Any ordinary day brings happiness

Here I sit on a Sunday morning, drinking my coffee and reading a book – Any Ordinary Day. Blindsides, resilience and what happens after the worst day of your life by Leigh Sales.

I’m feeling intense happiness – it’s not hot (finally – we’ve had the hottest summer on record) and I can feel a touch of cooler air on my skin. The butcher birds and magpies are celebrating the day. That’s all it takes to make me happy.

And it’s just that – finding happiness in the smallest of things; that happiness is not a goal – I’ve just read a discussion of this subject in Leigh Sales’ book and it has struck enough of a chord for me to write about the subject (yet again).

I’m really enjoying Any Ordinary Day. Leigh Sales is a highly respected journalist with the ABC, yet what we’ve got here is not ‘journalistic’ at all. It’s a book written in a very open, honest and personal voice. Being a journalist myself, however, I’m really liking the peek into her personal thoughts about her work.

But more than that, it’s a book that looks at people who have suffered the most extraodinary traumatic events in their life, and how they have come out at the other end. Leigh Sales interviewed people we’ve all seen on our televisions, wondering how on earth they emotionally and psychologically survive, how they get through their days – Walter Mikac (Port Arthur massacre), Stuart Diver (Thredbo landslide), Louisa Hope (Lindt Cafe) are just three of them. She talked to professionals who helped these people – policemen, counsellors, a coroner.

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Craft for the Soul Chapter 2: mornings

“Some people open their eyes in the morning, groan and put the pillow over their head. They are not very zesty. They are cosy-toed. They are not ready to welcome the day.”

This is the first paragraph in chapter two of Pip Lincolne’s book Craft for the Soul. And it is talking about me.

Which is why this chapter, titled Wake up and improve! also makes me groan.

Put very succinctly, it extols the benefits of getting up early and having a morning routine.

I get it. I WANT to be one of the zesty morning people and love mornings, like Pip. Just like I WANT to love exercising, and I WANT to love gardening. But I’m just not a morning person, and I’m not sure I want to try not being not a morning person! I love my bed. And I never get enough sleep – there’s this slight problem with insomnia I have.

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Taking stock: It’s catch-up time

Making :  A plain length of white knit. The local police have asked the community to help them create Australia’s biggest white ribbon – more than 2 kilometres worth, to be  exact. The idea is to get people talking about domestic violence. Once finished, the ribbon will be made into blankets to give to women and children affected by domestic violence.

Cooking : This week – NOTHING. I have been so overloaded and under stress (good stress and not-so-good stress) that I chose to lighten the load by taking it easy this past week and eat easy ready-made meals.

Drinking : Cafe au lait, in bed!

Reading: Lambs of God by Marele Day. I chose this book for our current book club read. It’s an Australian literary novel (my fave genre), published in 1997. I’m LOVING it. It’s about three nuns lost from the world in seclusion on an island. It’s quirky, it’s lush, it’s sensual – and there’s LOTS of knitting and fairy tales. Win.

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On creativity and ‘finding happiness’

Lying in bed one cold morning, keeping warm and being cosy-toed (I thank Pip Lincolne for that term – it’s perfect and one I have co-opted for myself), I was gazing at my bedroom bookcase, as I do. It gives me happiness. Often. In it are many, many books I have bought or been given but have not yet read.

Quite a few of them are books on creativity, and this particular morning, feeling cozy and homey, it was Craft for the Soul that caught my eye. Written by Pip Lincolne of Meet me at Mikes, the tagline of the book is “how to get the most out of your creative life”.

Pip is one of my favourite bloggers – there’s lots of crocheting and other crafty things to attempt on her blog. It’s a comfortable place to be, like sitting at a kitchen table with a friend gossiping over coffee.

Craft for the Soul by Pip Lincolne

 

I bought this book two years ago, and like most books on creativity, I never worked right they way through it – I’ve dabbled here and there. I don’t know why – yes, it has exercises in it, but nothing like The Artist’s Way or Fearless Creating which require actual work.

So, I am restarting my goal (and I am committed this time) to work through all of the books on creativity I have on my shelves but have never worked through, starting with Craft for the Soul.

It’s a gorgeous book to look at – each chapter has at least one recipe – not fancy ones, but nice homey ones. There are inspiring quotes by herself and others scattered throughout, and at the end there is a bunch of crafty projects to try out.

Happiness – where does it come from?

The first chapter of Pip’s book is titled Have nice times, and is essentially about happiness and how it has become a “fairly lofty aspiration”. (It also has a recipe for raspberry and coconut tarts in it – YUM!)

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Singing exams: a new musical adventure

My ‘rehearsal area’ at home

Boy, the things life throws at you.

