It was exactly 23 years ago—June 4, 2001—that I landed at New York’s JFK, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to tackle to world (well, the US part of it) as the New York correspondent for the Australian Financial Review. Here’s how young and naive I was: I actually thought I had to adhere to the newspaper’s insane daily hotel per diem, and spent my first six weeks in a room at the West Side YMCA. Glamorous.1
In an odd coincidence, I was this past weekend back in that neck of the woods. Elevator Girl and I zipped east, landed at the no-longer-like-a-bomb-site LaGuardia, and headed to Connecticut on a two-fold mission: for me to suss out houses for the August move; for her to see Connecticut for the first time.
I could go into great detail about the next 48 hours but here are the quick takeaways: we love traveling with each other; parts I thought I’d like to move to felt like Ozark-style drug-cartel havens; and I really don’t want to move at all. What that means more than anything is I’m struggling to figure out the upside of moving relative to all the dislocation and, above all, the effect on my boys.
The problem? Sometimes decisions simply aren’t in your control and, as a dad, I faced a crossroad of going legally nuclear or making the best of a situation I neither want nor agree with. I chose the latter.
It’s going to be a rough period, for sure. We all like to imagine we’re captains of our fate, masters of our destiny, until we realize we’re not. But I’m also realizing all I can control is my reaction and response and, in this case, that’s actually made a little easier knowing my sons will need their dad more than ever as another foundation of life as they know it is knocked over.
Of course, I also couldn’t process the past few days without thinking about my own evolution. I’ve long admitted to not being a fan of Chicago, and embarked on the east coast visit excited to reacquaint myself with towns I once knew well and think about how to start a new chapter there. Instead, I left with a deeper appreciation of what I already have and where I already live.
I’m going to put that firmly in the “progress” category. And the visit did clarify some other big things: my need to be close to civilization (closer than an Ozarkian backwoods hideout) and to focus deeply on how things make me feel. Being back east just didn’t feel right, but the circumstances mean I’ll need to build a life that does.
More than anything, it reminded me that you just can’t go back. I’m the first to wallow in nostalgia about music and movies from the 80s; to randomly search the “happy little Vegemites” commercial and then go deep into a rabbit hole of childhood memories. But being nostalgic is vastly different from thinking you can rewind life’s clock, as though you can pick up where you left off a decade or two ago.
I’m also not sure why you’d want to. A big part of me wants to fully understand what’s happened in Australia since I left all those years ago—it’s actually a central element in the plot of a book I’ve been noodling on writing, should I ever pluck up the courage. But I also recognize while we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past2, it’s a lousy place to hang around for too long.
If the past couple of years has taught me anything, it’s not only that we need to continually evolve, but doing so requires reevaluating what you thought you wanted and what you thought made you happy. So, look forward. Build the life that feels the way it’s meant to. And if anyone finds some money between the sofa cushions, I need it for a house deposit.
Upon learning this, my then Washington DC colleague Peter Hartcher nearly did a spit take, and said in his baritone newsreader voice something like: “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Just stay at the Algonquin and expense it—what are they doing to do?” You live and learn, and I only made that mistake once.
Obviously can’t claim this one. Darn it.
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.
Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.
Really great piece, Luke. Love getting these slices of your lived experience in my inbox. As someone who has tried to go back many times, I always liked Tom Petty's advice: "you can look back babe, but it's best not to stare"