Episode 63 - Walk Towards the Life You Want: Centering Your Life Around Friendship and Community
INTRO: Hello, everyone, welcome to another episode of Friends Missing Friends. Today, I talked to Rob Farquhar, a Sydney voiceover talent and podcaster. If you haven't already, you'll want to check out my previous conversation with Rob in episode 59, Life's Too Short to Rush.
In that episode, Rob was getting ready to make a big move across the country, and we talked about what it looks like to redesign your life, friendships, and relationships after a major loss. Today's episode was recorded one year after episode 59, and we talk about how his big move went, how he's been redesigning his life, what it's like to build a community of new friends, and so much more. Thanks for listening.
ROB: Well, I'll tell you what, it has been an interesting experience moving back from the Friends perspective, you know, staying on the show's topic. I think one of the things I did mention the last time we talked was that I was looking forward to catching up with people whom I'd not seen in a while. And funnily enough, that's been the more tricky thing.
My friends know I am back, but I think it's just really their life circumstances. I had a good mate of mine who was trying to organize a get together. And after I moved down south, he was gonna be here, he and his wife, and I'm pretty sure they have kids, were gonna be heading overseas for a little bit, sort of like, okay, we'll have to wait until I get back before we can sort anything out.
And yeah, unfortunately, I've not heard all that much from him. I've got another longtime friend of mine where we've been actually been more actively talking about getting together. Yeah, it just seems to have been, life has gotten busy a little bit for them.
So, you know, that's just given me the thought that I'll have to follow up with him. And because of this recording, we've got the Easter long weekend coming up. And it seems like, it seems more that I've been making, making new friends rather than reconnecting with old since I got back in.
I don't know, maybe it's just, now that I'm back down here, and I think I, I'm not sure whether I mentioned this in the last episode, but I'd found that living where I was living, which is in Cairns in Australia's far Northeast, it's a lovely place to live, and it's a lovely place to be, but the crowds of people basically who live there, you're either very country, and you're part of the boating, camping, fishing set, or you're a retiree, and I am neither. And I just felt like I, one of the reasons why I wanted to move back from Cairns to Sydney was just that sense of, I've always been a city kid, and I felt like I would find more connections and more of my kind of people back down here than I would be likely to back in Cairns. And perhaps I think I'm kind of proving that right.
And one of the, yeah, I think one of those things is getting myself out and making new friends. I went to a social event, one train station a little bit west on the train line from where I am, and had a good time there and made a couple of new friends, some of whom who live local, and were trying to organize some get togethers there. And yeah, it feels like things are, that life is gathering momentum right at the moment.
HANNAH: Wow, that's beautiful, because it sounds like, you know, you're saying in the past, you were running away from something, and now it sounds like you're running towards something.
ROB: I think walking towards something. Because it's like, yeah, it feels like, you know, when you're running away, you're frantic, and you're just trying to like go as quickly as possible. It was like it was, yeah, with the move, for me, it wasn't exactly a sprint, except for the last bit when I was actually relocating, perhaps. But it felt like, okay, I was just every day checking real estate websites, seeing what came up, being willing to look at things and say, you know what, from what I've read here, this does not look like the best fit for me.
Instead of flagging it or applying for it, because I'm desperate, I will trust that something else will come up eventually. Actually, on the Friends Missing Friends front, there are a couple of the two friends whom encouraged me to come back on the show. One of them lives in Melbourne, so she is a good bit away from me.
And I've met both of these friends I've met in person once, but we connected pretty strongly, and we've wound up, not only have each of us wound up in touch, but I wound up kind of getting the two of them because we sort of had an online social group in common, and both of them had mentioned the other. And I've been saying, well, why don't you two just get in touch and say hello and see what happens? And we're now on a three-person group chat where we check in with each other pretty much every day.
And we're all wonderful buddies. So we were kind of talking about trying to get together sometime around about this time of year. And then now that I've moved, one of the really good things about living with my friend in the Blue Mountains is that I had a fantastic rental rate, including utilities.
The one I'm on at the moment is definitely not so great, but I can still live within it comfortably. That said, it's put some restrictions on what I, you know, how much spare money I have. So me taking trips interstate is now, yeah, it's not something that I'm going to hurry into.
And again, that's kind of like one of the, my financial situation is one of those things that I'm looking at changing this year. So yeah, it means unfortunately we aren't, neither of us are in a place where we can get together and catch up and hang out in person. So yeah, we miss each other on that front.
And then my other friend Emma lives in Adelaide. And I actually wound up flying down there on December the 30th and spent two nights with her and flew back on New Year's Day. And yeah, no, both wonderful people whom I really wish I could be in person with more often, but we do very much keep in touch regularly.
