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?

work it

So now that I've had my bimonthly blogging epiphany, it's time to stop all of this "blogging about blogging" nonsense. I think we all get it. I want to write more. I haven't been publishing many posts. I've redesigned this space more times this year than I've written honestly about my life. Blah blah blah why do I say the same thing over and over again?

I've been at my job for a month now, and despite having to overcome a little hurdle called "imposter syndrome", I'm loving this job and am inspired and excited every day. I also love feeling like a proper adult with my swipe card hanging off my pencil skirt and the dual-screen setup at my desk. I'm learning a ton and mastering skills I didn't know I could have/need. It makes such a difference to be working towards something. I always struggled with hospitality, not because I didn't enjoy it or do well, but because so much of my time was taken with tasks I'd need to repeat again and again every day to reach the same goal.

babbling. as always.

I had a moment of clarity while I was hanging out the washing this morning. Most of my great moments of clarity come as I my mind wanders whist doing household chores. I'm going to wash the dishes after I write this, so with any luck I'll have solved all of the worlds problems by dinner time tonight.
I started this blog, after deleting I don't know how many others, because I had fallen in love with the unbridled words of Bekah on her now-extinct blog my little loves. She isn't the only blogger to inspire me with tales of life and love and challenges and triumphs, but she was the first to inspire uninhibited honesty in my writing. I tried, as far as possible, to write without a filter, to treat my blog as a truly safe space and forget about who might or might not be reading my words.
As my readership grew, and especially as people in my 'real life' started discovering it, the filter crept back in and I started leaving drafts unpublished. A few at first, then a lot more. Now I hover over that publish button like I'm contemplating deploying an atomic bomb.
Bekah took down her blog because she needed to protect the privacy of her family. Perhaps I wanted to read that as a condemnation of personal blogging in its entirety, but really, she just did what was right for her. And what was right for a young mother of two is not necessarily right for me, whose life is entirely different to hers. When my mum asked me why I wrote my blog about my own life, I told her it was because the blogs I love reading are about the lives of others. Others who share the seemingly mundane and remind me of what is most important: relationships, being present, acknowledging the little things. Actually, I think I shrugged, but that would have been a better response so play along with me.
 I'm not saying I want to share everything, but I want to share the important things. Everything that had been going on since this move to Darwin has been huge and important and often scary, and I don't want leave it out just because it doesn't make my life look neat and shiny. Life isn't neat and shiny.
Tom and I have been struggling since his job fell through. We moved up for a dream that didn't work out and now we have to readjust our expectations and review our gameplan. We've fought, we've cried, but what we've really done is grow together.
The more BIG THINGS that happen without being shared here, the less this feels like the safe space I had envisioned and the harder it is to dive back in. It's been literally a whole year since this vicious cycle started ruining my relationship with this space. I'm declaring a ceasefire. I'm not going to make another one of my many broken blogging promises, but I'm going to attempt to write daily for this week only. I may slip up, so don't feel sad, but I think we could do with some quality time getting to know one another better again. 

Kelsey, I don't know what would have happened to this space if you hadn't reached out to me. You inspire me.

lately

I guess I was avoiding this place. There was so much uncertainty and my life needed me more than I allowed myself to need to write about it all. There is still so much uncertainty, but there is clarity amidst that.

We moved for an opportunity for Tom, but thus far relocating has worked out really only for me. Tom's job hasn't been what he expected. Tom's job is no longer Tom's job. I don't know how else to say that. It's really upsetting to see him doubt himself when there are clearly so many things about that whole situation that are nothing to do with his abilities or his value as a person. He'll find something new, something better matched to his incredible mind and his passion for Environmental Science. But to say that this has been tough is an understatement. I could not have predicted how much it would challenge us. And I definitely would never have predicted how relieving it could be for Tom to lose that position. After so much stress and pain and worry, it was like a heavy weight had been lifted.

I, on the other hand, applied for an awesome position in Youth Services and am proud to say that I've been working there for three weeks and I absolutely love it. I'm working with some amazing people and on some exciting projects. I'm planning a couple of events and it's both exciting and terrifying to be solely responsible for their success; I've only worked as part of a team on things like this (and only in my spare time).

