37. Night Drive - Gotye

I wrote the following piece a few years ago, when I was still making house calls after hours.

I don’t anymore - the points I mention about prioritising time at home with my family, the inefficiency and a myriad of other issues led to me stopping them at the start of 2019.

But they were a feature of my practice up til then.

Especially in the early days, during those difficult early years. For a while there, twelve months or so I think, I’d drive from my home in the outer south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne and drive to Epping, in the outer-north.

On a good day it would take an hour; every other day it’d be closer to two. Each way.

And all before the Golden Age of Podcasts…

Why’d I do it? Well, I was lucky enough to meet one of the two people I’ve ever trusted in this game and work out of his office.

From there, I was able to meet some of the brokers he had working for him, who would in turn introduce me to their clients.

Clients who, invariably, were first-home buyers locking down their slice of the Great Australian Dream in the outer reaches of metropolitan Melbourne.

This was long before I decided to focus on advising people through their divorce, and I focused on providing these people great advice on their superannuation and insurance arrangements.

So I’d work as long as I did in the office, then trundle out to suburbs I’d never heard of (because they hadn’t existed a few years earlier), and take people through our advice process.

I could normally get two appointments in, but sometimes squeezed three in. A 4pm, 6pm and - if necessary - an 8pm.

Then, when finished, I’d pack up my papers and bag, climb back into the car and start the hour-plus drive home.

Were it not for the generous support and drive of that gentleman in Epping, I’d never have been able to resurrect my dream of self-employment and my story would be quite different.

But, still, those drives back could be quite nice and the song I write about here always triggers a warm recollection of what, looking back, was a fairly challenging time.

Though I suspect the meaning of this song isn’t quite the same as the meaning it has for me, this one is a real keeper for me.

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Night meetings. 

They're an unusual part of our business - heading out when most people are returning from work, to meet people in their homes to talk about that second-most sensitive part of their lives (their money). 

Like anybody that works outside of the usual 9-to-5 dynamic (though, these days, isn't everyone?), it feels a little bit odd, a little bit different. 

I was working from home yesterday, and walking out to my car at 6pm I saw my neighbour. He'd just returned from work and was putting the bins out.

He was done for the day, heading inside to spend the evening with his family. 

And there I was, tightening the tie and driving off, not to return for another 2, maybe 3 hours. 

Re-reading that I think it might come across a little negative. I certainly don't dislike night appointments. 

I feel it's quite a privilege to be invited into somebody's home. And the reality is that most of our clients have busy work days and it's easier for them to see us after hours.

And we talk about sensitive stuff - income, expenses, loans, dreams, hopes, worries.

These aren't really conversations you can shoot through in a cafe. We're all more relaxed, which makes for far more enjoyable conversations. 

And when our days are as hectic as they are, with phonecalls and emails and correspondence and meetings and work always screaming for attention, it's quite freeing to have the day to attend to all of that stuff, and keep the nights free for the truly pleasant part of our business (meeting with people). 

But they're also a quietly contentious idea in our business.

It's inefficient, the argument goes, and you're better served by only seeing people in your offices. It's a much more efficient use of your time. 

Which it undoubtedly is. 

And I doubt I'll be doing them for my entire career. I now have a young family, and for the first time there was a touch of envy when I saw my neighbour walking inside to play with his son. 

So I won't be doing them forever. 

But one inestimable upside of night appointments is that they lead to one of my absolutely favourite things - night driving...

Driving home after an appointment is one of the real upsides of my week. You have the satisfaction of ending another work day on a real high note. 

There's no traffic. 

The phone doesn't ring. 

This time of year you get to see the sunsets and Melbourne, like most cities, is much, much prettier in a sunset. 

You have no 'next thing' to get to. 

So you can take your time driving home, driving with the window down and the music up.

You have the slightly smug thought that you haven't spent hours of your day in the painful traffic of the daily commute (while carefully ignoring that your work day has extended hours beyond when most are getting home...). 

It's very hard to describe why I enjoy them so much.

But as a reference point - the song Night Drive by Gotye (on the Like Drawing Blood album, which had that Gotye song on it). 
It goes a great job of capturing, I think, the pleasant melancholy of driving, at night, through a modern city:

It won't be long
'Till those blues are gone
The city's waiting
Beckoning for us
It leads us on
Let it lead us on

Because it’s isolating, cruising along at a hundred k’s an hour in your little steel cabin.

But it’s also oh-so-relaxing.

There’s a route I’ll take home when my last meeting of the night is in the right spot. And when the time of year is right - around 8pm, early in the daylight savings season - it’s a terribly pleasant trip.

Over the Bolte Bridge, past that stranded ferris wheel on the left, out to see if the Tasmanian Ferry is in dock, around the bend and on to the exit ramp.

The exit ramp, incidentally, that leads directly to the second-most hectic merge in Melbourne’s road network.

Then a - hopefully smooth - transition to the inside lane that’ll take you into the tunnel, and out the other side towards home.

That section, though, from the gentle curve off the bridge, past the shiny towers of the city, under the hoardings and right up until you start the descent into the tunnel, is what this song always reminds me of.

Because you have the sun behind you, and the golden light is glinting off the buildings.

The window is down, my arm hanging over the edge.

I don’t have any music on, the only sound is the monotony of the new asphalt and the wind pouring in the open window.

It's the perfect night
To just drive on by
Let the dashboard underscore
Everything we've seen
While the world plays for our pleasure
On our windshield silver screen

Everything looks clean and fresh.

There’s no real traffic on the road; a few cars, the odd motorbike, a courier van shifting lanes.

As I drive, the light shifts and the reflection of the setting sun bounces off a different window, a different surface, at a different angle.

The apartments up there on the left, those impossibly small apartments - smaller than the Hong Kong average, so say the papers - are filled with people who have finished their workday.

They’re up in their glassed in modules, preparing food or doing the washing or watching TV or talking to loved ones or playing games or complaining about the smell of whatever it is their neighbour is cooking.

Meanwhile, I’m driving along, arm out the window, steering by fingertip.

Now the merge is over, the cruise control can go on. Up to 80, on, set, foot off the pedal.

Under the billboard straddling the never-enough lanes, half-heartedly advertising some goddamn thing nobody actually needs.

And, the whole time:

And the highway lines
Pass by in two/four double-time

Because he’s right, it IS a quiet joy.

A quiet, lonely, meandering joy.