And I will say this wonderful realm of technology that we live in nowadays, Discord and WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. It does, I do find there is that little bit risk of turning a friendship into a series of dopamine hits with pings from Messenger, but it does still seem, it does the job well enough, as long as you're managing it, and you're mindful of when you are wanting to genuinely communicate with someone, and when you're just checking your phone, because that bit of you has been conditioned to look for the latest ping from them, so that you can get that little burst of joy and of happiness, you know what I mean? But it still works well enough, and it's like everything at the moment, you know, with moving from Cairns to Loora, or moving from Loora to Campbelltown, that idea that the situation does not have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough for now. And as long as you're still working on changing it and taking care of yourself in the meantime, don't worry about how bad it could be, because it's not.
HANNAH: Oh, I love that, because I feel like, I know for myself, if I'm in a time of transition, I get frustrated, like, why isn't it perfect yet? But it's like, I'm walking towards something. I should just, kind of like you said last time, there's no need to rush, you know? Like, life's too short to rush. It's that, so I think that you're approaching it very methodically, both like keeping in touch with old friends and building a new community where you live now. Like, that stuff takes time.
ROB: Yeah, it does, very much. And I think that's the most frustrating thing, is just how much time it takes and how you have to be willing to be patient and take things step by step, especially when it comes to people. And in the end, what things don't come to, come down to other people.
Just that sense of, okay, you just met someone, it's new and it's wonderful, but really, if you want it to last, you don't have to necessarily be cagey or coy, but you do have to be patient. And as long as, I guess, you communicate that and you give that sense to the other person that you're not being secretive for secretiveness' sake, or at least if you are being protective of yourself, that they can see that and they can at least somewhat understand why and are willing to be patient with you and are also willing to be patient with themselves in the meantime, then things will work out. In the meantime, I guess it gives you more of a chance to be with yourself, because that's usually what we're trying, I think what we usually wind up trying to distract ourselves from with trying to forge ahead with things quickly.
It's like you realize that when you're not doing that, then all you're being is you in a space and sometimes even if you don't hate yourself, you just don't know what to do when you're on your own and it's just you and what happens as the seconds tick by and you're just in a room with yourself and going, well, what do I do now?
HANNAH: Yeah, and there's a difference that I'm still trying to figure out between loneliness and I'm just avoiding spending time with myself, but that spending time with myself would actually be fruitful. And I get frustrated sometimes with myself, where I'll be alone for a day, a Sunday or something, and then I'll kind of emotionally spiral and be like, I'm all alone. And then I'm like, it's only been a day, chill out. But I jump to that loneliness so quickly and I'm like, am I avoiding something? Like, am I avoiding self-reflection?
ROB: I've been trying to get myself into some routines. There are some things I do every day, or at least I try and do every day, to get to that place where at least I'm comfortable in my own skin and confident that I've got my life reasonably under control. So, of a morning when I wake up, I sit up in bed, swing my legs over the edge, breathe deep and steady for about 30 seconds, and then get to my feet and say thank you.
I'm not a religious person. I don't believe really in a specific entity as a higher power, but I've encountered this idea that gratitude, even if you're not necessarily being grateful to anyone in particular, helps. It helps you be sane and capable. So, this is something I read about in a book called The Magic, which was a sequel to The Secret, which was kind of all the rage about a decade ago in self-help circles, all about, you know, I think it kind of made popular the idea of the law of attraction, which I think was basically taking the human tendency to identify patterns and make a little bit more spiritual and like some sort of mystic thing rather than just a, hey, this is how your brain works, and here's how to hack it to your advantage. But yeah, the magic was basically all about gratitude, and it had 30 exercises in it that you could like over a month introduce a new one every day. So I didn't, I don't think I went all the way through and all them stuck, but that was one of them.
The second one is to meditate for 15 minutes. And for me, I just find myself somewhere comfortable that I can sit down with a straight back, close my eyes and just focus on my breathing. And my brain goes all over the place because it does, but more often than not, ideally, I notice it and go, okay, brain's gone all over the place, focus back on the breathing.
And after that, again, something that came from the magic, by Rhonda Byrne, if anyone's looking for it, B-Y-R-N-E, writing out 10 things that I am grateful for to have in my life. And I find, funnily enough, on the Friends front, more often than not, most of them are other people. You know, the book suggests it can be anything. It can be, you know, you can be grateful to your hands, your eyesight, your legs, and usually write down one reason why you're grateful to that thing. But yeah, I don't know. I just find more often than not, I mean, I've actually started saying that I'm glad for and grateful to myself.
