April Fool's Diary

By Damien Dwyer

The book is a two-part diary. The first part starts in early 2012 and covers a year towards the end of the author’s working life as a doctor. The second part covers a four month period in 2019, by which time the author has retired and is facing some of his own health challenges.
The diaries are a mixture of detailing some of the everyday trivialities of ordinary existence, coupled with short forays into more serious events, and seemingly random excursions into contemplation of some of life’s deeper issues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Aug 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781504322065

Book preview

APRIL

FOOL’S

Diary

Damien Dwyer

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Copyright © 2020 Damien Dwyer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

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except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-2199-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-2206-5 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 08/24/2020

Contents

Preface

Part One 2012

Part Two 2019

Postscript

Thanks to Jenni Leigh for her

amazing competence,

calmness and hard work in bringing this

manuscript to fruition.

Preface

I have had a desire to write something worthwhile for years. There have been a number of past efforts to write works of fiction, but those efforts have been universally poor. So, I decided I would settle for writing a diary. And on the 1st April 2019, I began putting pen to paper. Under the title of April Fool’s Diary. Not realizing how much the joke was on me. For I had completely forgotten that I had already written a diary manuscript covering the period from the 7th March 2012 to the 13th March 2013.

I rediscovered the 2012 diary on the 25th June 2019, by which time I was nearly three months into the second diary. Sadly, the title of April Fool seemed stunningly appropriate.

There has been significant editing of the two diaries, primarily because I have a depressing capacity to say some things again and again. I particularly have to thank my brother Paul Dwyer for trying to bring some much needed discipline to the editing process. Perhaps regrettably, I have an obstinate streak, and accordingly have not always followed his advice. I have also been reminded that a collection of the same words can play different tunes in different minds.

I would stress that the editing has been carried out on the basis that no new material has been introduced for any diary date.

I have decided to let the two diaries run in chronological order. That seemed to be the simplest approach. And I suspect the most honest. And although it seems at odds with my capacity to lie to myself, I actually am into honesty.

In regard to the 2019 effort, I had initially planned to write for longer. That all changed with the finding of the 2012 diary. Obviously there needs to be some sort of limit on how many times one says the same thing.

To be truthful, I have also run out of energy. Flapping around in the darkness does take a toll. To the point I can no longer get off the ground.

All that is left for me to say is to wish you good reading.

Damien Dwyer

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Part One

2012

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Wednesday 7th March 2012

I have been writing in a sporadic fashion for some years. The total output in that time has been minimal. And yet, I would claim writing is what I most want to do at this time in my life.

So at last I have decided to put up rather than shut up. And hopefully write every day for the next twelve months.

I have so many thoughts going through my head. As I say to Robyn, sometimes I give myself a headache. A lot of it comes back to the meaning of existence. Existence in general, my existence in particular. I think that means I have existential angst, but maybe I am using that term incorrectly.

I warn you now there will be recurring themes over the next twelve months.

Love is the thing that matters most. Often much easier said than done. I am continually surprised how hard love can be. Perhaps that is tied up with some of the contradictions in life. To love well, one needs to discard all self-interest. And yet it is self that drives the search for meaning, the meaning of life in general, and one’s own life in particular. I think it can be hard to separate self from self-interest. The self – it is both the essence of our existence, and at the same time, when it comes to love, the millstone around our neck.

I have this statement that I have written multiple times. Love is the fuel for the soul. Is it just the best fuel or is it the only fuel? Is anything else simply the equivalent of unleaded petrol in a diesel motor? I cannot answer that question now. Perhaps over the course of the next twelve months, I will come to a more definitive position on this question. I have no doubt love is the best fuel, and that is probably all anyone needs to know at this point in time.

The people I admire, they have all lived a life of love. Why am I so stupid that I do not always follow their example? I guess that just emphasizes how hard love can be.

Do I expect to find the meaning of my existence? No. Would it be smarter to stop searching? I cannot change the way I am. Will there be any answers? There will be some. Most of those answers will be within. There are some clues that come from outside. Without clues, I call them. I can tell you some of those without clues. Nature at its best. Water, dawn, dusk, trees, moon, sun. Some of the arts. Music particularly. Certain films, certain plays, certain writings, certain paintings. All without clues. Good clues because they lead to within. To where any of the real answers are.

There seems to be some sort of spirituality to great art. Often love as well. Nature at its best has that same sense of spirituality. A benign feel. A goodness. A loving feel.

Confused? You should be. I always am.

When someone is writing prose, you expect more from them. You expect their thoughts to be organised, that there will be some logic to any arguments, any statements. You will not often get that from me. My mind takes off, and I will often write the first thing that comes into my head. It is hard to get things right first time.

Perhaps that is why I sometimes dabble with poems. People don’t expect poems to be logical. They understand they end quickly. And often obscurely. And they accept that.

As an example, here is a poem I wrote some months ago.

Persistent

Relentless

As waves against the beach

The questions

That life

Asks of us

Why not

Embrace the ocean

Why not

Live the questions

For as water

Can cleanse the body

The questions

Can cleanse the soul

After all

It is the journey

That matters

The destination

Of necessity

Remains unknown.

I should also warn you there will be boring stuff about my work as a doctor. I really do not know to where all this might be headed. This is just the start of what should be an interesting twelve months.

I will leave you with a final thought for the day.

Life is always a balancing act – it is just the height of the tightrope which changes.

Thursday 8th March

Work. Basketball. No energy for writing. There will be many days like this over the next twelve months. Some would argue that work stops me thinking too much. But I have reached a stage in my life where I would rather think and write than work. Not that I don’t take my work very seriously. I do. I give it my best. That is probably the overriding message I got from Mum and Dad. Do your best. The great angels can’t do any more, Dad would say. In one sense it may not be good enough to achieve what you want, but in terms of the way one might live one’s life, it is always good enough. No one can ask any more of you. Failure does not worry me in the least. It is just that I quite often do not do my best. Not so much at work. I find it simple to make the effort there. It really is automatic. I have always made the effort. I make mistakes, but not through lack of effort. No, it is at home that I let myself down. Not enough reading. Not enough music. No writing. Too much television. Not enough time with Robyn. We are both at fault there.

And now a malfunctioning fire alarm. Just what one needs. Fate telling me to stop before I waste everyone’s time.

But don’t forget. Love is the thing that matters most. And always try to do your best. If you remember those two things, you won’t go far wrong. And life’s journey should be a pretty good one.

Time to finish. I’m tired.

Friday 9th March

Easier day at work. Less excuses for not writing.

Maybe I should start with work and having to tell people they have cancer. Although it may not be politically correct to say this, there really is a major difference between having to tell someone who is in the older age bracket (say over seventy) they have cancer, than someone in a younger age group (say under sixty). Whoever thought I would be using the term younger for someone age fifty-nine? I am now sixty, so somehow it seems reasonable to say that. Seventy is the old sixty. It is quite extraordinary, but in my thirty-five years as a practising doctor, the average life span of an Australian has increased by ten years. If things keep going at the same rate, by around 2080, the average life span of a human being in Western society will be one hundred years. Is that a good thing? Is that what we want? I am not going to try and formally answer that question now. Just throw in two thoughts. The first thought is that after the age of seventy (if not earlier), I suspect it should be more about quality than quantity. And the second thought is that I am not sure communities will be able to afford to continue financially supporting the current trend. At some stage, I believe we will have to rationalise some of the health care options we currently provide to the elderly. Such rationalisation is already overdue. Often the decision making should be quite straightforward. People just need to remember. Quality not quantity.

Obviously, I am in a somewhat politically incorrect mood. I apologise for that. Anyway, what I was going to say is that although I am quiet and sensitive and I think caring, when I discuss the diagnosis of cancer in an elderly patient, I do not have the same level of sadness that I have when discussing the diagnosis with a young patient. With the elderly group, there is that sense that the person has had a good innings, and if you have had a good innings, you cannot complain. With the young group, you have that sense of life being unfair. You know shit happens. But just because shit happens, it does not mean it is fair when it does. Perhaps in all of this I am influenced not just by what I see as a doctor but also by family. Dad died at fifty-five from cancer. Too young. Mum is alive in her eighties, but would not be remotely upset if she were told she had some sort of inoperable cancer. She strongly feels she has had a good innings, and she would rather die of something before her brain goes.

What does any of this have to do with the meaning of life? Very little. I’ll take a rest and hopefully come back to write some more.

Back. I have written elsewhere on a piece of paper the following statement.

Life – it is probably just a good ride.

That statement says a few things.

The first is that overall I have been lucky in my life so far. Great parents, great family with lots of siblings and extended family, good opportunities with school / sport / university, really good kids, Robyn. Even the failed first marriage to Marg. There was a lot about that relationship that was really good. Obviously very distressing for all concerned when it ended. But even that taught me some things about myself I needed to learn. Not that I always remember the lessons. At what point does a bad habit become a character trait?

Did I say lucky in life? I mean very lucky. In so many parts of the world, people get nothing like the opportunities I have had. Obviously, you start with Africa. I suspect Africa numbs most of us in the developed world. What is going on in so many of the countries there, we know and yet we accept. It is all too hard. Easiest to say, Africa, well Africa is pretty much a basket case. In saying all of this, I plead guilty to being part of that general reaction. What will be the eventual legacy of all of this? Will Africa eventually change as there is gradually increasing exposure to the exploding communication and information technology revolution that is taking place? And if that happens, will there be great bitterness in Africa about how little the rest of the world did to help them? Yes, we were interested in their resources, but as for Africa itself, well they needed to sort themselves out.

