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Unplanned Escapades on The West Coast-Our Second Leg
I feel like ‘unplanned escapades’ really characterises pretty much all of the second leg of our mammoth West Coast road trip. Mammoth seems appropriate: as you can see in the photo below, we got in a lot in the second week: we calculated that we drove for about 100 hours total over a 2 week period. Newsflash: that is too much. Even after being home for about three days, late last week we were only just recovering from the trauma (emotionally: our bodies were still wrecked). In fact, our everything was out of kilter and I’ve been flogging myself to get uni done—hence the ridiculous lateness of this post. Over a…
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Conquering the West Coast: The First Leg!
It’s been so long since I wrote a blog post that I hardly know where to start, but with the opening leg of an awesome West Coast trip seemed a good place! I returned last Monday from a three-week trip to Australia and in a pretty short turn around, James and I set out on Friday for our most recent slew of adventures: to tackle America’s gorgeous West Coast. We’ve got the full fifty (states, that is) firmly in our sights now, and we’re ticking off another three this trip. (It’s four, if you want to be technical, but since we’re visiting Oregon properly in June, I see no reason to…
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Aussie Expats Update – Austin Adventures!
Well, I’m a little late off the mark (my politics essay hasn’t just been calling my name, it’s been shouting it and cursing to boot), but here is a recap about our amazing trip to Austin last week! We’re incredibly lucky to have family in the US and to have the opportunity to catch up with them while we’re living over here. Bill and Laura live in Austin and took care of James during his second half-ironman in October when I was back in Australia; he was so enamoured with the city he insisted that we had to go down for another visit when I was back… and last week…
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Wading Through Grief
One of the most challenging—and daunting—things as a writer is the knowledge that someone, somewhere, at some point, has already dealt with the things that you want to deal with in your writing. And probably done them better (just saying). As with most thinking associated with writing, I find this almost paralysing: what’s the point, then, of continuing to try? What can I, just one individual, bring to an idea or experience that hasn’t already been put into words—or music, or paint, or sculpture—and probably done far better than I could ever hope to do? So, as always, I’ll muddle my way through it and do the best I can.…
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Becoming A Biographer
Happy Friday everyone! It’s definitely easy to say that with a certain spring in your step when the most pressing thing you have on your plate at the moment is napping, reading, and working on some other projects you’ve got lined up… I won’t lie, it’s a pretty good way to live! But, about biography. I first conceived the idea for this blog post some time ago, possibly as far in the past as the middle of 2016, when I first proposed to my grandparents that I write my grandfather’s biography—but I haven’t really had the capacity to complete it. The reason for that is simple: despite having done a…
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Aussie Expats Update – Visits, Scuba-Diving, and a Half-Ironman!
Happy Friday, world! Well, well, well… Here we are again. It has been far too long since I posted on this blog, especially because there have been so many interesting things going on for us lately (well, I think they’re interesting: I’m guessing if you’re reading this blog post, you probably do find our lives at least semi-interesting. Or you really love us, one of the two). Anyway, life has been hectic. The title may be a little misleading—unless you know me, in which case you’re likely suffering under no misapprehensions that I might actually have done any kind of endurance event—but the past two weeks have been absolutely packed…
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Liebster Award!
Hey people, welcome to the middle of the week! We’re halfway there to a pjs all-day kinda day (it constantly impresses me that I don’t just wear pyjamas all day when I don’t need to leave the house. I am an adult.) But, in other news, on Monday I was nominated for the Leibster Award on Monday by the beautiful, hilarious and talented Nicole Evans over at Thoughts Stained With Ink (I’m really hoping that this will, in part, make up for the fact that I’m a non-video-game-playing loser, but it’s also all completely true). Because she’s a superlative human, she nominated me for something called the Liebster Award after she…
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Aussie Expats Update – Fourth of July and Visitors
Welcome back to the weekly update! I’ve been busy studying this week in an attempt to wrap my head around some new ideas and forty-page readings for uni, and have to admit that it’s a lot of work! I’m studying two writing subjects, a political ideology subject and an introductory psychology subject; there’s a bit of variety and some interesting stuff to learn every week. I can only hope that I will get more effective and efficient at the whole business! I’ve also managed to do some work on my novel this week, which is really exciting. I’ve decided to write for at least thirty minutes every day from now…