It’s been the most stressful three or four weeks that I’ve had in a long while – with a lot of stuff coming at me from left field, suddenly and without warning. A lot of “where did THAT come from?” Some of it life changing (workwise) but when and what will happen is anybody’s guess. Another cancer scare (to find out I’m all good – 10 years cancer free and no recurrence but shit, it was terrifying there again for a while). Some outright bizarre stuff, and some good stuff.

One in the good list is where I’m going with singing.

A couple of lessons ago, my teacher threw this one at me. “You’re going to start doing exams and entering eisteddfods.”

I’m WHAT now?! Bring on the beta blockers. Singing in a choir is one thing – surrounded by others, the focus isn’t on you. You can hide the occasional running out of breath moments. Singing solo, that’s a horse of a different colour.

I’m beginning at AMEB (Australian Music Examinations Board) grade five and I’m doing classical voice. Vocally, that’s easy enough. But my musicianship is rusty. I did grade five musicianship at year 10 (many decades ago now) and haven’t studied it since, except for a brief semester at uni.

Actually am excited by it. I am grateful my teacher thinks I am capable enough – she says I have the perfect timbre for a classical repertoire. I’m looking it at an opportunity not to miss – if I don’t I KNOW I’ll regret it further on down the track.

When I was going through chemotherapy 10 years ago, I remember sitting in an audience at a concert, glowing bright red, thanks to the drugs, and wearing a hideously itchy wig. The concert was given by a couple from Armidale – a woman who plays recorders, and a man who makes his owned stringed instruments, both heavily involved in the music department of the university.

I went home from that concert writhing in existential angst, feeling my mortality and despairing that I had squandered my musical talent. That should have been me, I thought, if I had done things right. I could have had a life of living and working music.

Curiously, one of the songs I will be preparing is so apt it gives me chills. Ralph Vaughan William’s The Sky Above the Roof is a hauntingly melancholy song, and the final few lines are perfect.

Why dost thy weep, o heart, poured out in tears?

What hast thou done, o heart, with thy lost years?

Listen … it’s beautiful …

So, yes, it’s a journey of many years to come. I hope you allow me to share my progress, and enjoy the ride with me!

2018, the year of the voice

Illuminated musical manuscript
Illuminated musical manuscript

At the turn of the new year, I did my usual wrapping up of the year just gone and goal setting for the year to come. My word for the year, I discovered, was ‘organise’ (that’s a post for another day).

But it isn’t, apparently. What has become abundantly apparent is that this year is ALL about singing.

For a few years I’ve been on on-again, off-again member of a local choir, where I sing tenor with the blokes (there’s always a lack of tenors). At the end of the last year, I decided I want to take up singing lessons again with a teacher I had some years prior, briefly. Just for the hell of it.

That has changed everything.

Firstly, it means recovering my contralto voice. Constantly singing tenor has done me no favours at all, and now it is work to get my voice back. But it is a joy, too … “I’m THRILLED with what is happening with your voice,” my teacher said at the end of last week’s lesson, as she hugged me.

Currently I’m working on Bois Epais, a simple 17th century piece by Jean-Baptiste Lully. It’s hard enough getting used to singing contralto again, but to it in FRENCH? Mon dieu! I was always useless at French. My pronunciation is disgraceful. I have no idea. And this is such a simple song.

When I started having lessons again, my teacher promptly asked me to join her Monday Madrigals choir singing, guess what, madrigals. Joy! I love that stuff. At first I thought it would be difficult as I struggle to get out to rehearsal with my first choir once a week, let alone two. But it turns out that’s only once a month, so it’s doable.

The first choir is joining with two other local choirs to sing as a big massed choir for our two-yearly winter festival this year. We are singing the Schubert Mass in G and Vivaldi’s Gloria, among other things. Now, this first choir is flat chat getting ready for our annual concert to be held in April. The massed choir event is in June. The other two choirs who will be joining us have been working on these pieces … we haven’t. We are going to be woefully unprepared. It’s a lot of work.

So I decided I will have to join one of the other choirs as well (the one my singing teacher just happens to be the musical director of) so I can actually learn and rehearse these pieces. That means a second night out during each week.

First choir musical director is not happy I have requested to be moved back to alto.

C’est la vie.

Meditating at Black Head Beach, and new beginnings

Black Head Surf Club
Our view, meditating inside the Black Head Surf Club

Yes, I am making another attempt at reprising my poor neglected blog. I have exciting changes to make to it in the very near future, but until then …

I have a friend (I know, shocking, right?!) We’ll call her Bee. Bee has been hounding me to start blogging again. To get the words out there. To think creatively and to just plonk down my thoughts. I’ve been resisting … the last thing I want to do, I thought, after a day at work sitting at the computer writing stories to go on our mastheads’ websites, is to come home, sit down at the computer and do more writing to go online.

Last week I decided I might want to get back to it after doing my end-of-month goal check-in and reading something I wrote at the beginning of the year about creativity. I had that urge, again, to start reading the collection of ‘creativity’ books I have (mostly unread, the others partly read, none of them finished) and blog about working through them. I felt a frisson of excitement, thinking about doing it once again.