Of course, it does not stop with Africa. Obviously, parts of Asia, parts of South America. And further, within every so called advanced first-world country, there is a significant minority fringe that never remotely has anything like the opportunities the rest of their country has.

So very, very lucky. And that is the first thing ‘a good ride’ says. I have been very lucky. I need to remember that. You as the reader need to remember that. To take with a grain of salt anything I would say.

What else does the statement say? It probably says that I don’t necessarily expect to find any answers. I think in the end I may be able to say how I believe we should live. Probably because that is the way that works best for me, and more importantly works best for the people I admire. But I will not necessarily be able to say why we should live that way. I will say things like I believe in the spirituality of humankind, but I will not have evidence for this. I will not be able to explain where conscience comes from. I will not be able to explain the ecstasy of love when two people open up their hearts in a completely selfless, completely giving fashion such that two become one. As a faltering agnostic, I suspect the only reason I will be able to give you to believe in God, is that I would like there to more after this time on Earth. More for the soul.

I have to be honest and also say that in my mind, I still have pretty much the same body in any hereafter. I guess that means I must be happy enough with the current body.

So be warned. Mainly questions not answers. Do as Rilke says. Live the questions.

For at the end of the day, life is probably just a good ride. Particularly if you are one of the lucky ones.

Saturday 10th March

Golf, Another recurring theme. Today was fun. Played okay. Leave it at that.

The football season has started, and as always, I find myself increasingly drawn to the television set. And yet, if I spend any great length of time watching the various codes, I find that I am vaguely dissatisfied, vaguely unhappy with myself. I feel happier if I put pen to paper. But despite knowing this, I continue to choose sport on television rather than paper and a pen. Nothing like taking the easy option.

How can you have writer’s block if you are just trying to write some sort of diary? Maybe I should just say I did not do anything particularly interesting today, and worse, I do not have any interesting thoughts. Because so far, that seems to be the truth.

Or I am just not in the mood for writing.

Sunday 11th March

Mowing lawns and a supermarket shop. The mowing lawns is not as easy as it sounds. We live on two and a half acres, so that by the time one has finished the ride-on mowing and the push mowing, three hours have passed. Not that I am complaining. It is a relatively small price to pay for living on acreage. Though one of the plusses of winter is that you only have to mow every four to six weeks, as opposed to every two weeks in summer.

The supermarket shop was quite straightforward. We have had gender equality in that area pretty much all along.

And now, pen at the ready. Why do I want to write? I perhaps will answer that indirectly. Let us start with the alternatives.

Watching television. I am very prone to do that, especially when it comes to sport. But at the end of the day, I am often left feeling empty, often left feeling as though I have wasted my time. I see television like so many other things in life. Good servant, bad master.

More reading. That certainly would be worthwhile. The writing of other people can move me greatly. And I realise how impossibly good some writers are. Discovering Tolstoy for the first time was thrilling. Dostoyevsky, Chekhov. I had a thing for the Russians at one point in time. But lots of other fabulous writers. Including Australians. Patrick White and Peter Carey. My favourites, Tim Winton and David Malouf. In one sense, all this great writing is depressing because you know you will never be able to express yourself a fraction as well as these people. And yet, I still have this urge to have my say. To put in my two cents worth. Deep down knowing that it is in fact worth no more than two cents. And yet that does not stop me from wanting to put something on paper. I question my motives for wanting to do this. I worry that it is all about leaving some sort of mark, some sort of legacy. If it is that, I am wasting your time, and more importantly, my time. Ideally what I think I would like to achieve, is to get across some simple advice about how one should live, and the importance of love. And at the same time wander into that area people loosely describe as the search for meaning. Life in general, one’s own existence in particular.

Some answers as to why I want to write. There are other factors as well.

When I write, I get somewhat closer to the person I would like to be. Calmer. Easier about the world. Less selfish. More capable of love. With all of that you have to ask why do I get so slack about writing?

I guess because life is still pretty busy. Near full-time work. Things that have to be done at home. Things to do with family and friends. This last thing I do not begrudge. In many ways my writing is speculative. Family and friends are real. More valuable to play with a grandchild than to ponder the meaning of existence. The latter is tied up with my curiosity about life. The former is a concrete building block for the next generation. In the months to come, I will say quite a lot of negative things about myself. But I have been a good parent and a good grandparent. As I should be. For in my own parents I was taught by the very best.

Yet again, I have lost my train of thought.

Less television, more reading would be good. Also, more music and more walks. Although I am totally non-musical with no voice to sing and no ability to play an instrument, music still has the ability to touch me, lead me to my inner self. And walking is simply the exposure to nature, the chance to smell the roses. If you are smelling the roses, it would have to be very rare that you are not in a good space. Even if there is some sort of crisis, internal or external, you will be closer to sorting out that crisis if you are smelling the roses. Go down to the beach and look at the ocean. Or walk along the road under a full moon.

Smell the roses. Hardly original advice. But in the sort of society we currently live in, with our ever increasing dependence on and our addiction to technology, advice that is more important now than it ever was.

Read. Listen to music. Smell the roses. Almost certainly you will find yourself in a better place. What do I mean by a better place? I won’t give you a specific answer. Something to do with soul and the ability to love.

I am being vague, but I will leave it at that. One of the bonuses of this sort of writing. You can stop when you want.

Monday 12th March

It is a hard day for me to write. Endoscopy list in the morning, patients in the rooms in the afternoon. And Simon returning from overseas today, coming back up to The Coast this evening. So just a little hiatus in the middle of the day for me to write something.

Simon and Katy (his long-term girlfriend) have spent the last two years in England. They allow those under age thirty to have a two year working visa, and Simon and Katy have taken advantage of that. Why am I telling you this? Because if you get an opportunity like this, it is a pretty good option. Work for two months. They are both physiotherapists and there seems to be no shortage of locum work. Then travel for a month. In two years, you get to see a lot of Europe (Western and Eastern), as well as a lot of the United Kingdom. Travel makes most people less insular and that has to be a good thing. Harder to demonize a nation when you have been there yourself and talked to the locals. There are always more similarities than differences. I am not saying anything remotely new. Basically, people are people. Although there are seven colours within the rainbow, and there are a number of shades to those seven colours, ultimately there is still just the one rainbow.

Travel can broaden the mind. It helps if you open more than your eyes. It also helps at times if you look at less. You can end up seeing more. Smelling the roses again.

The beauty of this diary approach is that I don’t have to plan anything. I start somewhere and see where it leads me. It is particularly good for those full days at work, and on other days when I am intellectually empty. My only commitment is that I will try and write something every day for the next twelve months.

Who am I writing for? Myself. I feel better when I write. I have said that already. No one has to read what I write. But hopefully there might be a few thoughts about life that are worthwhile. There will however not be anything that has not been said before.

Has our existence all happened by chance? The end result of the Big Bang and subsequently millions of years of evolution. That seems pretty logical. But there still has to be a ‘Start’. Where does the ‘Start’ come from? I can understand people getting upset when we try and ascribe too much importance to the nature of the ‘Start’, and try and apportion special power to the ‘Start’. But there has to be a ‘Start’. Where we go from nothing to something. Or if there is no ‘Start’, then something that always was.

If you can think of other options, let me know.

So that is one thing, the ‘Start’.

And another thing is conscience. And spirituality / soul. Is our conscience just the end result of various outside influences? It really does seem more than that. There does seem to be a part of our conscience that is inherent. People argue over this. But if there is an inherent component to our conscience, where does this come from? And what about that sense of spirituality / soul that comes at moments of great love? Or comes at those rare times when nature is so special that the world becomes completely still. Where does that come from? What does that all mean?

A little bit of homework for everyone. I have to go back to work.

Tuesday 13th March

Some days I am just not meant to write. Busy day at work. A visit by drug reps at lunchtime. That would be a tough job. The doctor happy to accept the free lunch but not really keen to listen to what the drug reps have to say. But the drug reps will still go through the motions. And I am again reminded there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Now a clinical meeting at the hospital. And then wanting to spend time with Simon. When I saw him in England just back in February, that was the first time I had seen him in nearly two years. And now he and Katy are back in Australia for a month before heading off to South America for six to nine months. So naturally, I want to spend time with them. And then there is the golf day I am organising for tomorrow. Trying to make sure everyone who says they are coming is coming. Trying to get the groups right. Fiddly things that take time.

Time. It is a precious commodity. Undervalued. I need to create more time to do the things I should be doing. Not necessarily the things I want to do in terms of various simple pleasures (though I certainly do not turn my nose up at such things). No, doing the things that some inner messenger within seems to be telling me to do. Why the messenger? Why a certain particular message? I’ll have to think about that. Must go. Already late.

Thursday 15th March

Holy shit, I am so fucking tired. Obviously, I have not written anything on Wednesday 14th. I will explain why shortly. And then today, a really demanding day at work.

