Work anywhere?

Oooh jobs on country estates and boats...one to keep up the sleeves when wanderlust catches up with me.

http://anyworkanywhere.com

The best Festivus ever...

What makes a good Festivus you ask?

Well...Frank Costanza would have us believe that all it requires is to tell your family and friends all the ways they disappointed you over the year. But I'll let you in on a little secret, all the ways my friends have disappointed me this year is the exact reason I love them. So with a delayed plan to visit Harbour Islands as the brief, with one friend finally taking a day off work (she's promised for a while) and the other reining in her need to always argue...(loving her very George-like moment of realisation!)....a most awesome day was had yesterday out on Sydney Harbour.

There's a ferry that runs from Wharf 6 at Circular Quay (and Darling Harbour) that drops off at places like Fort Denison and Shark Island in Sydney Harbour. Lesson for yesterday was if you get the first ferry of the day and it's a quiet-ish weekday no one will be on Shark Island except you until the next ferry arrives 1 and 1/2 hours later!

Imagine a whole harbour island with stunning views back towards the city and Harbour Bridge/Opera House all to yourself. We also had some Sydney to Hobart yachts out in the harbour sailing past doing last minute training. Add a gourmet picnic and best of the best friends a girl could ever have = the best Festivus ever!

Happy Festivus.

Zen and the Art of Chucking…

The last few weeks of my life, post holiday hiatus in the sun, have consisted of catching up on precious sleep (well trying to get back into a normal sleep pattern) and my new found calling…Zen and the Art of Chucking. Well don’t be under any illusions I have found nirvana…but I did find all my Nirvana albums if that will suffice?

Really, the last few weeks have been a time of sorting things into ‘recycle’, ‘donate’, ‘re-gift’, ‘chuck’, and er, ‘return to rightful owner’ and I should apologise in advance to Nicole for keeping her brother’s Ricky Martin album since 1996, though I’m not sure he’d want it back.

Anyhow, amid the dust I have been having a rather cathartic experience. It’s almost like the art of sorting and ordering ones’ external life assists with getting the internal one back on track. As if the ‘chucking’ out of bits of your past literally purges the emotions and cares invested in all this stuff.

Now I should say I’m not really a pack rat. It’s the sorting out of the last of my grandfather’s things that are still in the old terrace house and turning the spare room into a proper study/guest room. Oh and getting rid of the accumulation of about 5 years of bits of paper from my Masters. The secret of higher education I have learned is how many bits of paper you have in your house. I have so many bits of paper we would be putting them out for paper recycling for months so tomorrow we are off to the Visy Recycling Depot with a car load. And that’s not the only place getting my custom. I’m making friends with the local Salvation Army depot, and tomorrow’s car load marks my second trip. Trust me, there will be more.

For me as I sort out all these photocopied articles on everything from multiple regression through to how to construct statements of significance and piles of reading on art and life in the Italian states from 1200 – 1600 (yep, those exiting years!) I have realised just how much I have forgotten…most of the time I can barely remember studying or reading on these topics. So what remains? Ask me again when I’m not this tired. Hot bath and a good lie down here I come.

And Zen you ask? ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Coasting-it...

Hello dear readers,

I've just returned from a week's respite up on the Central Coast of NSW. This former haven of relaxed beachside living has seen some dramatic changes over the many years my family has holidayed in the area...and most of them aren't that great but here's a collection of thoughts, random of course, but they seemed important at the time, so indulge me...

I miss being 16 but there is no way I would go back

On my numerous beach days I was subjected to the inner most thoughts of the 16-18 year old psyche as numerous groups landed on the beaches around me...ahhh to have a life once more where the controversy of the day was what happened at the formal after party and where one would go for schoolies. As I watch their awkward interactions I realised how most of us deep down are still 16 at heart but also feeling a world away from their cares and worries.

They paved paradise and put up parking lot OR my version of the multinational that swallowed the little guy

This is the story of a local shopping strip, an IGA and the car park that now sits on its site. I won't go into a chorus of 'paving paradise to put up a parking lot' and I will admit, I did enjoy being able to buy my usual yoghurt brand...but surely when Coles moves into your holiday area...it's no longer a small out of the way destination. It's serious urban (coastal?) sprawl. And I'm not sure I like it. I mean, for the people who live there it's probably most convenient to have a Coles open to midnight where you can pick up your Jalna...but will the awful Coles bakery kill the local bakehouse where if you get there after 11am all the sticky buns have been sold but pies are only $2 after 2pm?

What is it with the smiling at people?

Everybody smiles and says hello as you pass them...I'm not complaining, only I think I spoke to more people in the past week than I have in the previous 3 weeks in Sydney. And actually wished them well. Good morning to the man whose campervan blocked the access to my accommodation. Hello pregnant lady with toddler at the ocean pool...hello man fishing on bridge as I ran past you...(you probably thought I was crazy running the lake circuit)...

The smell

And I don't mean a bad one...rather there is something so quintessentially holiday- smelling for me when you get paper-bark mingled with a soft breeze coming over the lake front mixed with the slightly dense humidity when you are just over a row of bushland to the ocean...

Miles of beachfront...no one there...bliss.

'City' ideas versus 'Natural' ideas

Found via the blog Something Changed

"Millions of dollars are spent each year at conferences that people attend to be inspired, to learn the latest memes and speak the latest jargon. They stand around in hotel lobbies, drinking bottled water and swapping business cards. They look at what everyone else is doing, and try to figure out how to apply what they see to their own particular endeavor. These conferences lead to what I call “city ideas”. City ideas have to do with a particular moment in time, a scene, a movement, other people’s work, what critics say, or what’s happening in the zeitgeist. City ideas tend to be slick, sexy, smart, and savvy, like the people who live in cities. City ideas are often incremental improvements—small steps forward, usually in response to what your neighbor is doing or what you just read in the paper. City ideas, like cities, are fashionable. But fashions change quickly, so city ideas live and die on short cycles. The opposite of city ideas are “natural ideas”, which account for the big leaps forward and often appear to come from nowhere. These ideas come from nature, solitude, and meditation. They’re less concerned with how the world is, and more with how the world could and should be."

— Jonathan Harris, “Ideas,” World Building in a Crazy World

The Power of Time Off

So as I sit here at a ridiculous time on a Saturday night, oh no make that Sunday morning...I'm thinking about Stefan Sagmeister. Who you ask? Well....

Every seven years, designer Stefan Sagmeister closes his New York studio for a yearlong sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh their creative outlook. He explains the often overlooked value of time off and shows the innovative projects inspired by his time in Bali.

Now unfortunately I can't have a year off just now (and lets assume that Stefan is probably much better paid than any of us working in the arts! ) but this is my hope for my upcoming leave. In 4 days I will on leave from my workplace. In 22 days I will finished my Masters of Arts. In 23 days I will be on sabbatical. A short sabbatical of just over two months, but a sabbatical nonetheless.

Why a sabbatical you ask and just not a holiday or leave? Well you see I'm not really planning on going anywhere. A few trips here and there, a couple or days (ok maybe a week or so up the coast to just, you know, decompress) but the journey I hope to take in not one of many places but rather a mind shift, a time to reflect, re-energise and really to ponder. A search for a new muse perhaps?

Either way I think this time will be an internal journey more so than an opportunity to rack up some frequent flyer points. To quote William Hazlitt,

'The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases'

is it weird I had trouble spelling the word sabBatical?

Here's the Nov/Dec plan...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbatical