This morning I went up to a beautiful Open Garden in Blakiston. I'll post a few photos of the garden tomorrow (ed: the photos really aren't worth sharing and do no justice to the garden itself), but right now all I can think about is this studio. The garden belongs to the very talented artist Cassie Thring, and since Adelaide is Adelaide and the Six Degrees Rule here actually translates to about two degrees of separation at it's worst, we of course had a couple of connections and she invited us to have a look inside her studio. Excuse the glare from the windows, I quickly snapped a few photos with my point and shoot because I was just so in love with the place.

Doesn't this space just ooze creativity? Give me some indoor plants and a lazy cat and I don't think I'd ever leave.

life, lately.

True to form, I've been forever in posting again. Following an incident involving a stupid girl, a flying bottle of vodka and a defenceless computer, Tom & I have been sharing my computer for months. He's been crazy busy with job applications lately and working on a paper he's getting published (I'm so proud of him) so I've been more ... analogue ... in recent weeks. Spring is bringing a lot of beautiful weather and flowers and things to look forward to, so I'm not really feeling the loss.

We went to the Gilles Street Markets on Sunday. We browsed a little, but mostly we just enjoyed people watching as we ate delicious food and basked in the sunshine.

 

 

I've been thoroughly obsessed with our garden's offerings. Not nearly as obsessed as our crazy neighbour, though, who has taken to conducting a daily count of the many hundreds of self-seeding poppies that have taken over our front yard. (She treats the garden as her own whether we like it or not) The other day she spent two hours with a notebook documenting the nature of the different interbreeding varieties. I'm having a go at pressing some flowers and leaves, which I vaguely remember doing as a child. It will either look drab and old fashioned or, I hope, more like a mix between art and a botanical study. I'll let you know in a few weeks.

What has been keeping you busy lately?

firespell - a playlist for creating

I put together a short half-hour playlist of a bunch of beautiful women singing a bunch of brilliant songs. I used to make playlists (and mixtapes) all the time in high school, but iTune's Genius and Spotify's Radio have been doing the job for me more often than not in recent years since it's so simple. 

Nothing, though, can replicate the love you put into a playlist you compile yourself. Songs that are speaking to your heart, songs that seem to know you, arranged carefully into something that makes some inexplicable sense to you.

Or perhaps I'm giving playlists a little too much credit. I hope you like it either way. 

Lemons

I didn't mean to take a break from blogging, but the air around me became heavy and I found myself burrowing into cushions and immersing myself in the worlds of fictional characters whenever my own became quiet.

Eventually, though, I felt that ray of sunshine that told me it was safe to come out. My periods of anxiety are shorter now, but just as intense and unexpected. Years have taught me that there is no clear trigger, no ominous warning signs, and all I can do is ride the waves as best I can until the waters again become clear.

I look back to that time only a few years ago when leaving the house was the most terrifying prospect and I could go weeks without leaving the safety and familiarity of my bed. I know that I am stronger and better than I have ever been, but in those weaker moments it is hard to know this truth; it is impossible to see the forest for the trees.

You might remember that I briefly mentioned a creative project that I was excited about. It sat in the back of my mind for those weeks where I did no more than go through the motions: work, home, marathoning bad tv, harry potter, wash, rinse, repeat. But it occurs to me now that this was the worst thing that I could have done, because it is only when I have a project to excite and consume me that I feel alive.

Which brings me to the other reason I've been neglecting this space. I'm putting my heart into this creative endeavour; I've been busy working on it in  my free time for the last couple of weeks. It has to move slowly for mostly financial reasons but I will share with you very soon.

We've been discussing our next move. It's hard to know where we'll be a few months from now. We might be right here in our lovely little home or we could be making a new one in a bigger city or a small country town or on the other side of the planet. It all comes down to the jobs available for Tom. We have our fingers crossed for a Graduate position that has come up, but it's nice to know that we can be happy on any adventure together so if not this one something else will come up down the track.

It's almost two years now that we've been together and over eighteen months living together and we're more in love every day. I wish I could remember to count my blessings more often; I have so much to be grateful for and happy about in my life. It feels like such a failing that fear and anxiety can overwhelm all of that and reduce me to a wreck of a person drowning in her own tears.

Creativity and gratitude bring out the best in me. I plan to drown myself in those instead. You know ... the happy kind of drowning? I think that's my cue to shut up.

lately: creativity & life joy

I promised I'd blog, but my focus has been elsewhere and the words have not flown freely. I've been working on a creative project I'm hoping to get underway quite soon and have been happily consumed by that glorious phase of lofty idealising and brainstorming. I'll spare you the details because this project is (obviously) still in it's infancy and also because I like the idea of putting people in suspense.

Also consuming much of my time is my complete overhaul of the design of this blog. Even if you've only followed me for a matter of weeks, you'll probably have noticed that i have a weakness for tweaking the design little by little. Sometimes it's the header, sometimes the font, but over time the whole design has become completely unrecognisable to what it was before. Or before that. If you were an occasional reader you couldn't be blamed for assuming it was an entirely different blog. As the author, I'm constantly frustrated by the incomplete feeling of the space. How can it ever be finished if it never felt cohesive in the first place? So I've started from scratch, and I'm hoping that I'll end up with something that I'll like enough to stop pursuing that intangible perfect layout by making those irritatingly minute changes every. other. week.

In other news, that early morning ritual of ours that I have raved about (too) many times in the past is back and I'm very happy about it. It eroded into late, headachy rising when I stopped working in a coffee shop and Tom started finding himself working on his thesis more productively in the middle of the night. But! Tom's thesis is finished and he has completed Honours and I am back making coffee for early morning commuters. Early morning rising is back and I remember why I loved it so. I'm actually back at the same place I was earlier in the year, the two staff of our tiny shop had to be let off for five months due to nearby infrastructure works sending our customers elsewhere. I love being back and seeing all of my old favourite customers again. I am surprised to see that my memory has retained everyone's regular coffee orders and wondering if that might perhaps explain why I can never remember useful information.

Just some thoughts and updates. I have so much I want to say and so little patience to sit here and write it all down. Yet. I'll let you know when I unveil the new layout; I'm excited to say goodbye to this one.

ps. Royal Baby Boy Presented To Public In Traditional Manner (I laughed)