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Aussie Expats Update – 15 Months In!
Hello hello world! Well, it’s been a while since I posted about what James and I have been up to—in part because (again) it’s mostly been the boring stuff, like studying/working, eating, training, sleeping… Casual life stuff. That being said, there have been a few cool adventures we’ve been up to lately that are worth sharing. The last weekend in August saw James’s first big endurance event, the three-day Hotter’n Hell Hundred, a mammoth effort across Friday-Sunday which constituted an event each day: a 20km trail ride on Friday, a 160km road ride on Saturday, and a half marathon (21km) on Sunday. Talk about some distance covered! No one will…
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Why We Need to Be ‘Political’ Now
Happy Monday everyone, I can hear the cheers, the crowd’s going wild because—yes!—after far too long, the interminable Quiet on the Australian Front is being broken by a blog post: huzzah! So welcome back to another iteration of Deep Monday everyone. Now, this today’s thoughts were prompted by a Facebook post shared by fantasy writer Isobelle Carmody over the weekend which really resonated with me (the link is here, if you’d like to take a look at it). Then, of course, I didn’t save it, so while trying to figure out where I saw it, I headed to faithful Google, and happened to stumble across this article too, which is…
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Same Sex Marriage in Australia
Welcome back to Deep Mondays everyone! Now, it seems kind of ridiculous that this even qualifies to be a Deep Monday post, because it’s a remarkably simple concept. Currently, Australia—as one of the only western nations in the world in which same sex marriage (SSM) is not legal—is organising a postal ballot in order to have people vote on whether they want to legalise SSM. The reason that this shouldn’t actually qualify as a ‘Deep Monday’ post is because the answer seems—to me, and to a lot of other people—incredibly simple. In fact, that’s part of what makes writing this blog post kind of difficult, because when the solution to…
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Developing Mental Toughness as an Athlete
Happy Friday everyone! For someone who actually spends a lot of time training in different forms, I never really talk about training on here… I mean, I spend more time in the gym than I do writing, so surely it deserves some airtime?! Anyway, I’m remedying that today and talking about something that’s been on my mind in the gym lately and which, while it might seem training-specific, is actually very easily translated to other areas of life as well. So today I want to talk about mental toughness. But what is mental toughness, and how do I get it? How do you, if that’s your goal as well? Mental toughness is…
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Discovering My Own Novel
Happy Friday world! It reached about 1030 today and I realised that I hadn’t put together a blog post for the week: thank goodness for ‘to do’ lists! I’ve also been somewhat distracted from all material and worldly things while observing the strange contortions of a mammoth grasshopper who I think might be stuck in my study window (don’t worry, as soon as this is done, I’ll see if there’s some way he can be rescued). Anyway! I’ve been really enjoying some free writing adventures this week which have been taking me in weird directions, but I wanted to chat about my novel: gasp, shock, horror: the unspoken of for…
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Finding Your Meaning
Welcome to the end of another week friends! I’ve been flat out with uni this week (and done some training sessions designed by James’s coach–or by me, why do I do this to myself?–that have wiped me out), and realised at an inconvenient moment this morning that I had nothing ready for this blog. Noooooooo! But pressure makes diamonds and I’ve been wanting to talk about this topic for a while now, which is how we, as human beings and regardless of what our chosen or inspired purpose is, find our meaning for keeping on. As I have mentioned in the past, it is easy to become creatively disheartened, whether…
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Aussie Expats Update – White Water Rafting Adventures!
Helllloooo again friends! Well, we’re back in sunny (and hot!) Oklahoma again, settled back into the day to day routine of life here. We arrived home on Monday afternoon after two very long days of driving, having hit about 4500 miles (~7200km) for the trip total, and the rest of this week has been a messy throwing together of a million things that need to be done (and a great number that still haven’t yet been ticked off the list!), like washing and ironing and grocery shopping… And uni. Mostly a lot of uni. And training, because I foolishly decided to do James’s program on Wednesday afternoon and I thought…
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Aussie Expats Update – The Dakotas, Montana and Idaho!
Helloooo from Idaho my friends! Well, we’ve got a leisurely day today, as this is our second of two nights in Idaho Falls, which means our biggest commitment today is… Well, nothing really. Hurray! It’s been a massive week since we left Lawton on Saturday morning, so if you’re here for a ‘what have the expats been doing?’ update, please strap yourself in for plenty of adventuring and lots of photos. I’ve thrown in a Google Maps screen capture of our travel to rafting (our final legs to Boise and then Stanley are on the cards for tomorrow and Sunday!) to show everyone just how far the adventurers are going.…
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Aussie Expats Update – Baseball Games, Shooting Stuff and A New Adventure!
Happy Friday world! Well, we head off for our newest epic journey (ok two weeks is maybe not THAT epic, but we’re pretty awesome and we’re going to tick off a few things as we go) tomorrow morning and I am pumped! We’ve had some wonderful adventures recently, so I actually have something fun to share: phew! Monday before last saw us dressing in people clothes (no uniform for James and out of tracksuit pants for me) to attend a luncheon held by LifeTroops, an Oklahoma faith-based outreach program designed to help service members during their healing from military traumas. There, we had the chance to meet MAJ Andy Cullen…
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Do Autistic Children Belong in Mainstream Classrooms?
Welcome! Welcome one and all to another Deep Monday post! If you’re not an Australian, you’re probably reading the title of this blog post and are a bit confused about where this is coming from. On the other hand, if you’re an Aussie, you’re probably unfortunate enough to know exactly who Senator Pauline Hanson is; and if that’s the case, then you’ve likely heard precisely what Senator Hanson thinks about the integration of children with autism into mainstream schools. I’ll admit that it’s a weird way to start the week, but hey, what are Deep Mondays for?! So we’re going to talk about this! Before we get onto the meat…