It's challenging having such different experiences of this move. We both love Darwin, but Tom has been uninspired and overwhelmed while I've been quite the opposite. He's been working out of the city and I'm right in the heart of that tiny hub of activity. I've made a few friend through working at a coffee shop when we first arrived, he's only been able to meet people through the workplace that hasn't been a great place to him. It's like we're living in two entirely different places.
 

That said, we're managing to explore this beautiful city more and more now that life has calmed down and it's been so nice to find a Darwin that belongs to both of us. Yesterday we visited the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and then enjoyed the sunshine at the Ski Club for a beer. It was the perfect date to reconnect. I love our love and I love Tom's resilience.

I'll write soon. How are you all?

Roadtrip Diaries :: Leaving Adelaide

The removalists came in the morning and demonstrated great feats of strength carting our couch and the bed Tom built us into an empty shipping container. Mum and I sat under the Magnolia tree together one last time and watched. I vacuumed the house and Tom directed his dad in how to keep the fish. We packed our final possessions and said goodbye to our home of the last two years. The stressing and the fighting of the night before were forgotten in our resolve to start a new chapter together. I cried a few more times saying goodbye to my mum, to Tom’s mum, to my little sister whose eighteenth birthday I wouldn't be around to celebrate.

As soon as we hit the highway we were free, the tension that had accompanied the rushed move fell away and we were back to that place we had been on our last roadtrip. It was just us and the road and the terrible/brilliant nineties playlist we had created for the trip. Apart from those few pieces of furniture in the shipping container headed for Darwin, the contents of the car was everything we had. I could not have known how free that would make me feel until we had left everything else behind.

diana f+ instant kit giveaway!

Hello beautiful people!

No, I still don't have a home, but I'm braving the library again (a funny old lady just came up to me and said "hello madam" and then ambled away) to offer you the chance to win a Diana F+ as well as the instant back and two packs of Instax film.

Amanda of Little Tranquility has gathered together some incredible bloggers to host a little giveaway for our lovely readers. I thoroughly recommend you have a look at each of their blogs, because this is a seriously inspiring bunch of ladies.

Amanda from Little Tranquility // Sarah from The Laughing Medusa // Lena from Tiny Painter // Michelle from Creature Type // Lorelai from Lorelai Sebastian // Jessie fromCreating Happy // Tara from Tara Victoria // Rosa from Hello Martian Girl // Georgia from Wherever We Find Ourselves // Jess from Copper Hollow // Maddie from Maddie Richardson

I'm so excited to be able to give you all the opportunity to get your hands on this little beauty!

The giveaway is open internationally, which to an Aussie such as myself is a rare and wonderful thing, and you can enter daily! The winner will be announced on the third of April! Best of luck to you all. xx

One Week in Darwin

I’ve fallen in love with this tiny, humid, world-of-it’s-own city. Darwin is a mixture of Australia and South-East Asia and something else all of it’s own. During those nine days between Tom getting the job and us hitting the road, I was given a lot of crappy advice based on a lot of crappy Darwin stereotypes. From what I’ve experienced thus far, people ‘down south’ give Darwin and it’s locals an entirely unfair rap.

Darwin is the welcoming, open-minded and multi-cultural city that Australia likes to pretend is it’s national culture. I didn’t know what to expect, but I don’t think I was expecting this. I was concerned that I wouldn’t handle the heat, that this city would be too small and confining, that the culture here would be as bogan as I was being told by friends and strangers alike. I’ve certainly learned that you have to experience something for yourself and take what you are told with a grain of salt, because nothing I was told to expect was the city that I found here. Instead I found delightful people, friendly strangers and an incredible mix of cultures.

Going to the Rapid Creek Markets on Sunday was like walking right into Thailand or Malaysia (which are admittedly the only countries in Asia I’ve actually had the pleasure to visit thus far). The markets were overflowing with trestle tables full of delicious, locally-grown produce, home-made curry pastes in a mishmash of margarine boxes and Vegemite jars, eskies boasting mangoes frozen from back when trees all over Darwin were heavy with the weight of delicious fruit. I will take photos when we return this weekend.

Darwin is unlike any other Australian city and not merely because the weather is so unlike that which is typical of this country. Darwin is laid back; I’m certain that if the Rapid Creek Markets were to set up in Adelaide they’d be so overrun by pointless regulation that they’d lose the warmth and charm that emanated so clearly to Tom and I last weekend.

