Note to self

My mentor, a man named David Kreel, told me that periodically I should write a letter to myself. Do it yearly, he said. Or monthly. Whatever you want. The point is, do it regularly. These letters will serve as a marker. A personal contract. You can set yourself goals. You become accountable to yourself. Write down what you are currently doing and what you want to accomplish during the coming weeks and months. What you need to change to accomplish these goals. If it's in black and white, dated, signed...well, it's difficult to make excuses around something like that. This is one way to take more responsibility for your life, said David.

My mentor was in his late 50s when he gave me this advice. He was sitting at a large wooden desk, dressed in a pair of tennis shorts and a shirt with the Adidas logo splashed across the chest. David told me he kept his letters in a lock box in a bank. That he would go to the bank and read them from time to time. To remind himself what he had done. What he needed to do. For him, it was the act of writing it down that counted. As long as he had put these his thoughts down on paper, that's all that mattered.

For me, it was different. As David had suggested, every couple of months I would feed a clean piece of paper into an electric typewriter and knock out a short letter to myself.  I felt foolish addressing these letters to myself so I would start them with a generic 'Note to self'. As soon as I got these words down I'd have no problems filling up one side of an A4 sheet. Single spaced. I stuck to my typewriter for a long time, a large IBM. The kind you might have found in an office building during the '70's. I only began to change with the times when it became difficult to purchase ink ribbons. Then, slowly, hesitantly, I began working my way through a range of different laptops, each one growing lighter, faster, sleeker in design and more powerful. Laptops I mainly inherited for other people. I still kept the typewriter. Out of a sense of nostalgia.

The point was, I always printed these letters out because...because I need to mail them to myself. It wasn't good enough just to get the words down on paper. I needed the letter to leave my possession. There was something gratifying about dropping it in the mail slot. Feeling the letter slip out of my fingers and drop into the dark belly of the post box. And there was something equally as exciting receiving it three or four days later, complete with a postmark. Even though it had only been out of my possession for a short period of time, it had been handled by someone else. It had been sorted. It had moved through the Australian postal system. And like a boomerang, it had been returned to me.

I would open my returned letter, read it and be genuinely surprised at encountering my own words again. Just that little bit of distant made the words resonate with me all the more. I am not entirely sure why but there you have it. I would read the words aloud and think, I have to at least attempt to do what I've written. It was like receiving a direct command from the best, most virtuous, most optimistic version of myself. And so, after absorbing these"command", I would put the letter in my filing cabinet, the one in my office, and forget about it until some later day when I may of may not read it again. The point was I knew this promise to myself was out there. And as such, I was obliged to get off my ass and do something with my life. And this was fine for awhile. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes I actually followed through on the promises I made to myself. And sure i could have emailed this same document to myself but it wouldn't have been the same.

Then something disconcerting happened. One of my letters came back altered. Changed. I was standing in my hallway, wearing a dressing gown, having just received the little jolt of pleasure I usually felt when I heard the mail slot flapping and the postman's footsteps receding along the path. And I sliced open the envelope and started reading it, as I always did. It began the way they all began. Note to self.....etc. etc. But by the time I got about two or three sentences in, I realised something was different.

You're not happy, said the letter. You cannot sustain the life you are leading because it is a sham. You can fool yourself only so long with these tiny, insignificant so-called-goals but eventually, you will need to make a real change. I hadn't written these words. I examined the letter back and front. The envelope it had come in. It looked like the one I'd mailed only three days before in the city but it wasn't. Clearly, it wasn't. In that letter, I'd mailed out I'd resolved myself to cleaning the rain gutters and visiting my father at the home.

