It’s not that I’m like this all the time, and luckily it’s not scary depression. However it is the kind of depression that stops me from easily doing [new] things or finding much joy in anything. When you’re relatively freshly moved to a place and in the search for work, most things are new. Glory, it does seem easier to sleep and hide at home and knit rather than push through this layer of bleurgh to be more me than I’m letting myself be.

Rationally I can tell that there’s a layer of depression weighing down on me and it’s clouding my interpretation of the world and my relationship with the world. The world, I know, is weird, but generally fantastic and there are many good things in my life.

Tim for example is more than good and supports me in so many ways. I’m seeing a therapist who is interesting and helpful. I’m really glad to be finally living in Linz, and I enjoy the size of a smaller city (200,000) after the last years in Berlin. I’m meeting lovely new people here and take my knitting out to the local Stitch and Bitch.  And luckily on those hide at home days, there is knitting while watching Six Feet Under. And at least if I’m knitting I’m still doing something while I hide at home and Six Feet Under is a fitting accompaniment to both knitting and the blues.

In a couple of months Tim and I will be in Australia getting married and enjoying the summer and building boats. There is so much to be happy and joyful about, but it’s so incredibly frustrating that a forcefield of inertia is preventing me from actively engaging with my life to the full extent possible.

Anyway. More than writing about depression I wanted to share a detail photo of my grandmother’s wedding dress.

I think that modifying this dress will be the most intimidating thing about getting married to Tim – he’s great just the way he is and I’m so happy to have him in my life.

The dress is almost 80 years old and feels very vulnerable – I’m a little afraid to take it from being my grandmother’s wedding dress to mine and am thinking about having a second dress available to change into after the more formal bits of the ceremony.  I’m slowly working up the courage to tidy up the hem and shorten the sleeves in preparation for an Australian January wedding. Wish me luck!

I’ve lived overseas (on and off) for about 5 years now and it has always been with the knowledge that distance makes it much harder to maintain contact with family and friends. Either you’re here or you’re there, and despite the best intentions and the latest in technology it’s almost impossible to maintain or grow a relationship in the same way that realtime and realspace allows. There’s something about biorhythms, a shared physical environment, eating and drinking together that will always be more valuable than endless Skype conversations and email lists.

It’s one of the reasons why, even today, organisations still spend huge amounts of money and burn fossil fuels to organise face-to-face meetings and why for the last two years Tim and I spent weeks of time on train trips between Berlin and Linz. Luckily of course, I’m finally living in Linz and the tension that resulted from never being quite at home has begun to ease.

Being in a long-distance [romantic] relationship within the confines of Europe has also obscured the many other long-distance relationships that have evolved: all the many across Australia, to those scattered in Finland and Brussels, Newcastle Upon Tyne, the Norwegian bits of the Arctic Circle, Biggleswade, Sheffield, Brighton, Dunedin, London and beyond. Of course, now with the move to Linz, those who made up my community in Berlin are now more people far afield. Within my head when I think of these friends I also think of the people I’ve met briefly, desired as friends but have never had a full chance to become friends with.

So lately, as annoyed emails have begun to arrive from those I’ve neglected I’m trying to work out how to maintain these relationships, how to provide intermittent meaningful connections that transcend Facebook messages and work for those who are far less digitally embedded than I am.

Letters and packages I guess. I managed to send one off to Berlin yesterday.

That’s what’s been bugging me for the last week or so. Today though my tyrannies of distance are familial. My father has finally asked for me to come back home and visit him, sooner rather than later. He turned 76 last week and he’s been ill for ages, so this isn’t such a surprise.

I can remember when he rang up to tell me he’d been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis and that slowly, his lungs were scarring and being eaten away by a autoimmune response. I was in Helsinki at the time and even though my memory places me in the flat on Mechelininkatu I lived there in 2006. Somehow that timing feels wrong, maybe it was when I was back in 2008?

So for at least 3 years while I’ve been away there’s always been the knowledge that one day I’d have to go back home to hang out with Dad and not really know how long I’d be back in Adelaide for.

What’s amazing though is that for far longer than was expected, Dad’s lung capacity stayed strong. Based on advice from a doctor friend and responding to data from drug trials on rats, he started to take high levels of anti-oxidants and until recently his lungs were good. But at the end of last year he was hospitalised following a stomach flu and as seems to be the way, suddenly felt, I don’t know what. His age? Breathless?

Putting aside the fact that Dad is ill, I am looking forward to hanging out with him some more. As a child he preferred to teach me maths than play sports, but as I’ve grown older I realise how much he’s influenced me – to love science and to be more of an independent worker than an employee. Without a doubt, one of the reasons why I’m with Tim is that in many good ways he reminds me of my father.

So yeah, I don’t really know how to finish this post. I still need to work out the best tickets and how to fit this around work and how to manage being away from Linz  so soon after I arrived here.

Maybe it will give me more motivation to write postcards.

This week I’m overwhelmed with visits by half a dozen lovely people primarily from Adelaide band Brillig. It’s an absolute pleasure to be showing the first arrivals, Matt and Elizabeth around my new city.

I’m almost shaking with excitement for Thursday when some of my most absolute favourite people in the entire world come to visit. I think I’ll need to visit some more fotoautomats so that I can record their visits too!