There are those days when you haven't slept and you feel like you're being dragged slowly through hot mud. Those days when the thought of imparting wisdom to others seems ludicrous but that's what you're supposed to be doing. And then the students say that they love you anyway. It's odd.

I wonder if I should even continue with teaching. As I get into this course I feel like I really have to do something else. There's practically nothing left for me to learn in this kind of teaching, or that's how it feels. I need to throw myself into something else. Acting could be the go. I was too gutless to become an actor at a much younger age. But I could have been good at it. If you can teach you can act. Thirty six seems a little late for such a career change, but you have to have something to look forward to. Something different.

I know I'm guilty of many things, not least of all a pathetic lack of ambition. But what can one expect? It's enough really that I've survived, that I haven't jumped off a cliff, hanged myself, swallowed pills, gone for a swim at Bondi after a bottle of gin. When I was in there I never thought I'd get out. It was hard to imagine a life beyond those walls. Those walls that are so much more than just physical. Anyway, I don't think I'd ever go that far again. The new pills are vastly superior to the old. If I feel myself going down, just one pill can prevent a crash landing. Chemistry, pharmacology, long may you prosper. Bleak, is it? That's what some say and what the heck they may be right, but what am I supposed to do about it? If that's the way it looks, that's the way it looks. There's no point pretending to be cheerful when that's not the case. I do that at work and there's no need to carry that on here. At least here is one place where you can just be yourself. If my true self is choked with black bile, so be it.

Well, on a happier note the weather has been beautiful here lately. I love the autumn in this town, in any Australian town I've lived in. Autumn here doesn't have the deep melancholy that it carries in Central Europe. It's bright and it's fresh. It's dry and it's sharp.

Workers in this country are getting screwed now ladies and gentlemen, just in case anyone in the great beyond beyond were wondering. Sunday overtime rates just got ditched. Unfair dismissal laws are out. All power has gone from the worker to the employer. Not that workers had all the power before but now the bosses hog the lot. Collective bargaining gone. Individual negotiation is the name of the game. How is a 15 year old worker supposed to negotiate with Mcdonald's anyway? Psychopathology is allowed to run rampant.