All of that said, Darwin is expensive. Our original rental budget, double what we were spending in Adelaide, now seems ludicrously naive and we’re having to increase our budget and readjust our ideas of what is reasonable.

Tom has now been at work for a week and he loves his new job and company. I had an interview and hope you’re all keeping your fingers crossed for me, but I’ll look for a cafe job for the interim (whether I get this job or something else) because I have far too much time on my hands and no studio to work in. I can’t spend all of my time waiting for real estate agents to get back to me - I need to be doing something.

Hopefully next time we speak it will be from our new home and I can get back to regular posting! x

A new city to explore

Long time no speak - and so many adventures to share with you! They may have to wait, though, because we're still homeless and I'm using hotspot from my phone to access the internet and I really need to be using it to hunt down some sort of home situation. Rent up here in Darwin is so outrageously expensive that we've had to readjust our expectations and ideas of what is 'reasonable'. We're lucky that Tom's uncle and aunty moved up here a little over a year ago and are graciously opening their home to us while we settle since the move was so quick we really couldn't organise anything from Adelaide.

Tom starts his new job on Monday and is full of nervous energy and I'm acclimatising to the humidity in this tropical climate whilst applying for work and preparing for my first (hopefully last, since this is the perfect job) interview on Wednesday. Life is pretty crazy, but I'm loving exploring a new city. Darwin is so unlike any other Australian city, mostly due to the tropical climate I suspect, and I feel kind of like I'm on a permanent holiday in Thailand with the monsoon rains and the crazy Sunday morning markets. I love it here. I was worried before we left, but this is definitely where we need to be at this point in our lives and I'm so excited to find a place and start feeling like locals.

I'll share our road trip another time, but here's a taste to tide you over:

1 back bumper bar missing somewhere along the Stuart Highway
2 shredded tyres
3 swimming holes
8 sunrises
3,766 kilometres travelled (2,340 miles)
4 climates (Mediterranean, Arid, Sub-Tropical, Tropical)

thoughts on moving

Friday 

 Our house remains a labyrinth of boxes and garbage bags. Navigating my way from the front door to the kitchen is surprisingly challenging and I am convinced that our possessions are multiplying while we sleep. We've got two days to pack up the house, but it looks like a month-long project at best. Nervous energy is beginning to creep up; I cannot imagine being ready to leave by Monday. I know it will come together somehow, though, because it must.

We're taking our sweet time to drive up. Two weeks setting up a swag in a different tiny town every night and watching the landscape change. I declared this the year of "explore", and this time next week we'll be exploring the classic Australian outback on our way to build a new life in a new city.

Monday

Everything has happened so quickly. I've been so caught up in the logistics of the move that it really only hit me yesterday that we are leaving. Claire drove away and I was left sobbing in the street, finally realising what our moving actually means. We're leaving everyone we love and we're building a new life in a new city. Skype can never replicate those nights at the pub with my best friend, those mornings where Claire would bustle around the kitchen making tea in her ugly mug after crashing on our couch. She was right, this is the end of an era. And though I know it is an exciting adventure that lies before us, right now I'm grieving all that I will lose.

It's a chilly morning, perhaps the last for a while, so I don't mind shivering a little as I sit outside and write this. I'm trying to bring back that excitement I felt twenty-four hours ago, but it's mixed with sadness finally and these last few hours are fraught with to-do's that I can't imagine being able to complete.

- - -

I'll be out of internet range for most of the trip, so I doubt I'll be able to post until we are in our new Darwin home (assuming we have one by then). Follow me on Instagram to keep up with us as we trek across the desert.

We're moving to Darwin!

Tom got the job!

I knew he would. In the same way that I just knew we were home when we first inspected this flat, I just felt like this position was his before he even sent the application.

I am just so damn proud of him.

I never really thought of myself in Darwin. Like most 20-something's in Adelaide, when I thought of relocating my imagination jumped straight to Melbourne, where all of Adelaide's creatives seem to end up. I don't know a lot about Darwin, I've been there only once when I stayed a night on my way back from Wadeye (perhaps I'll tell you about that trip sometime). I never really thought of myself as a summer person, per se, and now we're heading up to live in the land of perpetual summer. And yet I am so ridiculously excited. I have that same feeling about Darwin; that feeling that this is right. That we will love it and make it our home.