That's become number one. For doing all of these things for myself, then my dog Sookie is typically number two, then my close friends, people I've spoken with recently. It's usually, it's easy enough. I just look at the prior day, and I can easily mine 10 things that I'm grateful for out of that. So that's kind of the morning routine. In the evening, I try and journal.
There's actually another exercise I found in an Instagram account that I follow, a fellow by the name of Ben Mia. And he offered a post that said how to be unfuckwithable. And basically, you start your day by, there are kind of like three mantras that are part of this. I am always surrounded by love. I will always have beautiful life experiences, and I'm always learning and growing. So I start off, I actually get my journal out, and I write them out at the top of a page.
Then that night when I come back, I actually turn those into questions. Okay, how was I surrounded by love today? And write out the things, whether it was me taking care of myself or other people being in touch with me, then what beautiful life experiences did I have? When I was in Loura seeing the valleys from the top of the hill where I'd walk my dog every morning. Yeah, things that I've witnessed, things that, perhaps specific things other people had shared with me. And then, how did I learn and grow?
And figure out the things that I did, and perhaps, even if it was like, oh yeah, I learned how to do this as a routine, or I learned how to forgive myself a bit better for not doing the thing. And then I will just journal, try and get all the stuff that's been knocking around in my head all day down onto a piece of paper.
HANNAH: How do you feel different after more centered, more grounded, or what does it kind of help with?
ROB: I think so. I think one of the things that it's really helped me with is just noticing what I'm feeling in the moment. And because when you're busy feeling the thing, it usually, there's some, I've seen people have different perspective as to whether a thought comes first or whether a feeling comes first, and that drives the creation of a particular thought. I think it can work both ways, but no matter what, I think whether it's prompted by a thought or whether it is just an emotional reaction to a circumstance, noticing the emotion, at least helps you go, oh, okay, all right, now I'm getting wound up, I'm feeling frustrated, I'm feeling a bit angry, or maybe, oh, okay, I'm in a really good mood, I'm feeling a bit high, I'm having a sudden burst of happiness, or maybe, oh, I'm feeling a bit needy, I want this person or I wanna do this thing. And okay, it's okay to be feeling this thing, you just need, perhaps need to do something other than what it's prompt, that this feeling is prompting you to do.
And just trying to take a few deep breaths, which again, helps center a little bit and go, all right, what do I really need to do right now? What's really gonna help me out at the moment? Even if it is just sitting and doing nothing for a bit, right when my mind is telling me, do something, do something, do something. Do something, you know? Tell that person off. Not necessarily stand up for yourself, but make a strong statement kind of thing.
Let them know where you stand and what you did. Okay, as long as you know, you don't really have to worry about telling anyone else or just take a deep breath and then just work out what really is gonna serve you the best. And I think it also helps reduce the intensity of the emotions and the moods when they happen. It's not about turning yourself into a Vulcan and not feeling anything. It's just reducing the swings. The swings are small enough that they're not driving you to do anything. You're making decisions based on, okay, what's really going to be best for me?
Funnily enough, last Thursday, when I was coming home from that get together, I was coming home on the train, and it was just this moment of, it was the first time I'd been on a suburban train, I think, at about, say, nine, 10 o'clock at night. And I was just sitting there, and it felt like, and it was all of a sudden, I just blinked, and I looked around myself, and I thought, I'm home. I'm back in Sydney on a Sydney train, going back to my place late at night.
This is me, this feels right, this feels correct, this feels like what I want back in my life. And it wasn't a big deal thing that I was doing. It was just me sitting on the train with a bunch of other people commuting to wherever they were going, and it just felt good.
HANNAH: Yeah, it's like one of those moments where you're like, this is where I'm supposed to be right now. It's like desire and reality converge, and those moments are kind of wild, and they're often very small moments. I love that, just like, oh my gosh, I'm on the train, and I'm supposed to be here.
ROB: Yeah, so there are still some logistical issues with me getting together with friends on a regular basis, again, no car. I don't like locking my dog inside, where she might feel uncomfortable, or locking her outside where things might get cold. But thankfully I've had, you know, I've got a few of them who are quite willing to pop over. I've had friends help me get some new furniture. I had one recent good mate say, hey, you know, I can bring my Ute and borrow a trailer, and we can go and get you, help you get some appliances. So Sunday last week, but he came up, brought the Ute, like a pickup truck in the States, had a trailer on it, and we hit one of the major white goods and appliance chains called The Good Guys out here.
