One month on...

There once was a balloon boy who attended a balloon school. All his classmates were ballons, as were the teachers, the buildings and even the furniture inside. One day the balloon boy brought a pin into school. His teacher discovered it and sent him to the headmaster ,who sat him down and told him, "You've let me down, you've let yourself down, you've let the whole school down..."

How deflated must he have felt? Possibly a bit like me.

To begin with, arriving back in Sydney was just like crash-landing in any other city we'd visited, only one slightly more familiar than most. We wandered through the CBD, stopping for a coffee and bacon & egg roll ($5.50 meal deal) at a cafe, marvelling at how expensive everything now seemed. $5.50 for a roll and coffee? Lordy! You could get a fish dinner, ten beers and a piggy-back home for that in Laos!

Seeing friends and family was awesome, though it seemed our trip had somehow skewed the space-time continuum. Whilst I was sure that only twelve months had passed, back here on Earth it seemed longer. Babies had sprung up like watercress, the social landscape seemed only vaguely familiar in a very different way.

Still, the first week was a thrill. Sydney turned on seven days of sunshine. We frolicked in the joy of wardrobes, packed larders and going for drinks with old friends. In the distance, my return to work loomed on the horizon.

Not that you'd know it. I hadn't had so much as an email response in over five weeks. Then the news came.

It was all quite friendly. Whilst I was away, my role had been made redundant. No surprise there, the clue was in the lack of communication. I would be required to work an eight-week redeployment period after which, if a suitable role could not be found, I would join the ranks of Australia's great unwashed and get stuck into some hardcore Mornings with Kerry. Redundancy, in other words.

Rachel got stuck into some hardcore catching-up. In between, she also met with some recruitment agents. She's very clear on what role she wants - Product BDM to the stars - but the searching can be tough. Some people just exude bad energy, and a lot of them work in recuitment.

Then the scale of the adjustment began to become apparent.

When you are traveling, people ask you where you are from, where you've come from and where you're going. Here, back in the real world, they want to know what you do. Suddenly, self definition by occupation is back, clawing it's evil arms down our throats, trying to rip out our self-worth by means of comparison. Evil little shit.

There is also still a lot of negative energy floating around amongst the echoes of the GFC (Global Financial Crisis, a devlish little acronym that completely passed us by whilst away). To put it as frankly as I can, there are a lot of not very happy people doing things they don't enjoy in places they don't want to be. Being in the company of large groups of these people feels like swimming through a maelstrom of razor blades: it's not deadly, but stay in long enough and you just might drown.

Or maybe that's the way it always was. Maybe the year away has simply changed our perception of the situation. May it's not them or it, maybe it's us. Herein lies the challenge.

It all came to a head last Saturday where my repressed displeasure expunged itself in a flurry of Martini-fuelled firey ramblings. I hadn't even known I was that upset. Alas, those whom I was with soon did. Whoops and, obviously, sorry.

It's early days. We're sat in limbo (very comfortably sat, mind you). Like anything - starting a business, writing a book, going on a trip - the beginning is always the hardest. "The hardest bit of rolling a boulder is getting it underway", or some such wise ditty. The great unknown lies ahead like a big, scary, blank canvas, and the uncertainty sometimes nips away at you like piranha. Mundanity threatens to seep in and water-damage all the dreams cultivated during those magical months.

Over the past few days though, I can feel a bit of positivity creeping back in. Obviously, my frustrations are a little clearer to me now. I've had some conversations that have inspired me. Friends and loved ones have sent me some parcels of love. All good for the soul.

Today I realised that I'm back full circle. I've walked a Road Less Travelled and, wouldn't you know, it joins back onto Mainstream Freeway! It probably does that a few times along the way, I'll wager. But then off it snakes again, back down into the undergrowth and the valleys and the hills and the unexplored territoires.

A year and a half ago, a friend told me about his 'feather, brick, truck' philosophy. So, I started listening to the universe, keeping my eye out for the little signs along they way. In return, I was guided along a path that saw Rachel and I experience a year that most may never. A year of sights, sounds, encounters, realisations and epiphanies whose profound impact on our lives we have not yet begun to comprehend.

It's then I understand, the journey's actually only just begun. And I realise I'm smiling again.