I didn't need this. I mean….I really didn't need some kind of batshit crazy fracturing of my psyche. If that’s what, god forbid, this was. I didn't have a bad life. I had a wife, child, career (job), house (money suck), car (oil spot on the driveway. See house.), dog (vet bills. Exploding piles of sun hardened faeces when I mowed the lawn), a fridge full of food, garage for tinkering, small group of school mates for the occasional catch up (Erroneous social connections. Tiresome competition. Nicknames from a different life), gym membership (bouncy eye-candy on next treadmill over. Look but don't touch. And don't get caught looking), walks around the local park (see dog), peace (arguments with wife all but abated as a result of correctional relationship therapy. Or as Gerald would crow, “The inevitable acceptance of being pussy whipped my son”. See small group of schoolmates for……etc, etc), the latest phone (until the next one comes out), a music (Vinyl. Yeah, I know how that sounds) and a wine (a monthly delivery in styrofoam and cardboard) collection, annual holidays (Vietnam this year. Next year talk about a beach house in Queensland. Shoot me now), a bedside Kindle (Intimacy avoidance tactic), online streamed television series (vicarious living through the lives of edgy fictional characters. Something to talk about. Filling in the gathering silence. Banging on about the masterful character development and gratifyingly sustained narrative arks. See wife and small group of school mates for……etc.), online pornography (closed loop gratification. A monkey with electrodes attached to its genitals and head), medication (yes please), up-to-date dental work (keep smiling sunshine), a middle bulge I couldn't quite get rid of (see gym, fridge and wine), work colleagues (I could just about stomach on a daily basis. See career. See filling in the silence with catch up conversations about edgy tv characters), an extended family (kept at arms length. Are you kidding?), over-priced ballet lessons (see daughter), insomnia (see medication), mild depression (see medication and a crushing sense of nostalgia and the feeling that time is passing too quickly. See LP's and wine collection), an espresso machine, steady neighbours (freaks), fourth high school reunion (Seriously. Shoot me now. In the face.), daydreams (pipe dreams more like), media-stoked fears of global environmental and socioeconomic collapse. And all the rest of it.

Okay, I wasn't entirely happy. Sure. But who is at this age? I certainly wasn't ready for some kind of mental collapse. It did occur to me that I was exactly the same age as David when I knew him. It also occurred to me that those five years I knew David was very important to me. Formative. My parents….in fact, my entire family were background figures during that time. But David? David was clear and present. He was in focus because what came out of his mouth seemed real. He had been through the Vietnam war. He had real stories.

Anyway, this letter…..I knew what I'd written and it wasn't this. At first, I assumed it was a joke. Someone had found out what I was doing and they were having me on. Fine. And please don't worry: I do not intend to become the unreliable narrator of my own life. There is no raving loon in the wings of my subconscious mind playing cheap mental/story games with A. me and B. you. So fear not. Besides, hasn’t all that silliness already been thoroughly explored in our culture? You know, how at the end of the story, the main character reveals he had some hip form of schizophrenia or some other neurological malfunction all along? How it subverted the telling of the story? I get it. Everyone wants a Mr. Hyde for their Dr Jekell.

The letters kept arriving. One after the next. It was like being my own pen pal. Now each time the mailbox flipped open and I heard the postman, I felt a sliding sense of dread. I didn't want to be unhinged. I didn't want this paradox existing in my life. I started to see these letters were all basically external observations, descriptions of my life from distance. As if written by someone watching my daily routine unfold through a pair of high-powered binoculars.

Creepy right?

You bet it was.

The fifth letter was different. It was a detailed plan, with clearly laid out steps, each one numbered and in neatly formatted paragraphs. I read it twice. It explained how to set up an online account under a different name. How to falsify the documents I would need. The names of the people who would help me in the coming weeks. How to prepare myself physically for the swim. How they would find nothing other than my wallet and some clothes on a beach up north. My car keys.

It was ridiculous. I had no intention of following this plan. There was no way. Not in a million years. I folded the letter....the plan...up into a tight wad, shoved it inside an empty tomato can I found in the recycling, took the can outside and put it in the bin.

I fell asleep that night with the light on, my wife snoring lightly from her side of the bed. When I woke up, the sky was just beginning to lighten. Morning birds were chirping from the trees. My wife hadn't moved, or so it seemed. She was still snoring away, her hair spilt across the pillow, her back to me.

I lay there for quite awhile and then I heard the garbage truck moving along the block, getting closer. I slipped out of bed, wrestled with the lock on the front door for a few moments, then ran outside, catching the garbage man just as he was about to wheel my bin over to the compactor scoop.