I am so excited for this next chapter of our lives.

Mind, matter & Melbourne

I didn't want to leave the last post lingering there like that. It has no reflection on how I feel most of the time. Right now I'm floating on clouds. When I wrote that, I was waiting for medication to kick in after five days of missing them and dealing with the associated withdrawals. I had been crying at the drop of a hat, spent a day in bed, yelled at Tom for being perfectly lovely on more than one occasion and entirely lost perspective. I knew that I needed my medication, but I continued to skip it because a couple of days without and I'd entirely forgotten the last time I felt joyful. I'm my own worst enemy in withdrawal. I actually didn't hit publish on that post until I was back to feeling myself, but something made me feel like I should actually put it out there rather than delete yet another ill-advised draft. My anxiety has become such a strong influence in my life that it feels just plain silly to hide it in shame. It is what it is. Most days I feel in control, but every now and then it rears it's ugly head and leaves me feeling impotent. I don't need to pretend otherwise; I'm proud of how far I've come. It was only a couple of years ago that I could barely leave the house because the fear was just so overwhelming.

As always in the last million months, my reasoning behind the lateness of this follow-up is that we're still sharing my computer since that incident wherein I stupidly threw a bottle of vodka into Tom's bag not realising that his computer was inside just waiting to be smashed. In this past week, Tom has been writing the application and then preparing for the interview that he had this morning. I don't want to jinx anything, but it somehow feels like this is the job. We'll find out really soon, so fingers crossed.

I spent two blissful days wandering and writing and at my own pace. In the mornings, I walked the dog in the Botanic Gardens. We sat at the cafe and watched the gondolas and Mr Biggles attracted the attention of many adoring strangers. I wrote, for the first time in far too long, simply for the sake of putting words to paper. I wandered up Swan Street and ate a delicious fish taco at Fonda. I spent a long while immersing myself in the beautiful art at the NGV. I sat a table in Degraves sipping delicious coffee, listening to a great busker and reading The Happiness Project. I caught up with an old boyfriend and met his lovely new lady. Returning to Adelaide, I felt so refreshed and inspired, so lucky for the flexibility in my life that allows brief escapes like this.

summer

My blog feels unfamiliar and writing strangely daunting. I give it yet another new face and hope that the words will flood to me when promised a quiet sanctuary. The new space takes on the peace and minimalism that I wish I could bring to my own head. There is so much noise; it will be days before the din quells into a quiet rumble.

I lose sense of time. My head throbs in pain and my boyfriend looks at me with fear and sadness in his eyes. My days are a blur upon reflection. I cannot distinguish the overarching feeling of the time; through the fog I remember long lunches in the sunshine, interesting conversations with strangers, nights spent cuddling and planning with my love. But I also remember letting five days pass without taking essential care of and sobbing quietly in the car home from my brother's wonderful 21st dinner when barely minutes before I had been laughing gaily and teasing my siblings.

An old friend picks me up and we follow the road to the sea. My father lived here once, not so long ago, but we do not pass his old home. Port Willunga has never looked so beautiful. I didn't realise how much I needed to see the sea and run around on the beach. The sun browns my skin as we wade out deep into the clear water. I cannot remember the last time I was in the sea, but I feel as though I could stay here for the rest of time. I sink down and let the water consume me. It is blissful oblivion and I could be the only person in the whole world. We splash and laugh and I am teased for my poor catching skills. I bond with my friend's twelve-year-old sister and carry her around on my back so she can catch the ball on my behalf.

Back at the house we delight in a long, lazy lunch and grand conversation. I am the only person at the table who has yet to live in a non-English speaking country and a burning desire to catch a plane right now comes over me momentarily. I remind myself that my adventures with Tom are only just beginning. I quietly plan our next adventure, caught by a lust for a change of scenery.

I wish every day of summer could be defined by such beautiful surroundings and interesting folk.

foiled plans & kombucha

If everything had gone according to plan, today's post would recount what I am sure would have been a glorious long-weekend escape to the beach with friends. But life does not always go to plan. Sometimes that stomach flu that has apparently been "going around" hits you square between the eyes and wakes you in the dead of night screaming "I AM HERE! FUCK YOU AND ALL OF YOUR AWESOME PLANS, YOU WON A TRIP TO VOMIT TOWN!"

