You no longer have to commute during rush hour with the hoi poloi, the great unwashed, the ‘general public’.
INSTEAD: You begin to formulate opinions listening to banal radio phone ins including ‘How to escape a rabid dog” and “What do you think would happen if there was no moon”.

No more awkward conversations with the person who works at the office but whose name you can’t quite remember.
INSTEAD: You see no one and terrify delivery men who back away slowly, as you now see them as potential new friends.

You can have lunch whenever you like.
INSTEAD: You forget to have lunch as you’re far too busy.

No more holiday or sick pay.
INSTEAD: You can work in your pajamas and take a month to go to New York and no one bats an eyelid.

No more RSI or back troubles from cheap office furniture.
INSTEAD: Your living room and bedroom become your office and bed sores become a realistic threat.

No more mundane conversations with office co-workers whose lives are so dull even if they found the Turin shroud on the dead body of Amelia Earhart on the weekend, it would be tedious.
INSTEAD: Putting up with mundane conversations with your neighbour who wants you to care about the state of hallway skirting boards as much as he does.

Thankfully, no more monthly emails entitled “Join us in boardroom to raise a glass and say a fond farewell to…”
INSTEAD: No more getting twatted on the boss’s credit card – as it has your name on it now.

Secret Santa becomes rather limiting and obvious.
INSTEAD: No more awkward Christmas party.

No more having to justify that expensive lunch to your boss.
INSTEAD: Your company expenses now include your rent and electricity.

National Insurance and Tax was the Finance department’s worry.
INSTEAD: National Insurance and Tax is your worry and makes your head bleed from the inside.

Friends resent your newly discovered lifestyle.
INSTEAD: The phrase ’9 to 5′ makes you feel so smug and superior, you so don’t care anyway.

‘LIVE’ each day:

L for LOVE.
Be open to it and never be afraid to love back. Of course it can rock your world and break your heart and soul, but as my friend Julia said “That’s when you know you’re alive”. Never assume it will be the same experience either, so being afraid to take a risk because you were hurt before is rather pointless and prevents you from finding something true and real. Optimism is really important to keep with you when a relationship ends, and friends and family are usually there to remind you of that – so listen to them.

I for INTERESTING
Be fascinating. Be unpredictable. Everyday. Go out of your comfort zone and there will never be a dull moment. Fear is just the result of something you’ve not experienced yet and I really don’t care what anyone thinks most of the time (apart from the odd wobbly moment I usually regret). People are worried and embarrassed for themselves rather than for you – despite their apparent concern. No one ever becomes stronger or more popular by being generic and afraid of failure. Take risks. Sing loudly in supermarkets, go skydiving, ask that person out for a drink, and burn those bridges (which is the most overrated life precaution I’ve ever had doled out to me. Period.)

V for VALUE
Find purpose in your work and believe in your principles and you will find the meaning and respect most people struggle to find in life. I wish I discovered this earlier and been more confident with my ideas and beliefs, and not listened to all the objections I encountered when I was younger. I do believe you have to shape these through experience first before you can live by them, so be open to every idea and opinion and try to not let peer pressure and arrogance sway you. Also, be the best friend you can be: the rewards for loyalty are truly amazing and worth more than any financial gain or material items you could ever gain, people will be drawn to you and offer their friendship and loyalty back as a result. Remember most of all, if the right thing to do in life was the easiest thing to do, we’d all be wearing halos.

E for ENTERTAINING.

I try to find the fun in everything I do – in work and play. Life is a one-off show, so I go through life with an imaginary camera on me (much like Miranda). This encourages me to be continuously entertaining and remind myself not to be insufferably dull and depressing. Laughter is never to be underrated in any situation and doesn’t make you less sincere, it just makes the harder moments in life easier to digest. Finding things to stimulate you, whether it be: hobbies, coffee, drugs, sex, or a game of Twister, is the fuel you need to travel down life’s road. Again, people are drawn to those who know how to enjoy themselves and not content to suffer with their lot in life. So dazzle, laugh and sparkle at every opportunity.

So now it’s your turn, what life lessons you try to live by? Go on, I’m sure you have some.

