Dispatches from the Fury Road: Fan.
Like most people this year, I’ve found the start of 2024 to be a roller coaster ride.
Up one second. Down the next. Suddenly spinning around a corner you didn’t expect. Screaming in fear. The neighbours knocking loudly on the wall. Being furious with them for having the audacity at knocking on your wall when you never let them know you can hear them having sex. In their defence it doesn’t go for long but still. I’m certain this is a universal 2024 experience for everyone.
I’ve been pretty happy with how I’ve dealt with all of it.
When I’ve felt the Grief Train pull up to the platform I haven’t blinked. I know that feeling is going to be on a city wide loop for a while now and when it arrives, I calmly board until I can get off at the appropriate stop. It is what it is, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over time, it is better to embrace the grief so you can leave it behind at the right moment.
I’ve had some crazy things said to me in work situations and I’ve been rapt at my poker face. I can’t repeat these quotes but suffice to say, they’re cocoa bananas. I love my work. I am grateful to make a living from entertainment. I take pride in what I produce no matter the vehicle that is delivering my ideas.
Yet the industry has a substantial amount of people who say things that are just not right. Not necessarily wrong. Just left of centre in a way that isn’t interesting, entertaining, or sane. Each time something has been said, my face has remained impassive, almost to the extent it is bordering on looking like I’ve had a stroke. I give nothing away and then wait for the appropriate moment to ring certain friends to say, “Guess what was just said to me?” Then we all laugh before I return to the insane asylum that is Australian Entertainment.
Last week I had a very scary man and his partner sit with a mate and me at a bar. It wasn’t late but this guy’s company suddenly felt like it was 4am. It was volatile. He was quite clearly on all the drugs. He was very friendly in that way if you looked at him at the wrong angle, he would smash your face in. Fun!
This is too long a story to recount here, but I had to find our way through this tense situation with just the right mix of laughter, stubbornness, and caginess so my friend and I could leave with our faces intact and our wallets in our pockets. A big shout out to the bar staff who looked over to see if we needed help and offered none. I am grateful to those nights in Adelaide in the 90s when I WAS out at 4am and found myself in scary situations. The unintended training I experienced in those situations came in handy for a night like this.
I feel I have dealt with the year as best as I can.
Then my fan broke and I was ten seconds away from walking into oncoming traffic.
My big expensive fan that I’ve had for seven years just suddenly came apart in my hands and this is the closest I’ve come to a three-year-old’s temper tantrum when they can’t find the words to express themselves. I am embarrassed that something as boring as a broken fan was the moment that I came close to falling apart. It is always the little things that make me react with the biggest emotions. It is a tedious trait and I’d love to have more insight into why this but I’m currently writing this from my apartment that is so muggy I’m sitting here in my shorts looking like I’ve just taken a dip in the ocean.
Sorry about the visual but trust me, if you could see me now, you’d wonder why I was typing away while melting. It happened so late in the day all the stores that sold fans were closed and all I could do was walk impotently to a chemist where I bought toothbrushes, soap and headache tablets. I don’t need any of these. I’m not sure what I was doing. I just needed to walk and the chemist got in the way.
I have no solutions this week. I just needed to get this out of my head while my skin glistens and my forehead buffs. Yes, I know I can buy a new fan. I will buy a new fan. I’m just more amazed at how you can be so level headed with bigger issues, and then something as daft as this is where your reslience breaks.
I was such a fan of that fan too. Don’t you hate it when those you idolise let you down?
Justin Hamilton
Surry Hills
21st of February, 2024