Tom had it three days earlier, and I was so certain that I'd made a lucky escape (admittedly a fantasy when living in the small quarters of a one-bedroom flat) that was excitedly picking out books to read on the beach and buying Tanqueray and Rekorderlig to drink over interesting (and later, ridiculous) conversation during those balmy nights out on the deck.

Alas, it was not to be. (I wish I could honestly say I use the word alas in my day-to-day vocabulary, but most of the time I just waste the opportunity by using a swear word in it's place.) We spent Australia Day on the couch watching The Matrix Trilogy, which I somehow managed not to see in the fifteen years since it's release, which is unfortunate because of all the Thomas Anderson references I could have made throughout the last two years. Other than those misses opportunities to tease my boyfriend, though, I don't feel like I missed out on a great deal. The first was good, but the other two? Whole sequences of CGI people with jelly-limbs hitting each other? Twenty minutes on a single chase scene that wasn't remotely necessary to the development of the plot? Machines and computer programmes with an inexplicable will to live? The first was enough; ignorance was bliss and I wish I could un-know the whole Architect/Oracle/One storyline and the stupid love story between Neo and Trinity. /accidental rant

 

In other exciting news, I finished my first batch of kombucha and I'm dorkishly proud of myself. I'm please that I have a boyfriend with a background in biology, because I needed him to assure me that none of the new growth around my SCOBY was bad, regardless of how ugly it appears. Even though I knew what kind of things to expect in a normal batch of kombucha, I was still anxious that I had somehow broken it and infected my SCOBY with horrors unknown. It reminds me a little of when I first started nannying the twin one-year-olds when I was eighteen. When they tripped and fell I would run and scoop them up, afraid I was doing a terrible job. It only took a week or so for me to become more relaxed and just let them pick themselves up and go along their merry way. Things are usually not as dire or serious as they might initially seem. I'm hoping that kombucha will become second nature to me and I won't be anxiously checking the progress of each batch multiple times a day.

I'll be honest, this first batch hedged a little close to the over-brewed, slightly vinegar stage. In an Adelaide summer like this I think it could use a day or two fewer to be of the beautiful tart standard of Mojo, especially with the mini heat wave we have to look forward to this week. I hope you're all well and that any of you Aussies had a more exciting/less sick Australia Day than I, but right now I really ought to get ready for work - I've made a terrible habit of being exactly two minutes late to work every day, but I think today shall be the day I break that streak and catch the earlier train.

life, lately

pictured
1. The sky one night of the heatwave. Oh, yes, the heatwave. For those of you lucky enough to have been anywhere else last week, we had the most diabolical (record-breaking) heatwave. On Thursday the temperature reached 47C and we were officially the hottest city on the planet. We had to close the shop for the week and I spent most of my time hiding form the heat and watching Homeland.
2. Celebrity head, because Sherlock and Watson were adorable when they played it in The Sign of Three. We spent Tuesday of the heatwave swimming, drinking gin and playing silly games with friends.
3. I finally bought a Kombucha SCOBY and my first batch should be ready in about five days!
4. Cashew Cheese from The Whole Pantry app.
5. The Life-Changing Loaf of Bread from My New Roots.

not pictured
1. Impromptu dinner date at Jack Ruby. The scallop cheviche is ah-maz-ing!
2. our first night(s) apart since moving in together. Tom went to Kangaroo Island with work (just for fun- entirely funded by tips!)
3. the cool change came in the form of a huge storm; Tom's parents dog was alone and terrified and somehow managed to make her way to our house. It's about a half hour walk, but we can't remember a time that she has actually been here before then. Clever girl.
4. a lovely gin-soaked evening with Josh.
5. setting up my studio in the detached bunglalow in the backyard. Excited to start using my new (to me) workbench.

I didn't mean to take so long to post again, but the heat was so all-consuming and those day so uneventful (I didn't think you wanted to hear my thoughts on Homeland or how our low temperatures were a normal week's highs) that time just ... passed. How have you all been?

Pub nights in Adelaide. (1 degree of separation)

Usually I really love Adelaide, you know? I like how it's relatively small and quiet for a capital city. And though we have plans to live in other, bigger, and busier places in time, we're pretty happy right where we are right now.

