Dear Sam [former housemate]

Your letter really got me thinking about what I am doing out here: Am I here because it's something I want to do, or am I here because society expects it of me? I genuinely believe I am here because I enjoy it; because, exactly as you and Tim discussed, you never know what a time you've had until you tell somebody about it. While sometimes it may be difficult, there is always a story to tell and laugh at years from now. While some prefer events to run smoothly, I prefer everything to be crazy and difficult and for shit to go wrong. The best travel adventure stories are always about shit going wrong: The time you got the shits, the time a rabid monkey scratched your face, the time you ate magic mushrooms and thought a googly-eyed German was the Devil himself. No-one cares for stories about beautiful sunsets, nice hotels, or friendly locals...

... But back to the question of why I am here - and, perhaps, why you are there. A lot of people, when I say I am finding the fly in-fly out a little bit difficult, will say something like "You'll get used to it", but I have concluded there is a great difference - a huge terrifying chasm - between "getting used" to something and letting it kill your spirit and soul. Do you know what I mean? If I keep doing this work and, after a while, it doesn't bother me, is it because I am "used to it", or because I have let it grab my soul, tear the skin away, and leave it hanging to dry from a meat hook, like a great piece of beef jerky, or "soul jerky", as it were?

Yes, this "soul jerky" is what we have to stop ourselves becoming my dear boy. There's people I work with out here who are definitely in the latter stages of becoming hard, dry soul jerky, and the sight of them causes me to dry-retch. They are career FIFO workers, whose lives have so subtely eroded away that they don't even notice it happening, until one day they find they have nothing left - no friends, no lovers, no passions. They have no reason and no desire to go home because they have no home. This lack of a centre to their lives is like the blazing sun to the meat of their souls. Without a spiritual hub, one is dangerously close to becoming soul jerky.

But enough of this depressing talk of soul jerky, though I do like the term I invented just now by the campfire, after a few beers. Aah beer, the lubricant to the cogs of my brain...