External discipline leads to internal freedom.

Yesterday I decided to do it NOW, after a day spent with Bee at a one day meditation retreat spent in noble silence and doing guerilla walking meditation at Black Head Beach (along with a lot of formal practice). During the day, our teacher, Sharn Rocco of Mindful Works,  talked about The Artists Way, by Julia Cameron – an old classic that nearly everyone has picked up or heard of at some time. I’ve picked it up many times. And I’ve never finished it. She talked about incorporating artists dates and morning pages into mindfulness practice. What a brilliant idea, I thought.

So hence my thoughts coalescing into an actual action. I may or may not pick up and read and work through all of these creativity books I have. I do hope to, though. I will also share thoughts and experiences about meditation and mindfulness practice (or the battle to establish one, which has been taking many years). I’ll also talk about singing a lot, I’m predicting, as this year has unintentionally turned out to be ALL about that.

So … hello again, interwebs.

May all of my non-existent readers be happy.

Namaste.

 

An exploration of creativity

There’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while (say, a year or so!) and I’m finally committing myself to getting around to it – starting a series of posts on creativity. Specifically on creativity books.

I’ve amassed quite a collection over the years and, I am ashamed to say, have never finished working through any of them. One of them I haven’t even started reading.

Why now? Two reasons. One is that this blog is badly neglected. Two posts back I wrote ‘Perspectives of an Australian regional journalist’. I had to – it was a uni assignment for my post-cadet journalism course. I even included a photo of myself (again, only because I HAD to) in all my chubbiness. Even though it was a uni assignment, it felt good to post again, and of course, I’d been ‘meaning to get around to it’ for a long time.

Then I posted the planner post, which felt to me kind of like a non-post. Making the video was fun and I’ll definitely do more, but I’m also wanting to be authentic on here, explore, find community, and grow. The way things used to be in my blogging world, all those years ago.

The other reason is a fascinating chat I had with a friend last week on creativity, blockage and manifesting things.

My friend is an artist. She paints gorgeous whimsical illustrations. You can see her work at www.sharninormal.com. She hasn’t done anything for a while and I asked her why. So we ended up talking about blockages, which bought to mind the creativity books I had sitting around.

Blockages – let’s face it. When it comes to creativity, we all have them. I have them up the whazoo. Most of them limiting self-beliefs. Like labels – I am no artist. I would feel a fraud to call myself an artist. It’s only the last two years I’ve felt comfortable calling myself a writer – and that’s only because I’m legitimately being paid for legitimately writing, even if it is ‘just’ journalism. I love the job, and people appear to enjoy my feature stories, but it’s not easy.

I remember going through years of existential angst and a yearning to create, but not knowing how or what to create. That was over a decade ago. That horrible hunger has gone entirely, perhaps because I am writing on a regular basis (again, even if it’s for work). But, in some form, I want it back.

The subject of creativity has always fascinated me. What is it? Where does it come from? How do you get it?! Particularly the ‘how do you get it?’ question. All of my life, I’ve wanted to be a writer. And I’ve always associated that with so-called creative fiction, aka fiction novels. (Isn’t all writing creative? It’s coming out of pure mind no matter whether it’s fictional or not.)

Coaching the Artist Within by Eric Maisel on creativity

One of my oft-uttered phrases is “I don’t have a creative bone in my body”. By this I mean, yes, I can sing, play musical instruments, draw, but it is always someone else’s composition in the first place. I am a good copyist when it comes to drawing, but when it comes to drawing or writing something out of my imagination? Hmm. What I am lacking, really, is imagination. Can you be creative without imagination? Can you grow imagination starting from nothing? So many questions!

 

Hopefully, my journey will answer some of these. I am starting with Eric Maisel’s book “Coaching the Artist Within.”

 

Yes, today I am embarking on a journey. I don’t know where it will end up, but I’m excited and curious to find out where I will visiting and exploring on my odyssey. Maybe I will make friends with fellow-travellers on the way.

One Book July 2016 planner setup

Here I am doing something I’ve been meaning to do for a few years – a planner post. And even including (*gasp*) a video!

Yes, I’m coming out, to those who don’t know it yet, as a planner nerd. I have quite a large collection of ring bound planners and travelers notebooks – I collect them like some girls collect shoes.

You can view the video I made or, alternatively, I’ve provided text and photos below if you don’t wish to watch the video.

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Perspectives of a regional Australian journalist

It is only as a regional journalist that I have become a strong advocate of the importance of community. Yes, I valued community before I was a regional journalist, but through my work I have come to value community, and become involved in it, on a deep and personal level.

I work for a weekly, one-journalist paper (thought  I do job share with another journalist). That one role is responsible for everything editorial. This is where we differ from metropolitan newspapers. A country journalist has to be a versatile all-rounder.

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