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Aussie Expats Update – Settling Back In Again
Hello everyone, and happy US Friday! Well, not surprisingly, I’ve been a little off the grid lately. Between international travel, trying to stay on top of uni (and not doing a suuuuuper great job), spending time with my family, reading some great books (I finally got to books 2 and 3 in the Outlander series, thanks Granmda!), and just taking things as they come, this blog kind of fell off the priority list. But I’m back now and ready to return to posting some vaguely interesting things with some more regality. As of Monday afternoon, I returned to the US, and I’m rapidly settling back into our regular life here…
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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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Writing Writing Writing: Wearing Down the Keys
Happy Monday everyone! Never ones to sit still for long (apparently: this forever-travelling lifestyle is quite a new one for us!), I’m already neck-deep in planning our next adventure in just under a month’s time. Still, I’m also cherishing the chance to enjoy somewhat more lazy days with no study hanging over my head, especially since there are plenty of little ‘to do’ items that I’d like to tick off while I’m on a break. Regardless of everything else, what features highest on my priority list is, of course, writing—which, for the purpose of this list, includes working on editing my behemoth of a novel—and I’m feeling really excited about…
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Where We Create – A Space for Writing
Happy Easter Monday everyone!! I realise that I was a tad slack last week: sometimes blogging falls by the wayside… Mostly because last week I didn’t have anything ready, and I felt a bit wiped out just at the thought of having to put something together. So here I am again, back and loud and proud! Thanks to uni, I recently watched a youtube video of John Cleese presenting a lecture about creativity. It was excellent. Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I’m a big John Cleese fan (thanks for that Dad!). I think he’s hilarious, and as someone for whom humour is not a creative forte, I’m always intrigued…
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Creative Writing Courses
It’s Monday again! I mean, I can be happy about this because I’m currently road-tripping my way through ye olde U-S-of-A (and knowing me, probably drowning in a pile of uni work), but I hope you’re all happy about it too. Especially since you’re reading this post. Yay! Hurray! Read on, brave visitor! So then, enough joviality. To business. The other day, I was scrolling mindlessly through Facebook (as one does when one should be reading, or writing, or studying… or really anything except scrolling mindlessly through Facebook) and stumbled upon a bit of a sales pitch for a writing course. I actually really love the literary page that was…
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Organisation? A ‘Writing Projects’ List
Greetings fellow humans! So I’m a little bit excited about this one, in part because I took a photo and I used glittery golden pen to jazz up my page. I actually didn’t do a great job (the gel pen wasn’t working properly so I’m blaming my tools), but I stuck it up on my wall in front of my desk because ‘look at my artistic skills’ *cough*. And James said it was nice, so there. But anyway. This idea occurred to me while I was lying in bed in early January and realised my notebooks were jam-packed, my digital filing was all over the place, and my head was…
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The Joy of (Re)Discovery
Happy Monday world! I love writing. And I love finding my old writing again (well, love-hate, but definitely a fair splash of love in there). One of the most exciting adventures that I can go on (at least inside my own house) is rediscovering old things. That’s a pretty open-ended statement because I find it really easy to have adventures and get excited about stuff, but I’m fairly confident with rating finding old, forgotten things—depending on what the ‘old things’ are, I mean I’m not advocating for digging up any ancient graves, everyone—as an exhilarating experience. But it’s complex, too. I wandered downstairs a few months ago to put a…
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Aussie Expats Update – The Risks of A Break in the Juggle of Life
Well, here we are starting the second week of January. Yeeeeesh. I’m sure there are a lot of people getting ramped back up again for work, or university, or the countless other things that require our energy and attention. I wish you all luck, but for me, the end of the tunnel is in sight. Well, this immediate tunnel, at least. After my psychology exam next week I’m due for a blissful month off from lectures and assessments, during which I will theoretically achieve monumental goals—like splitting the atom or starting (and finishing) my next manuscript, or becoming a world-famous blogger—and in all likelihood won’t achieve much at all… Other…
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Aussie Expats – A 2016 Recap and The Year Ahead
HELLO EVERYONE!! Well, it wouldn’t be the end of the year without an obligatory ‘look at everything we did’ kind of post, so I’m going to do one, mostly because it wouldn’t be an understatement to say that 2016 was a big year. Mammoth actually. Those always seem to happen when you’re getting ready to put up your feet and tell everyone that ‘last year was huge, we’ll take it down a notch for this one’… Actually, as you go along in life (it seems to me), there’s nothing but big years. And they speed up, until they’re flying past and slipping through your outstretched hands. At least that’s how…
