The Little World

I have a confession to make. I have a mental condition that permeates my life. It has affected me ever since childhood and makes itself felt in everything I do. It is sometimes a good thing and sometimes bad…but I have come to realise what it is and to accept it.

It is the need to have a reason. Not necessarily to reason, as in philosophy or to be reasonable, as in the law – just to have a reason for being where I am and doing what I do.

It’s been the guide for schoolwork, workwork, and playwork for the last 65 years. It might have been in operation before that, but I was too small to perceive it. When I can satisfy myself that I have a good reason for whatever is going on, I can do it with zest and really produce results. Devoid of a reason, I just drift away.

It’s kept me out of the tourist spots of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. It keeps me at home here in Perth for a goodly part of the year – until an event that I find rewarding happens elsewhere and then I am up and going. It keeps me out of the local clothing shops, jewellery shops, restaurants, movie theatres, and new-car lots. It bars me from stadiums, casinos, and racetracks all over Australia…because I honestly do not know a good reason that would draw me there.

On the other hand, it pushes me through the doors of art galleries, camera shops, bookstores, country pubs, and hobby shops on a regular basis. It pushes me out into my Little Workshop or over to my Little Studio in spite of inclement weather. It keeps me up and typing here at the computer far into the night.

If I am a creature it is not of pure habit, but of focused activity. I find I am never happier than when the focus narrows.

Thus my efforts to build 1:72 aircraft, vehicles, and structures for my airfield. Part of my mind has said that this is a good and honourable activity and that there is a purpose to it – the reason seems to be to demonstrate to myself that I can recover some of the motor skills I had in my professional days. Part of it seems to be to tell the story – to myself, if no-one else – of the Royal Canadian Air Force training bases in WWII. As that was before I was born, and I am nowhere near the place any more, the tale may be somewhat distorted, but I am doing my best – in the bookstores and on the net – to correct errors.

Spinoff of this is that it gives me a reason to travel to Sydney or Melbourne to gather more information…and it might even get me across the Pacific to the prairies again.