And I got myself a fridge and a washing machine and a toaster and a microwave oven. I have to say a major thank you to Josh for that. Yeah, I owe him big time. And like I said, I've had so much help with this that sadly I'm not really in a position where I can kind of help somebody else move unless it's just with the fight and get to their place via a train and load stuff and unload stuff. I can't, it's tricky paying my friends back, but hopefully I'll be able to pay it forward.
HANNAH: When a friend helps me, sometimes I stress out and I'm like, okay, how do I help them exactly equally back in less than a week so that I don't owe them, you know? Yeah. Not actually, but like, yeah.
ROB: No, yeah, that is, I understand that feeling well. And I think that's one of the things that really was something that I had to embrace after I moved down, because I did wind up making friends who, because I didn't have a car, because I had a dog, were willing to help me out in some wonderful ways. And I was going, you know, I've got to pay these people, you know, got to buy them some lunch.
And they were like, Rob, don't worry about it. You're a mate, we'll help you out. And it just, you know, just that realization of, okay, you can't just stop trying to make it transactional, because that's leeching the spirit of this thing, of this connection that you've got with these people. And just trust that it will all, in some way, balance out, and just, you know, in the meantime, be with them as much as you can.
HANNAH: Yeah, and it, wow, it just sounds like so many friends have supported you in this, like, transition phase, and like, moving and everything.
ROB: Yeah, and I think, even though in some cases, it sort of highlighted the differences between myself and some of those, and some friends. And in some cases, I think there was, I won't use the word irreconcilable, because that sounds very, you know, it's a very terminal kind of, but I think at least it highlighted where, which friends of mine I knew, in some ways, the friendship has to be limited. And say what you will about the nature of that connection, whether it then is actually a friendship, or whether it's, you know, a polite and connected acquaintance, if you know what I mean.
You know, a friendship doesn't have to be strictly defined in such a way that every friendship must fall within those parameters. You know what I mean? And that, you know, sometimes it's, in some cases, at least it's worth being aware of the nature of your connection and how you feel about it. And then setting your own boundaries and the frequency and the nature of the connection that you have with that person based on yourself and who you are and who you are in relation to them and what you want out of that connection with them, you know?
So I think it's, yeah, just learning how to, and this is starting to sound a little bit like something I've encountered recently called relationship anarchy, which I think, which basically, from what I've gathered, is this idea of taking each connection that you have with somebody else on its own terms and not falling within a pre-prescribed model of, this is what a friendship is, this is what a love relationship is, this is what a best friend or a friend with benefits is. Just be aware, again, being aware of who you are with that person, and then sometimes just sitting down and talking with them and saying, okay, look, this is how I feel about you, these are the, this is how I feel, these are the times when I feel good in our relationship, these are the times where I feel, where I feel that I need to keep my distance, these are the things I feel like I can safely share with you, these are, and there are other things about my life that I don't, that I feel are not part of this connection that we have. And yeah, just defining each relationship in its own terms and without assuming a particular hierarchy.
And the example that comes to mind is when you have friends and then when you have a relationship, whether it be a marriage or a boyfriend, girlfriend kind of thing, where you are in love with a person and that inherent assumption that the friendships that you have are secondary to this primary thing and that you will, you are devoted to this and everything else fits in in your life around it. Whereas it's more like, actually, you know what I need, in some cases, it may be a person goes, I need strong connections with the people who have been in my life for four years and whom I have developed strong bonds with and who, you know, they're not, I'm not friends with them just because they've always been there. I'm friends with them because I love them.
And they are, their happiness and wellbeing is as important to me as the, you know, the happiness and wellbeing of the person with whom I am in love with or I'm married to. And so I need my, I need the people, you know, the people in my life to understand that, yeah, and maybe it's even looking at friendship and relationship as a community rather than as a nuclear two people thing in which, you know, where two people rest everything on each other, put all of their weight on each other. And don't have anyone else, yeah.
But it's also, I think with all this change, it really has shown me of all the people I've already met who is important to me and whom I'm important to. And whom I need to, I hate that word need, whom I want to and who I will have a better life from developing and maintaining the connections with. I wouldn't advertise shaking up your life or having your life shaken up in such a significant way, but sometimes I guess there is no guarantee of a nice, easy and stable life as much as we try and make it do so.
And sometimes as much as these things suck, they can help you as your life gets shaken up a little bit, identify whom you can rely on and how you can rely on yourself to not just be there for yourself, but be there for the other people too. Because I think people always say, look out for number one. And there is a very, it's usually said in a very cynical way and in very way, kind of a severing way, like, you know, nobody else matters, look after yourself.
But it's like, no, you look after number one so that you can look after everybody else. And that will, and looking after everyone else will help you look after number one.