 But then you have those nights where you go to the pub and find that everyone knows everyone and you run into not one, but two of your exes (one of which we will not discuss because I like to pretend that it never happened) and start to wonder if perhaps it's time to move on from this tiny town to avoid these kinds of awkward interactions.

One of Tom's closest friends from all the way back in high school is now in the same Fringe show as the guy I was seeing for a couple of months three years ago. A guy I haven't spent more that thirty seconds with since that time he drunkenly apologised for being a dick while we were dating and then proceeded to try and coax me to go home with him. It couldn't have been all that long before Tom & I got together.

When asked how we knew each other, the Ex vaguely told someone "... we'll go with Uni. Yeah, Uni ..." as if we had some kind of secret. We met at the pub and we hung out for a couple of months and then we kind of fell apart and that was that. And neither of us were studying at the time. I have no idea what was going on there, but the remainder of the night was tinged by that initial awkward and unnecessary lie.

The combination of $2 beers specials and the strange I-have-seen-you-naked-but-I-don't-actually-know-you-very-well-anymore conversations left me feeling distinctly disgusting at work the next morning. I'm reasonably sure I was still drunk when I got to work, but thankfully no one seemed all that interested in coffee and I managed to spend my shift mainly eating bacon (essential) and rehydrating. It was possibly not the best start to a year of taking care of myself. I remember now why I always aim to get the last train home on weeknights, and it's not because of the cab fare.

The word for 2014

Last year I played along with Susannah Conway and created a "Word for 2013".
I took so long trying out words and attaching meanings to them that I don't think the end result of the word "Do" was perhaps as powerful as Susannah's experience with the process. I didn't exactly forget the word like I often forget New Years Resolutions, but I don't see evidence of it inspiring me to do more, to approach situations differently or to step out of my comfort zone in any way.
I had no intention of choosing another word for this year. Last year's process simply didn't seem to be something that stirred much within me, so I decided instead to write a list of intentions that were specific to a few areas of my life on which I'd like to focus.
But while I was writing the list and exploring my intentions for 2014, one word just kept coming up. Explore.

The word came to me organically and the word failed to go away. So I've decided to welcome it into my life and let it stay for the year. My year of exploration.

Intentions for 2014

Screw resolutions that I'll forget after about a month; this year I'm setting intentions. For me, that means focussing on the process of achieving my goals rather than just the goals themselves. Goals can't be reached overnight, and it can sometimes feel like you'll never reach them at all, so I think it's really important to focus on enjoying the process and keeping perspective. As long as I am actively working within my intentions, I am creeping closer towards my dreams and, more importantly, I am enjoying the journey.

actively seek opportunities and make time to feel alive through creative self-expression

When I am creating, I am whole. The world makes sense to me and my anxiety abates. I have no excuses for my lack of creative output in recent years, I've simply let it slide and I think that perhaps I have suffered for it. This year I want to be deliberate and mindful about undertaking artistic endeavours.

cultivate simple rituals and traditions 

This year I want to take care to be mindful as I go about my days. I want to create rituals in place of mindless routines and be more present as I consciously go about the new little rituals I will fit into my day-to-day. I also want to focus on creating meaningful traditions with Tom that we can keep for years to come.

write consistently and openly

This intention is for both my own personal journalling and also for writing here on the blog, both of which have declined significantly in recent months to the extent that I feel like something of a stranger to the mediums. I want to write consistently, yes, but more importantly I want to write without bridle. As long as I continue to write regularly, I don't necessarily mind about a blogging schedule (this may change, but for now it is what works for me) or a daily word count.

take care of myself

My health, both physical and mental, can be precarious at times. If I am not careful to look after myself and listen to the needs of my body preemptively, I'll have a lot more trouble and work getting myself back to health once my body folds to the pressure. Likewise, my anxiety is something I have learned to live with - and at most times it is something of which I feel I am in control - but a little slip and it quickly takes control of me, or so it feels, which may be the same thing anyway.

Do you make resolutions or intentions for the new year? I sometimes feel like such a nerd for my great love for goal-setting and list-making, but I do find that it works well for me. Even though it's really just an arbitrary date, starting each new year with a clean slate and a brand new set of intentions feels like a good way to mark moving forward.

