A moment in Japan.

It's one of those heart stopping moments. The kind of moments that literally take your breath away. It is like falling in love and like free falling from the sky. You can't breathe or think or feel because every sensory establishment in your entire body is overwhelmed with complete and utter raw happiness, at the sight before your eyes. It is everything you ever dreamed it would be and everything you were told it could be.

You will be seeing Kanji symbols everywhere for a very long time, and rather than dismiss them, you will wonder what they mean and admire their complexity, and delicate strokes. You will hear the jingles of Tokyo trains over Sydney metal forever, because they are not sounds and songs that you could ever forget, or want to.

The tradition and culture has soaked into your delicate, sheltered Australian skin and something about you will never quite be the same again. You have been in an experience that is so unique, and no one can ever take it away from you. In the darkest of days and longest of hours, as you sit at a desk from 9-5, as you cry over broken hearts, as you live your life, and grow old and your life begins to fade, the lights of Tokyo will light up your imagination. They will be as clear as they were tonight in your mind, and you will wish only to be standing back in front of them, watching your breath mist as the cold touches your soul, and wakes you from all the bad dreams you have ever had. You will want to feel the snow flakes stick to your nose and, while you may never be this cold again, you don't care because this experience, this moment, is not one that you would give up for the world. This is the world. You are in it. You love it.

Golden days

The Fallacy of Time

Time does not exist. Only clocks do. 

Where did all the professionals go?

Professionalism. We all know it's important. If you don't know, you are probably not a professional.

The problem I have with it, is that it is so clearly a facade. I have never met someone who is, in their essence of self, a professional or someone who wants to behave like one. The line between personal and professional has become increasingly blurry with the introduction of social media and text messages. When someone says something on facebook, there seems to be more room for personal judgement, comment or voice where in the past, this has not been possible in a professional environment. Does it make our jobs better? Well no. I would argue that it makes our jobs harder.

When someone tells me something on a professional facebook page, I find it impossible not to take personally. It might be good, it might be bad, it might just be plain unprofessional. Whatever the context, it interferes with my personal life. You can no longer escape the professional world to come home and be yourself, and you can no longer be yourself in a personal world, in case the professional world sees it.

It often makes me feel as though I am in limbo and leaves me wondering when I can be my true self, if ever. Ideally, I would like to go to work, come home and forget about the day, leave it behind and never think of it again, particularly if it was a bad one, but I come home to check my email, my facebook and my phone to find that I am being followed, watched and scrutinised on many levels and it is therefore simply, not a possibility. I have to stay professional all the time, despite some things that are said over social mediums being so clearly unprofessional, sometimes, just downright mean. I suspect this is an issue for almost everyone and leads me to believe that the truth is, professionalism is a facade. Social media is starting to show it for what it really is.

It leaves me wondering, if the world continues in this way, what will become of the world in which suited people make important decisions about the lives of the less well dressed and those who can't make the decisions for themselves. What will they do and where will they go when all the lies surface?