I will start with today. Technically, I was meant to finish the rooms at 4pm, but I did not leave the rooms till 6:15pm. It meant I missed clinical meetings at 4:30pm and 5:30pm. Why so late? Despite what one might think, I am a reasonable communicator who is prepared to spend time with patients. I therefore seem to get a disproportionate loading of the more complex type of patients. A lot of these patients are very worthy of the time required. There would be a percentage of patients who have made their own life (and the lives of some of those with whom they are in contact) quite miserable. They are the minority, but their numbers seem to be steadily rising. I wonder if that is a reflection of an increasingly self-centred, less giving society. Of course. I have no hard evidence for that. But certainly the character of my practice has changed somewhat over the last twenty-five years. When I first came to the Central Coast, the practice had a real country feel and the vast bulk of people were very grateful for anything you could do. Now it has more of a Sydney suburb feel, and one is seeing more often the sort of patients colleagues, particularly those in the northern and eastern suburbs of Sydney, have been talking about for years. Increasing wealth certainly does not equate to increasing happiness.

I should emphasise that today was just a tough day and the vast bulk of patients very much warranted the time spent with them.

I do forget how draining work can be. I would stress that observation is not remotely peculiar to medicine. Any job can drain.

Why not writing yesterday?

The golf day went well. Nearly forty starters, so a lot of organisation and last minute juggling of groups. But we had a good day. Great weather, great course, nice people. I played with my oldest brother Garrett, my favourite golfing mate John and two other really nice people. (Yes, there were five in the last group, not four!) Our golf was variable but always fun, always in the right spirit. Somehow it would seem wrong to ask for more.

And then home to catch the end of Robyn’s gathering as most of them were leaving. But Evie to stay overnight with Joey (age 3) and Paddy (age 4 months). And subsequently babysitting Joey, as Evie (with Paddy) and Robyn went off to see some film, I think about home births. Paddy is an example of a home birth with just mum Evie, her partner Kat, the midwife and of course Joey there in attendance. Robyn arrived about five minutes after the event. The traffic was bad, and at the same time things happened somewhat more quickly than anticipated. I arrived about an hour later. Just to see the end result, you would be a convert to home births. And yet for Robyn and I, being medical, we are aware that things can go wrong very suddenly in obstetrics. So of course, we would have been happier to see Evie have Paddy in hospital as per Joey. But you have to respect the decisions your children make.

It is a pity I don’t always do that. Last night, I did something stupid. Unfortunately, I do stupid things more often than I should. Evie and Kat have allowed Joey’s hair to keep growing at the back so that it is down to his shoulder blades. They have been talking of getting his hair cut, and Joey always seems quite happy to have his hair cut. Certainly, he is happier when his eyes are not covered by hair. Anyway, while Evie was out, I asked Joey if he wanted his hair cut and he said ‘yes’ and he went to the cupboard where the scissors were and pulled them out. And so, I cut two inches off his hair at the back. Without having asked permission from Evie. And immediately felt a sinking feeling in the gut. That feeling when you know absolutely you have done the wrong thing. That feeling reinforced by the reaction of Luke. Why is a twenty-three year old smarter than a sixty year old? Thankfully, Joey seemed happy. And Evie was very gentle and kind when I confessed as soon as she got home. But it was still a very dumb thing to do.

As for the rest of the night, I put Joey to bed after I gave him his bath. You sleep beside him on the mattress on the floor. Quiet music in the background. (Thank you Gurrumul.) For fifteen minutes, he would not stop talking, and I was wondering if he would go to sleep. And then quite suddenly fast asleep. There is something extraordinarily special, extraordinarily important in a sleeping child. This florid reminder no child is born bad, and every child is entitled to be loved unconditionally from the very start. That if we got at least that right, the world would be an infinitely better place. If you have been loved, you at least have some idea of what love is about, you have some idea of the importance of love. It does not mean you will get things right. But at least you have some chance. If you have not known love as a child, life is extraordinarily difficult. If you have not known love ever, I think life is just about impossible. Irrespective of whether you are deemed by others to have been successful

I am not sure The Beatles got it completely right. But no one is going to write a song saying love is the thing you need most and it is so much more important than anything else, that the rest does not matter all that much. Simpler to say ‘All You Need Is Love’.

Must go. Basketball.

Saturday 17th March

No chance to write yesterday. Full day at work, then going out as soon as I got home.

Did I learn anything yesterday? I think you do probably learn something every day. I’ll give you one thought to think about. If you have accumulated an uncomfortable number of points in terms of holding onto your driving licence, perhaps the best way to make you stick to the speed limit is to put something delicate or fragile on the back seat. Last night we had a special cake Robyn had made, and I certainly was not game to go over a certain speed in case this had an adverse effect on the way the cake survived the trip. (As it happened, the layers still shifted, but strangely the overall appearance looked more interesting.) So maybe in addition to speed cameras and police blitzes and the points system, we should make it obligatory that once you get to a certain number of points, you have to put your best plates or glasses in a box on the back seat. Try it. You may be surprised at the result, surprised at how effective it is in making you stick to the speed limit.