What are you hoping to achieve/change/do/learn/be in 2014?

our perfect little road trip

Our little trip to Melbourne and back was a very last minute decision, but so timely. We had planned a longer road trip for this time, but Tom's new retail job put a spanner in those works and it looked like that plan was off entirely. It was so exciting when we realised that we could fit in an abbreviated version of that break. 

This trip proved to be a break that we needed more than we even knew. The distance we travelled distanced us also from the burdens and stresses of the day-to-day and brought us some perspective that we could bring back home. We were able to live fully and completely in the moment and it was a glorious reminder of the importance of time spent together, of time out, of time to just be. 

We sang to bad nineties songs and classic hip hop and bickered over lyrics (I still maintain that the words to TLC's Unpretty sound more like "but at the end of the day I have no self esteem 'cos I'm so stupid"). We stopped to look at silly things on the side of the road and I took a thousand unnecessary photos of Tom's hands as he drove. 

 

We managed to stop in a lot of different little towns along the way. On Christmas day we had a little picnic lunch in Tailem Bend and then continued through to Naracoorte where we spent the night in Tom's sister's house. We drank beers outside and watched the sun set and dreamed together about the house we will one day have and the black subway tiles I am desperate to install in the imaginary kitchen. 

We managed to stop in a lot of different little towns along the way. On Christmas day we had a little picnic lunch in Tailem Bend and then continued through to Naracoorte where we spent the night in Tom's sister's house. We drank beers outside and watched the sun set and dreamed together about the house we will one day have and the black subway tiles I am desperate to install in the imaginary kitchen. 

 

The sun was setting as we left for the last leg to Melbourne. It was something of a miracle that we made it to South Yarra, what with my poor navigational instructions, Tom's entire lack of an internal sense of direction and the fact that the gps and both of our phones were flat as we made it into the city.

We walked through Gosch's Paddock (which is not a paddock, so you shouldn't mislead me to believe there might be sheep grazing outside Olympic Stadium, Melbourne!) to Swan Street and had a beer at the Corner Hotel. 

I rose early the next morning, made myself a coffee and brought it along for a long meandering stroll through the Botanic Gardens. A lot of people were running around the Tan, but I was quite happy to take my time, sip my coffee, and stop to read about interesting plants I came across. Under those beautiful tall trees I felt so small and at the same time so connected with the world around me. I took a lot longer than I had anticipated; it was blissfully quiet and peaceful and I took some time to reflect on the year I'd had and the one to come as I explored. 

Upon my return, Tom and I walked to Swan again to have a coffee (dad has a great machine but we like to sit and watch people sometimes) and pick up a couple of ingredients for breakfast. Tom made the most delectable scrambled eggs with baby spinach, bacon, and slow-cooked tomato. I felt torn momentarily between a desire to fit as much as possible into our only full day in the city and a wish to maintain the relaxed feel of the previous two days of the trip. We opted to take our time and just bask in the lack of responsibility and the change of scenery. It was the best thing we could have done.

We walked to Chapel Street, cursed the after-Christmas sales for filling the street with teenage girls with a thousand colourful shopping bags hanging off their arms and settled into a nice pub for lunch and wine. We met a couple of nice guys who told us brilliant stories about partying in London and Berlin in the eighties and how the clubbing scene changed in the aftermath of the Wall coming down. After a few beers we were lazy and just took the tram to meet Tom's old school friend, Cushing, at Richmond Station. They saw De La Soul that night in St Kilda and I wandered back into the Gardens to see Gravity at the Moonlight Cinema. 

On our way home I insisted on spending some time in nature, so we went through Creswick again and found a forest to explore. An inexplicable wave of something rather like sadness overcame me in this beautiful place, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. What was that feeling? It was terrible and it was blissful all at once and I felt as though I might be rooted to that spot, lost in that moment, for all the remaining days of my life. And then, in a flash, it was gone and I was with my love and we were ready, so ready, for whatever the coming year might throw at us. This trip had cleansed us and readied us and we are so excited and determined and the rest of our trip home is punctuated with discussions and plans for the future, for this year and the many years to come. 

 

 

christmas celebrations

I had a whole post written about our first Christmas celebration of the year because it actually occurred almost an entire fortnight before the day itself. In the craziness of the lead-up to Christmas, though, it never got finished or posted. One of my resolutions for this year is to be a better blogger, but more on that in a post later this week.