A NEW DAILY ROUTINE

The perils of working for yourself means you naturally want to rebel against 9-5 hours, which basically translates into “I’m going to sleep in and work late, go for long lunches and have my signing lessons during the day”. Idyllic yes? Well, no. All these wonderful things actually become distractions – the biggest enemy of productivity as my freelance friends will agree. I’m so grateful to have my cousin on board as my business mentor and I’m determined not to give him too many reasons to kick me up the backside, so getting a routine is more important than ever and will have to forgo the weekday nail bar and spa treatments. Seriously, what I mean by this is really to be more efficient with my time, set deadlines for myself, my work and for things I want to make time for, rather than sit dither about like an 80 year old on a fast-moving escalator.

GET PHYSICAL

I am seriously lethargic. Obviously exercising is the healthy thing to do, I give myself a pitiful round of applause for acknowledging this. It’s more the sheer daily exhaustion and failing to wake up with any sense of energy which concerns me more. Ever since the ‘broken limbs‘ incident, which was my excuse not to join the hamster treadmill and Nazi recruitment camps affectionately call a gym, I’ve not done any regular exercise that consists of breaking out in a sweat. I do walk a huge amount but apart from this, I’m simply lazy. I loathe running, I have fantastical visions in my head of doing ballet but the reality of the situation may not be the same, so it’s either dance classes or some other form of sporting prowess. I really have to decide what I should do, as all exercise seems as appealing as Gregg’s pasty rubbed up against a door mat at the moment.

WRITE, WRITE, WRITE

It’s my only creative outlet beyond singing and the fact I have only been able to write three posts on this blog during 2011, tells you how much my life has failed on this front. I did at least three posts a month a few years ago and I think I owe it to myself having a blog since 2006 to keep this going and to find the fun in updating it regularly. I love it so much, but it requires discipline and I’ve been reading a lot of books like Stephen King’s On Writing and other guides on the subject, to remind myself I don’t have to be so precious about it and can make the time if I really want to do it. Enthusiasm comes from creativity and I have as much enthusiasm as a flatulent cat with asthma at the moment, so it’s more important than just blog posts and empty pages of half-finished novel to me.

SAY LESS, DO MORE

I know this post totally contradicts what I’m going to say next, but I really have to talk less about what I intend to do and actually follow through with my claims. We all do it, though I seem to do it all the time. Some of my friends may think I’m being a little harsh on myself, though I’ve noticed far too many intentions went astray last year, so the ratio could be strongly improved.  I’ve read if you want to set yourself goals, don’t tell everyone you’re going to do them, as the more people you tell, the more you convince your mind you are fulfilling them and therefore lose the element of responsibility in seeing the task through.  There are ways and means of going about it and issuing a press release amongst friends is not the way to go about it. It just makes you feel like a buffoon six months later when they ask you how’s it going.

ACKNOWLEDGE “JIMINY CRICKET”

Finding out what gets you up in the morning, so you can march through life with a shiny baton of truth and purpose is bloody hard. You can read as many self-help books as you like, but until you simply listen to that annoying voice inside your head which has more sense than you do, you will never be truly happy. It’s really clichéd and annoyingly simple and yet we spend hours, weeks, years and even lifetimes ignoring it and gravitating towards doing what we think others expect from us. The baton clumsily slips out of hands, usually during these vital moments when we have to make an important decision over the soulless but highly paid job offer, or the relationship with fit but inappropriate guy, or deciding to spend time with the selfish friend who no longer listens to you. Jiminy is there though. He told me I didn’t need to work for anyone else anymore and now I have my own company, he also told me I didn’t need a relationship to make me fulfilled and happy, so I can resist the “Singledom” paranoia when it rears its ugly head (you know, when you swear online dating is a waste of time or when yet another friend announces their engagement through Facebook). Listening to myself has gone a long way to making me a happier and more calmer person recently, so it’s more a case of continuing to do this resolution.

I’m going to grab 2012 by the back the head like a cheap whore in a motel room and try and not let time take over these intentions. Perhaps the points will inspire you to do the same, I think changing your approach to life are much more realistic goals to aspire to strangely than stubbing out a cigarette or signing up to Weight Watchers:

1. Organise my time.
2. Exercise.
3. Be creative.
4. Follow things through.
5. Listen to myself.

If you see me not doing any of these over the coming months, please do walk up to me and slap me hard with flat side of your smart phone. Here’s to not cringing at this when I read it again in 2013 and realise I’m still doing some of these.

So this is me starting again. It might as well be the beginning as I think my previous blog entries were getting on the little self reflective side, so much so, the writers of ‘Dawson’s Creek’ were probably chasing commission on them.