And please don’t think I’m a bad driver who regularly breaks the rules. Just unlucky enough to run across a rare radar on a quiet back road on a double demerit weekend some eighteen months ago. First points lost for perhaps twenty years. But the points do carry over three years. So, you then have to be careful.

Random thoughts. Never quite sure to where they might lead. That’s better from me. Not ending the sentence with a preposition. I know I do it a lot, and I know you are not meant to. Get over it. Just be happy if you understand what a person is trying to say.

It is raining today. I am not complaining. We have had a week of good weather. The weather is like life. Sometimes life is grey and wet. Sometimes it is good to experience that, to be reminded of all the different colours.

And I guess the rain is keeping me at this desk.

Last year I wrote a short poem about rain. Winter rain to be precise. Written at a time when Robyn and I were stressed.

Bleak

Desolate

Recurring pain

My heart

Adrift again

In winter rain

I said at the time winter rain was a rain you wanted to escape. I am not sure that is right. Because at other times I have written things that would seem contradictory to this thought. As for the poem, it was written to Robyn, but I have never shown it to her.

At that time last year, I also wrote of how in one’s life, at certain points we get the option of choosing the safe route or the dangerous route. The journey on the dangerous route is much more draining but the rewards are ever so much greater. If you go the dangerous route, you have a chance to find some answers. And I ask Robyn to come with me on the dangerous route. And I say we would regret it if we did not make this journey together. And yet, I never did show her what I had written.

That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

Anyway, if you are going to take the dangerous route, you have to embrace winter rain. Live all the questions.

And when I was writing all of this a year ago, I knew enough to say that if I took the safe route, I would end up at a dead end. But I also understood that even if I took the dangerous route, and even if Robyn came with me, I could still end up at a dead end. But I felt at least the living would be more worthwhile.

So, in retrospect, better to embrace winter rain. Better to have a heart that feels pain than a heart that does not feel.

I need a break. Why is that? Sometimes I feel my writing is a bit like foreplay without the sex. I get myself interested, but I don’t go on with it.

Still raining. Time to read a book or listen to music. I want Robyn too.

Sunday 18th March

Where to start? There turned out to be some significance in the last words I wrote yesterday.

I wanted Robyn to come to bed with me. For contact, not for sex. But I knew Robyn was tied up on the computer doing stuff with old photographs for a school reunion, and that was what she wanted to do. So that lead to one of those classic Is that all right / muted response situations. I am almost always hopeless in those situations. Only this time Robyn followed me upstairs one or two minutes later. And that then led to a period of very awkward, quite difficult communication where one is trying desperately to find the right balance of words. To somehow not be too selfish or too critical, and yet at the same time convey your needs and wants. Where both of you invariably end up at times not quite saying exactly what you mean or using unintentionally a particular phrase that provokes a sharp, almost angry response. That sort of communication where at times you feel you are digging yourself into a hole, despite your initial intention to do the exact opposite. You wanted to be fair, to be balanced, to be non-judgemental. Not snap. Not bring up something from the past. Just gently try and move forward, say softly maybe this is where we should go, that is what you wanted to convey.

And yet despite the strain, despite the tension, somehow we seemed to make progress. Ultimately cheap shots minimised. Ultimately some admission of our difficulties, our own failings.

It needed Robyn to follow me upstairs. And it then needed me to start talking. I don’t always talk, particularly if I feel I am asking for something. I always like things to be given freely.

And I would emphasise the first fifteen or twenty minutes of our communication was tough. It is always a struggle to get words right at this time. It would be better if we could respond to the intention rather than the words.

Ultimately, all I wanted to say is I think I need you tonight and I love having your arms around me. So please, tonight put the photos on hold.

And Robyn did. And I felt great. And I think she felt pretty good too. Certainly this morning there was that special warmth between us. That wonderful feeling where you are very conscious of the thirty-two years you have shared, and yet it feels almost the same as the first time you had arms around each other. Only better.

And all this happened because Robyn followed me upstairs. And we talked. You think I would learn.

I will take a break.

Some more mundane words. I have been out hitting golf balls at the practice range. I enjoy doing that although the net benefit is variable. There are times when I feel I am improving, other times when I feel very stagnant. My efforts on the golf course suggest the latter is a more accurate assessment. And there are times I think maybe if I practised more, I would improve. But at what cost? Does the game then start to get too important? Do you forget why you play the game? I am never going to be playing for sheep stations. Why can’t I just enjoy the companionship, the walk, the good shots, and those occasional rounds where for some reason most things seem to go right? I guess that would be my main message. Don’t take the game too seriously. It is okay to try, but don’t kid yourself about your ability. Have fun.