We celebrated early with Tom's family because his sister, Millie, & brother-in-law, Ben, would be (should I now say were?) holidaying in Vietnam with Ben's family for Christmas.

I love Tom's family. I love how his Grandma can't hear anything, but barely wears her hearing aids (despite her son-in-law being an audiologist). I love how she makes fun of herself and I love the stories his Mama (other grandmother) tells about being brought up by Catholic nuns and going to dances hoping to meet a soldier and the long line of girls kissing their suitors goodbye outside the hostel just before curfew on a Friday night. I love how well everyone gets along and how Tom's parents welcomed my mum to the festivities and how openly they welcomed me to their Christmas festivities two Christmases ago.

We started with an array of dips and fresh bread form the markets and then moved onto fresh oysters and prawns. There was an outrageous amount of food for dinner even though there were only ten of us. Turkey, lamb, pork, steak, roast vegetables, potato bake, three or four salads ... it went on forever. The lemon tart I made for dessert was a hit, too.

My favourite part of the evening came after dinner, though. Armed with wine and santa hats we toured the neighbourhood Christmas light displays. Ben and I developed a rating system with bonus 'trick points' for installations that made good use of flashing light patterns.

On the 22nd, Tom and I hosted Orphan's Christmas for my two best friends and their partners. The night involved a failed attempt at a light walk like the one we enjoyed with Tom's family. Unfortunately no one in our area seems to care much for Christmas so it ended up being a wine-time walk with no lights to speak of. Nevertheless, the night was perfect. Tom made a roast lamb and I made another lemon tart (because if it ain't broke, don't fix it). Good company and good conversation is the best kind of christmas.

On Christmas Day itself, we went to my mum's for brunch. I love Christmas brunch with my family. Always featured are my two favourite dips, warm croissants and seemingly endless amounts of smoked salmon. It was the perfect way to spend Christmas day. My dad was over from Melbourne so he even came too which made it even better. It's the first Christmas with both of my parents for about six or seven years I think. We drank mimosas in the sunshine and ate fruit and I taught my Popple to use his new ereader and my Nana rolled her eyes at his acquisition of yet another gadget that she cannot understand.

We spent the remainder of Christmas day driving to Naracoorte and then drinking beers in the garden as the sun set. Along the way we just had to stop and take a picture of this sign:

Hope you all had wonderful Christmases and spent time with those you love.

Back in a day or two with some words about and pictures of our little road trip. xx

little achievable resolutions for the new year

I hate New Year's Resolutions because they are always so grand and idealistic but lack measurability and accountability. How can you achieve your goal of "losing weight" if you don't have a) an end goal in sight - technically you could lose a kilo and count that as a success  b) measurable means of attaining said goal - how can you know on a day-to-day basis that you are putting in the work to achieve what you want? It's too easy to fall off the wagon, to forget your resolutions after a month, to lose focus on your goals when life gets in the way.

Most years, I simply don't make resolutions. But most years I also get to December and wonder where the year has gone and what I did with it.

So for 2014, I'm taking a different tact and setting myself some small, measurable resolutions that are achievable on a daily basis but make an overall difference to my life.

1. Wash my face every night. I never remove my make up before bed. I wake up in the morning with panda eyes and pillow face and wonder why it is that I never feel fresh and lovely come sunrise. Not any more. This is part of my perpetual goal of one day becoming a 'real adult'. Presently I am an overexcited toddler stuck in the body of a 23-year-old.

2. Save at least 10% of each week's pay. I know most people just do this automatically, but I am not most people. I am a silly person who lives week-to-week and never has money left over for fun things. Part of this is that we don't earn a great deal, but most of it is simply that neither Tom nor myself have any self-control and don't know how to save money. I'm going to make a spreadsheet and keep a damn budget. But in the likely event that I get bored of that, I'm making my resolution the simple act of putting money aside and not using it on beers when we suddenly decide we feel like going to the Exeter.


There are other things I wish to do in the year, but I don't want to treat them like resolutions. My mind changes too often. Life changes too often. We might have to pack up and move in the middle of the year or we might be in this same house twelve months from now. In a couple of days I'm going to blog about some of my plans for the year to come, but while those are dreams and hopes and