Guilty pleasures

This post was first published on 26 June, 2012. One of my all-time favourite quotes is from Bertrand Russell who said: The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. I quote him often to anyone who will listen as a justification for my penchant for not doing very much at all sometimes. It got

Thirty five things that make me happy

This post was inspired by Caitlin Kelly’s posts about all the things that make her happy. I got to thinking: there are ALOT of things that get up my nose (Australian for really annoying) and I am generally quite vocal about them. But I liked the idea of embracing the concept of mindfulness and appreciation,

And so this is 50…

And what have you done? Another year over, and a new one just begun. ~ John Lennon

A month or so ago, I turned 50. I didn’t have a “milestone party”. Instead, I spent it in a beautiful part of Turkey, doing what I love: travelling and taking photographs.

But turning 50 deserves some sort of recognition, applause even. After all, not everyone makes it this far. In some countries, 50 is considered positively ancient because life expectancy and outlook is so poor. But I’ve talked about the lottery of location previously, so won’t belabour that point here.

Western cultures tend to mark 50 as the halfway point of our lives. We are encouraged to think about what we’ve achieved thus far, and what is still on our “bucket list” to check off. Where we’ve succeeded, and where we have failed. Wins and losses. What we still have to look forward to, and what we must leave in the past. So in the sprit of nihilist existential navel gazing a lá Adrian Mole, here is my list of my proudest “have dones” and deepest, darkest “have yet to dos”.

Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain. ~ Jack Kerouac

What’s in a name?

You may or may not have noticed, but it’s been over a year since I blogged here. I haven’t been altogether silent, though. I have written about my travels, and I regularly post photos. But focusing on this blog, well, not so much.

And there are a couple of reasons for this: vulnerability and hubris. And both are inextricably linked.

Being a reasonably popular blogger (and by this, I mean that I don’t have a huge numbers of readers, but those who do subscribe and read tell me they enjoy it), I felt a certain sense of untouchableness (that’s not a word, but it suits the point I’m trying to make). I felt that I could write about things here, namely work things, and be safe because I was being authentic. I thought the public domain was my armour. I was wrong.

I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say, I was in a very bad place work-wise then. I wrote about it as a way to make sense of it all, and also perhaps, as a way to validate what I was experiencing in the public domain. I thought there was safety in posting publicly, but I was wrong. My musings were not perceived that way, and I was silenced shut down*.