And when it comes to golf, I generally do.

And now Robyn has given me a note about sweeping the driveway and the back verandah. That is a very fair request, especially as I have done very little around the house this weekend. Another excuse to stop writing.

I still feel good about last night. Still smiling inside. It is a nice feeling to be in love. Not that love is easy. I have said that before and I will say it again many times over the next twelve months. But at the end of the day, it is always going to be the thing that matters most. It will always be the guide as to how we should live. It will not necessarily explain why we should live (although it is not that bad a start), and it certainly will not answer the question of how in the fuck are we here on this extraordinary planet in this increasingly extraordinary universe, and whether anything happens after we die. But love will tell us how to live, how we can be happiest in the time we have on this planet.

Another tease. Time to do the sweeping.

Good job sweeping. Made dinner. The latter sounds more impressive than it really is. Just a barbeque and some microwave vegies. But it does take some time.

I know if I lived on my own, I would have very simple meals all the time. Not because I don’t enjoy good food. I really enjoy what Robyn and Luke cook. And I enjoy going out to restaurants. But if it was left to me, I would always take the simplest, quickest option with any cooking. The family all know that. So that it is with some reluctance they might hand over responsibility for a particular meal. I am the option when they are particularly busy. But that can be quite frequent. So, I might get a guernsey once or twice a week. That is more than enough from my viewpoint. And I suspect more than enough from their viewpoint as well.

It is funny when I look back on some of the things I have written in recent years. At one point, I wrote to Robyn that I thought she would get bored reading what I wrote, because I had a tendency to say the same things again and again. You are always hoping to come up with some original thoughts, but the vast bulk of the time the best you can hope for is to come up with a slightly new way to say something that has been said many times before and very much better by other people.

Better to accept people have been asking the questions, living the questions, for thousands of years. And you have as much right as anyone to ask the questions. And if you have any brains, live those questions. As Rilke says.

Changing the subject.

What am I reading now? ‘A Simpler Time’ by Peter Fitzsimons. Easy to read and quite enjoyable, especially as it is about his early family life on a farm at Peats Ridge on the Central Coast. I even recognize some of the surnames. It is an under-appreciated skill to be able to say things simply. Although I should add I probably enjoyed Paul Kelly’s book ‘How To Make Gravy’ a little more. Overall, my reading these days is poor. Perhaps just two books a year. Maybe because I have reached a stage where I want to have my say rather than read someone else’s words.

Monday 19th March

Strange day at work. Really busy most of the day. Hard work to say the least. And then three of the last five patients for the day don’t turn up, and the two that do are very straightforward. I thought I was going to be feeling washed out, and now I just feel strange. But I certainly am not complaining.

What does that all say? The most obvious point is that I have reached a stage in my career when I am definitely happier to work less. A friend once said to me, you know you are in exactly the right job if you can honestly say if you won a major lottery, you would still keep doing the same job. If I won Lotto now, I would stop. Simple as that. That does not mean there has been a change to the way I practise medicine in regard to an individual patient. I still take the time to get a proper history. For a physician that has always been the key to good medicine. I still talk to the patient, often at great length. And I make good decisions as to what should happen next. And if they need endoscopic investigations, I do those well. With all my years of experience in gastroenterology, some might say I am still close to the peak of my powers. But deep down, I know I would rather be working less. Much less.

A second point is that I never worry about the money. My father spent a lot of his career not charging significant numbers of patients. And he had nine children to support. I am lucky because the Government will always give me the Medicare rebate. And the rebate for what I do is not a bad start. (Not necessarily so good for other parts of the profession, for example general practitioners). So, I can at times be seen by the patient to be generous when really it is the Government that is paying a reasonable wage. Dad practised pre Medicare and never had that option. He was truly generous. And he certainly did not remotely care about making a lot of money. As long as he could pay the bills. No thoughts of expensive holidays. And certainly nothing remotely expensive for himself.

I stray. No doubt I will come back to Dad at a later stage. Suffice to say he had a gigantic influence on me. So I do not worry about money and being wealthy. When I retire from medicine, I am greedy enough to want to be able to have the money to keep playing golf and perhaps have one or two trips per year. So, I actually want quite a lot. Far more than Dad would have wanted.

Dad was Catholic. I never got the chance to question him about his Catholicism. About what bits he could not only accept, but with his great intellect, understand. And what bits needed a leap of faith. I would have liked to have had that conversation.

But overall, money matters little to me. So losing some dollars because patients do not turn up, that never worries me in the least.

Clearly when I write, I am all over the place. Start somewhere and end up somewhere quite different. That is what writing on the run does. Little snippets. Maybe as time goes on, I will get more organized. Probably not.

