me on the way home from a shit day at work one evening, and I where I would normally go home and be reclusive or ideally drink it off while being reclusive, I laughed out loud instead. I laughed all the way home. I came home and danced. While standing in the kitchen eating, I danced alone. Then I danced with the dog, because he was nearby and an inoccent victim I could rope into my happiness without noticeable complaint.

Work saw a different side of me. I'll write more about what I currently do for money at another point in the week, but suffice it to say the work is shit and the pay isn't great. But I've got renewed enthusiasm and have showed more of my old self to my relatively new workmates. My old self - the one who is not afraid to be seen as a bit of a dickhead, who isn't afraid to jerk around, but also who gets in and gets the dirty work done.

In short, I had my groove back.

My first in-depth appointment with my psych was on Saturday. We talked about the ex from over two years ago, mainly. Her task for me: write a letter to the ex describing all the ways she hurt me. Not a letter to be sent, I guess, but one that lets it all come escaping out of me and forces me to put it into form. Since this suggestion I've been fighting for my good mood. I have flat points - moments where I cannot comprehend anything that is going around me, even the smallest things. It's like time slows for me into dreamlike unreality, and then I wake up from the dream bleary eyed and unable to remember exactly what it was about.

These are things I need to confront. They are going to be painful but ultimately for my own benefit. The pain is scary beyond belief. How do people going into life threatening operations cope? I cannot comprehend it. This shit is not physical, it's only my thoughts! Somehow I'm afraid to face what I know I have to in order to get on with living.

I feel between a rock and a hard place when it comes to coping. Where I would normally shut myself away and blare some weird music on my stereo, I find myself only with my laptop speakers and a tenth of my music collection. The rest - the kickarse stereo and the collection of CDs that I have accumulated over so many changes in my life - are in storage at my parents' house about ten hours drive away. I cannot go there to retrieve them, because my dealings with them are a large part of the reason I've sought therapy in the first place.

So what do I do about this letter? How do I cope with writing it? How do I bust down all the mental barriers I've put up over the two years to block the bitch out of my head? And what do I do to save those surrounding me from having to see my pain?

Mailbox Monday

It's been a while. Not that I've stopped the hunt for mailboxes - I just keep forgetting that it's Monday until Monday is over.



So this one appears to have it's own crash barrier. Did it get run into too many times? Or is the owner a go-cart driver?

Sunday adventures

I got new toys today - a couple of filters for my camera. Naturally all I wanted to do straight away was go out and play with them. I decided to stop on the way home from the store and reef them out of the packet right there in a carpark at the nature reserve.

What did I find? Kids. Plenty of the little buggers everywhere. In prams, running around kicking footballs, throwing bread to the already fat ducks in the pond. So I wandered off in search of seclusion and nature, only to find that nature has kids too.