Watch this space.

I find myself in a state of flux (hardly anything new I hear you cry) which is not just a mental state for me but it seems to be materialising in several other aspects of my life like my career, my home and even some of my friendships. Being back in London is unfathomably easy and way too familiar for my liking. It is the mental equivalent of slipping on an old pair of slippers, yet this time I also have my eye on a shiny pair of new shoes (the shoes in question happen to be in a swanky New York department store, on sale and put on hold behind the counter with my name on them, making them especially alluring even though I am stuck on a different continent). My life has moved on so dramatically now, that certain parts of it that once fit in quite easily with my daily routine now seem to be totally defunct or inappropriate. You’d think living out of a suitcase since April and not working properly since July would throw me into further disarray but to be perfectly honest I have never been more happy in my life than right now. Attempting to carve out a new life back in London, not knowing if this next step is the right step forward, is the thing that fills me with the most unease and doubt.

The idea of sitting behind a desk and working for someone else fills me with so much dread I’d rather vomit onto a porcupine then lick it up. I have to be creative. I cannot and will not settle for anything less. Sounds dramatic and I suppose it is. For the first time in my life the thought of permanence and routine bores me – this used to be the safety net I would seek out and hold onto desperately to in order to give my life structure. I don’t know what the antidote is but I know I need to step out and embrace my creative side again. I need to be embrace the unknown and allow creativity to flow back into my bones. It scares me as I really don’t really know how to achieve this. I feel like a priest who’s been asked to become an atheist or a dog being ordered to meow. I know what’s involved, I’ve seen other people do it, I just don’t have the tools available to make it the transition. I read the fantastic book ‘The Creative Habit’ by the choreographer Twyla Tharp which has been a great starting block for me as it’s practical and full of sound advice. No airy fairy crap most self-help books insist on preaching. I realise it’s just inexperience and fear that holds me back mostly. Practicality is also an issue, I simply don’t have the funds to suddenly be a full time writer or performer. I went to a talk given by Stephen Sondheim, a musical theatre hero mine and to many other theatre fans. He spoke about his mentor Oscar Hammerstein II and it made me think how envious I was the had someone in his life who saw enough potential in him to be something greater than he was. I’d quite like a mentor. A guiding and enthusing force of good in my life. I can lend my talents towards many things but my concentration and impatience tends to let me down. I am reminded of this constantly with the random notebooks full of ideas stuffed in various bags and boxes of mine, the half finished documents and scripts on my computer or the songs yet to be memorised and technically mastered. I do wonder if it’s cynicism, perhaps indecisiveness or even age that stops me from committing or just a life long habit I have failed to keep in check. To be great at one thing when I have the urge to do a hundred million things all at once. ‘Focus’ is the big word I need to remind myself of over the next few months.

Sorry, what was that?

Those who know me know that last year I had an accident. Quite a big one. I broke my hands. Yes, that’s right – in the plural sense. In fact, I broke eight bones in total – both wrists that now have what are affectionately known as ‘Herbert Screws’, some other small bones in my left hand and most significantly my left arm, which needed a ‘Wolverine’ style plate bolted into place. I only realised today, I never wrote in detail about how this happened but to cut a long story short: I was on a date.

You’d think this would have been quite an ordeal for me, well it was and quite hideously painful too (strange how I curiously never imagined broken bones to be that painful until then) This aside, the episode wasn’t that surprising given my track record with dating; just ask my friends. So much so, when news of my injury reached my best friend back home in London, it didn’t illicit a sympathetic and frantically worried call, no quite the opposite really. As I lay in the hospital bed with my arms bound in plaster and bandages, with my iPhone on speaker mode balanced precariously on my chest, I could hear the faint unimpressed voice of my friend Dan say “Richard, it’s time to write that book now.”

I’ve toyed with the idea of writing about my dating escapades every now and then, I’ve even posted a few of them on here – but a whole book? Too self indulgent and self deprecating perhaps? It sounded like a crazy idea before and too ‘Bridget Jones’ for my liking but now I’m thinking it might not be such an idiotic idea after all. Gay fiction in general makes me want to hurl into a cheap plastic carrier bag in front a room full of strangers and the only gay biographical authors I do admire are David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs. I’d have to have some message beyond “Hey look at the crazy dating antics of this guy, ain’t he hysterical?!” Writing something bigger than a few paragraphs is what this blog has been leading up to I suppose; the trick is for me is to stop thinking and actually do more and just sit down and write goddamn it. Am I capable of doing it? I just have to let go of being such a perfectionist and allowing myself to be distracted by, let’s face it, everything.