And now I have to go and make dinner again. Two nights in a row. Luke busy preparing lessons for school tomorrow. First year as a teacher. For the information of the general public, teachers work a lot harder than most of us realize. It is not just the time in class and the school extra-curricular activities. I had never appreciated how much time is put into preparing each lesson for a particular class. Do not begrudge them anything they earn. I have a story about teachers and I will tell it after I have made the dinner. As for Robyn, why is she not making dinner? She has terribly long days on Monday and Thursday, and as well she has a meeting tonight, so that she will not get home till after 10pm. Iron clad leave pass in regard to cooking tonight.

Dinner done. Dishes washed.

My teacher story. I went to St. Aloysius College, a Jesuit school in Sydney. It was a good school. I suspect less pretentious back in the 1960s than the school is now. Not that we had much to be pretentious about in those days. But to their credit, a number of the Jesuits would try and make you think. Not just hammer stuff into you. And in turn that philosophy seemed to attract a number of lay teachers with a similar attitude. Not just do it but think about why you might do it. So, a good school.

Anyway, every year there would be some poor secular priest sent out to all the Catholic schools to try and drum up vocations for the priesthood. A thankless task, talking to an audience of young teenage boys who might have had a lot of things on their mind, but certainly becoming a priest was not one of them. Anyway, this priest was urging us to think about the priesthood as a vocation. And then he surprised us by saying the priesthood was the second greatest vocation there was. Now he had our attention. For if the priesthood was not the greatest vocation, what in the hell was? And the priest looked at us as if we were stupid. You know, boys. Doctor? No. Lawyer, Judge? No, No. Politician? God, no! Well, what then? Teacher, boys, teacher. In teaching you can make a difference. Teaching, that is the greatest profession.

I have never forgotten what that particular priest said. It did not result in me choosing teaching as a profession. The closest I came to any teaching was the teaching one would provide to medical students and trainee residents and registrars. And I certainly enjoyed that. But looking back, I think that priest was close to the truth. As a teacher, you can make a difference at a time when it matters. You give something special, some important lesson in life, to a person under the age of twenty and the community in general, and his / her family and friends in particular, benefit for the next sixty years.

So again, do not begrudge teachers what they earn.

I regret having a light beer. I did not need it and it has taken away any energy I might have had to write more. Silly.

Tuesday 20th March

Work the opposite of yesterday. All under control in the morning, but more complicated in the afternoon. Not finishing till 6pm, and missing another clinical meeting. Just the way it goes sometimes. Hopefully, I will get to the meetings later in the week. The returns from such meetings have always been variable. But they do help keep you in the loop, keep you abreast of new developments.

Just how critical are such meetings? Perhaps not quite as important as the various regulatory bodies might say. More than ninety five percent of the stuff I see is stuff that I have seen lots of times, and I know exactly what should (and at times should not) be done. And the hard work is often communicating all of that to the patient in a way that they understand. And as for the rest, the most important thing is to recognize what you don’t know, and work out who is the best person to ask for advice and specific help. I have been very lucky to have a number of colleagues in sub-specialised areas of gastroenterology who have been fantastic in providing assistance with certain difficult cases over the years.

That does prompt me to tell a story against myself. Some twenty years ago, I rang one of my most valued colleagues about what I felt was a difficult clinical decision in a seventy-year-old woman. The colleague listened patiently as I described the clinical history at great length. At the end of which my colleague asked me what would I do if the patient was my mother? And I immediately responded by saying I would do this, this and this. To which he cryptically replied, ‘Well why in the fuck don’t you do that?’

It was a forceful reminder of something I had been taught before. Treat patients as you would like yourself, your family, your friends to be treated. That message is more important than any clinical meeting. Not all of medicine is rocket science.

I will do some reading tonight. And before that listen to some music. I definitely do not do enough of that. I have a lot of favourite songs. And a few favourite albums. And a few favourite artists, individuals and bands. I suspect you could guess most of them.

Two last things to say about music before I go.

The first is my definition of a really great song. I say a really great song is a song where it does not matter who is singing that particular song, you still want to listen to it.

All right, I admit that is a flippant definition of a great song. And I am sure there are better guidelines, better definitions. But my definition is not without some basis. And I am inclined to give you any thoughts as they occur.

And the second thing. Do not underestimate how music can touch the inner you, the spirit, the soul. Sometimes an easy shortcut to within. I certainly do not take enough advantage of that.

Music. A quiet room otherwise. Close the eyes. Listen. You can feel it in your heart. Then the tingles in the body. Mixed in with a sense of calmness. Something is touching you. Making you a better person.

Live that feeling.

As you live the questions.

I wrote somewhere, some weeks ago, that in order to see, sometimes you need to open more than the eyes. I should have added that sometimes to see, you actually need to close the eyes.

Wednesday 21st March

Brief and