HANNAH: Yeah, I think sometimes in life, it's just whether it's forced upon you, or it's something you decide to do, it's just the upheaval can kind of help settle a more firm grounding, more firm ground.
ROB: Indeed.
HANNAH: And I love what you said too about the community, instead of just having it be like me and this one other person. This is something I've been realizing a lot lately, as the script, I was told 10 billion times growing up of what my life was gonna be. Through movies, TV shows, commercials, books, everything.
I find my person, it will be a man, because of my preferences, and then we will get married, and then da-da-da-da. And as me thinking, okay, that's the way it's gonna go, and that it just keeps not happening, and me thinking, okay, well then, what do I do? I'm realizing from necessity, and from just learning more about myself and about life, there's so much more to life than just that.
And I can still build a community and a life without that. I can want that too, but I don't need it to be the center pillar necessarily.
ROB: No, I think there is a lot of hard work in some ways that you have to do because, I hate to use the word society, but the way that the world we exist in, in the countries, the nations that we exist in, are legally set up such that that nucleus of, thankfully, it's been loosening up lately in some places, including Australia. Thank God we had our, we did have our big plebiscite a few years back, and I was only sad that, I was expecting more of the country would have voted yes than I think the 61% that did vote, but still 61% did vote yes, and we got same-sex marriage. So, you know, I am glad that it's not just, you know, a man and a woman, but still the idea that there has to be a marriage, a wedding of two people, and in order to have all these things in your life that, you know, an individual needs in order to get by.
I mean, my friend, she is very much aware of these things, and, you know, they're not her area of study. She's an academic, but she's very much, you know, she does a lot of research and reading, has a lot of awareness into these things, where she even commented that it's kind of getting to the point where you can't own a property on your own. You kind of almost really in Australia have to be married to be able to afford, and you can't have a single income.
You've got to have a double income just to be able to afford a property somewhere in the general vicinity of a major urban center. I think people are starting to realize, holy shit, there is so much in life that you can only do or have. There's so much safety that you can only get if you're sharing that safety with somebody else. Now, this is kind of like life has gotten to that point. So either you know you're-
HANNAH: That's so frustrating.
ROB: Yeah. I mean, and thankfully, I think hopefully this is one of the things that these ideas like relationship anarchy or what have it might lead to. It's like, you know what, I don't have to be married.
My best friend in the entire damn world, we get along so well. We don't have to be intimate. We don't have to be in love, but we love each other enough that you know what, let's give each other some safety and we'll buy a place and we'll move in and we will work out the particulars of what that means for if we are dating, if we fall in love with somebody else, that kind of thing and how we negotiate that.
I mean, I even have a friend of mine from back in Cairns, from the Cairns days, a fella named Jerry whom Vicky and I met. The last time I saw him, which was, I think, a few years back, he popped over for a chat after Vicky died. And we met he and his wife, Mary.
And they are in the medical profession, very well paid, use their profession to travel the world and go to some incredible places. And Jerry was telling me how they're both English and how they're looking at buying, each of them buying a flat on the same urban block from each other, so that they're walking distance from each other. They're in love with each other, they're married, but they can't, the way each of them is, they know that they are at their most sane when each of them has their own place within walking distance, sure.
But yeah, they wanna go to sleep in their own bed most of the time. They wanna have their own space that they can own and make theirs in their own way most of the time, and that's what works for them. So yeah, I mean, good on them for being in a profession and having a lifestyle that enables that.
But you know. But hopefully, yeah, but at least they're doing it, at least they're doing it in a way that doesn't, you are married, you must live together, you must conjoin your lives in this way to be properly married and properly in love in a societally acceptable way. So that hopefully we'll be able to find ways of working around that don't limit us to this whole must be married, must pop out 2.3 kids, although how you'd be able to afford them nowadays is a question in of itself.
You gotta go into debt to send them to school, for God's sake. Yeah, I don't know. Hopefully we'll find ways of being able to live sanely and build these communities. I mean, maybe I do wind up buying that block in the country for cheap and renting it out. We wind up forming a minor commune or something of all the people who love each other in our own way. And yeah, who knows?
To sort of sum up the experience since I moved down, it really does feel like in some ways new horizons are opening up for me, but there's also that realization it's easy to sort of like say and you know, assume it's all gonna be wonderful, but that realizing that it takes, it's gonna take me work. You know, it's not just walking toward things. It's like, you know, I've got to, it's a hiking trip for God's sake.
I've got to make sure that my bag is packed and that I'm fit enough. And you know, it's not just a nice casual stroll and with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it needs me to work externally in the world and also within myself.