I've been contemplating this for a little while now and it's become clear that this space belongs back where it all began, on Blogger.

SquareSpace is great; it has the capacity to to awesome things. I moved to SquareSapce with the intention of taking advantage of all of it's great features. I had a little business brewing that I wanted to add to my existing blog and the gallery and shopping cart facilities were going to be essential to this.

I've since come to know two important things. Firstly, moving across the country, leaving behind my studio setup and starting a new job has forced me to accept that these things take time. And whilst I still have every hope and plan to start this little business, I really do want to do it right. Secondly, I've realised that I don't want to give up on the ultra personal aspects of blogging and that even when I do get my little enterprise off the ground I will want this blog to remain a separate entity so that I don't have to worry about the professionalism or relevance of my posts. (So. Many. Words. Take a breath)

Actually, there's a third important point. I can't stop redesigning my goddamn blog! My job in Adelaide lacked the creativity of my current work, so my constant rebranding/refacing of this space was a little bit of a creative outlet for me. But now I want to use my creativity to do bigger things! I want to create community in Darwin through my work but also outside of it if I can. (Anyone else think that Renew Darwin needs to happen?)

So this weekend I'm going to port it all back into a much simpler design on Blogger. Unfortunately it is not as easy to get my posts back there as it was to get them over here. Anything from 2014 will have to be reposted, so something strange will inevitably happen to the comments. I guess it's lucky that I've been such a slack blogger lately so there won't be as much work involved!

So yay for that and yay for these two exciting pieces of news:

1. TOM JUST GOT AN AWESOME JOB AND WE ARE SO HAPPY AND I AM SO PROUD and these last few weeks have been so tough but IT'S ALL UP FROM HERE!!!!

2. I got my business cards and I'm pretty excited. (read: I totally think that makes me an adult now despite throwing cardboard around the office this afternoon and giggling like a crazy person)

a reminder of what matters.

"I am self-propelled; fuelled from within. I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m not attached to them. I learned a long time ago that if I give them the power to feed me, I also give them the power to starve me." - Steve Maraboli

light

Yesterday's post was heavy, but I felt like I was being true to my idea of what I want this space to be to me. I've learnt that you cannot take the best things in life for granted. Anything valuable needs to be valued. (duh) Our love comes 'easy' because it is so so wonderful; but just because it is easy to love someone does not mean it is always easy to be loving towards them. It can be far too easy to take advantage of the love others have for you; my parents have certainly had their (un)fair share of that throughout the years.

Anyway, I'll stop now. To lighten the mood, here is some light captured on my phone in the past couple of months.

Take care of the ones you love. Then come to Darwin and see some spectacular sunsets with me.

be present in love

For a while it felt like we were looking at each other from opposite sides of soundproof glass we didn't know how to penetrate. I didn't know how to understand what Tom was going through and I felt like he was taking little interest in anything other than his own pain and the job hunt he now had to undertake.

I wasn't really trying to understand how he was feeling, I was actually just trying to make him feel better. I was going to make him feel better godamnit!

But you can't just make someone feel better. You can't just tell them to look on the bright side or focus on all of the good things in their life.

What I really did was bring discord into our usually happy home.

Perspective means everything. From mine, we were suffering under the weight of his feelings of failure and his determined pursuit of new work. But when I eventually stopped telling him that things would be okay and started listening I realised I had it so very wrong. It took me a whole damn week of madness to realise what was wrong with my perspective (everything). We weren't suffering at all; he was suffering and I was being a pretty crappy girlfriend by wishing he would stop the job search and take some downtime with me. He was really just trying to get us back on track to our Darwin dream. I was so determined to have his attention NOW, to know that he was (and we were) okay NOW, that I couldn't see his reasons for being distracted. He was looking to our future.

I stopped trying to change his attitude and behaviour and instead focused on being the girlfriend I wanted to be (not the shrill, pedantic one I had been being).

On Sunday I sent him a formal invitation to a home date in the courtyard: wine and cheese under the stars. We talked all night. He decided to cook me a romantic dinner. We talked about his recent interview and discussed his next move to woo them. He gave me advice about asking a superior for a coffee meeting. We laughed and played "would you rather" and he admitted that considering the price the goon wasn't remotely undrinkable. We got along in the way that made us fall in love in the first place, in the way that makes our love work so perfectly every day. He is my best friend. I never want living together and cleaning schedules and messy kitchens to ruin that perfect combination of love and actual connection. (It didn't, I did)

That's what I learnt this weekend. What did you learn?