Eddie | Greenlane
“If I could wake up tomorrow and do one thing differently, I’d set an alarm earlier and I would make use of those first couple of hours in the day.
At the moment I’m in a work environment where it’s a standard 40-hour a week job, but I typically am doing more like 60 or 65 hours a week with work pressures that I have placed on me, and I sort of get into a cycle where I don’t actually take advantage of my free time. It’s always about what I’m doing at work. I love what I do, and it’s a very fulfilling job, but there are moments in my life where I don’t actually take time for me, and I don’t celebrate who I am. I don’t take time to celebrate my achievements in my, even in my work life, but also in my home life. I think just getting up a little bit earlier would give me time to pick up the phone and call my family more often.
My family are down in Christchurch. I just pick up the phone and I call my brother. I just talk to him. My sister as well. lived in London for a number of years, and bizarrely with that much distance, it’s almost easier to pick up the phone and talk to family when you’re on the other side of the world, but when you’re just in two cities in the same country and the same time zone, for some reason it’s really hard.
I grew up down in the South Island, in Christchurch. I never thought Auckland would be home. So, when you asked me where in Auckland is home, if you’d asked me a year ago I would have found that really confronting, but now it is, and that’s part of that, well in the ‘90s growing up, that South Island thing, the North Island is sort of a bit rivalry.
I grew up as cathedral chorister, so I was singing 20 hours a week in the Christchurch Cathedral choir, not that that cathedral is there anymore, post-earthquakes.
Oh earthquakes, that’s the one to talk about, isn’t it? It’s part of my growing up, what that was like. I was there for all of those, for all those events in Christchurch, and a number of my friends passed away in those earthquakes.
Immediately afterwards there was just this massive growth in community. Everybody just came together in this whole other way, where for 15 years prior, living on the leafy street with my parents, you would never go over to your neighbour’s house, but for some reason after an experience like an earthquake, it’s totally okay to just got and knock on somebody’s door and say, gidday and just chat. I remember a whole lot of experiences where you’d go and knock on someone’s door and it would just be, the awkwardness for that moment where you don’t acknowledge that you haven’t actually every knocked on their door or seen their house, even though you’d lived next to them for 15 years. Having a massive event just to sort of shakes up everything literally, kind of brings community together in a whole different way.
What do I value? Community, and friendship and food. Ah, I think food is a massive part of bringing people together. So don’t ask my flatmate, but I sort of have an open-door policy; if someone wants to come around for dinner, they’re always welcome.”