Where to start?

Here’s the wonderful David Sedaris reading and extract from his last book “When You Are Engulfed In Flames”:

“Stop worrying where you’re going – move on. If you can know where you’re going, you’ve gone. Just keep moving on.”  ‘Sunday in the Park with George‘.

Over two years ago I moved to Australia. Two years of radical change. Two years of self-discovery. Two years of rest and recuperation. Two years of growth. Two years that needed to happen. If my life was a movie, this would be the penultimate scene right before the end, where phrases like “Well, it’s certainly been an adventure!” would be uttered and people would starting hugging each other goodbye as they march off into the sunset. This isn’t the kind of adventure I’ve had at all really. I’ve still not seen Uluru or been to Western Australia, I’ve done a few touristy things but certainly not conquered the country or anything – I doubt I ever will either. I’m quite happy for the multitudes of backpackers to continue sampling Australia’s sights and sounds I’ve missed. My adventure here was about prioritising my life, which I admit sounds as thrilling as a tax return party organised by Accountants of Dagenham, but honestly it’s probably the best thing I’ve done with my life.

Not many people get to dissect their life and personality under the cold light of day but “snow globing my life” as I like to call it, has allowed me to do just that. Routine, fear of insecurity and delusion cloud most people from ever having to face this head on and is usually only reserved for for teenagers or 40 year olds going through a midlife crisis. For example, I realise I will always be more comfortable knowing I am doing the exact opposite to everyone else. I loathe it when something I love becomes popular with the masses so I prefer to move on – do something different. I also know I am my most happiest when I’m performing, working within the theatre, understanding ‘an audience’ and this is something I intend to rectify when I get back to city life.

I get annoyed when people assume I hate Sydney because I want to leave. Why would I want to abandon such a great lifestyle to return to noisy, expensive, economically unstable city they ask? I still think Sydney is a great place to live and fulfills a purpose with it’s sun-drenched, hedonistic, carefree lifestyle which the city’s inhabitants relish daily. This city has given me a tremendous amount and shown me I’m capable of achieving anything, that spontaneity has it’s own unique rewards. You can get drunk on culture in London and thrive off the buzz of New York and a few years ago too much of this ‘city life’ became overwhelming but I now sorely miss this, I really do.

So, next steps? Well, they’re partly out of my control. The one thing I’m sure of is that I have to move on.

At the end of “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” the Pevensie children grow up to be great Kings and Queens after their adventures with Aslan, only to find themselves back in the real world after stumbling across the old lamp post that once brought them to the magical land of Narnia. Even though they have lived a lifetime, nothing has changed since Lucy first stepped through the wardrobe. Australia it seems is my Narnia. I’ve done a million and one things, grown personally and then some but back in London things haven’t changed. I almost felt as though I was bragging unnecessarily when I told friends what I was doing with my life now, as if I was Edmund describing to a row of confused faces, how I slayed a White Witch and befriended a talking Lion.

It’s only been two days and I can’t quite process how I feel to be back yet, it’s been ridiculously familiar but strangely divorced at the same time. Certain elements of my life here have either changed or feel redundant, whether it be my old bedroom or favourite cafe, banter between particular friends and so forth. There’s certainly a small amount of personal grieving that comes with the fact nostalgia is the only thing that has kept certain experiences alive.

Thankfully, certain friends have never waivered, their faces beam like giant lighthouses guiding me back safely to what was so great about my life here. These are the people I have longed to spend even just five meager minutes with while I was in Australia. Their news – comforting, their friendship – easy.

So here I am, back in London after two and half years. Right now, and without sounding too new age, I feel as though ‘my journey’ isn’t complete yet. I’m not ready to come home, if I can help it. New York is the definitely the next destination, I just need to secure that opportunity and it will happen. I’m ready for it. If I did have to return to the UK, it wouldn’t be so terrible, it would just be harder as I’d have to make a conscious effort to move myself on and not slip back into routine. I’ve achieved so much since breaking away from my old life, so it would frustrating if I let it take over once more.

Like Edmund and Lucy, I’d like to ensure I have a few more trips back before I have to grow up and settle back home once more.