With Geoff as a teacher and now me as a mum/working from home, we finally have a long summer holiday that overlaps. Claire is grunting away in her cot where I hope she will make it to 11am. Geoff is on his ipad playing some kind of game and drinking an enormous coffee. I am in the study, moseying about on the computer with my empty cup beside me after an excellent sleep-in where I was out about as cold as you can get. I love lazy mornings.

Later this month we are going away for four days for our first ‘family holiday’. I let myself be controlled by my spend thrift, tight ass brain and it nearly didn’t happen. We need to make these memories.

Some of my fondest memories are of family holidays, some of them are bitter and akin to gale force winds while camping with wombats shoving their faces and bums at you through a tent, all out wars over board games and endless maths homework in the retro’est of shacks with the worst weather while being sick. But most of them are of togetherness, fun, family, seeing new places and trying new things. Of climbing the Pinnacle in the Grampians. Of hiking up the top of a mountain in the Flinders ranges – just me and dad, of lying on the beach in Mallacoota scouring the paper to see if I’d made it in for a study score over 40, of canasta and 500, of tenting with Laura while the rest of the family were in a caravan, of lazy afternoons reading on the beach, icecream in Sorrento, walking the back-beach in Rye, damper and campfires and marshmallows and bagpipes in the middle of nowhere, of walks by myself in early morning up lonely hills, roadtrips with time passing games, and card game after board game after card game.

My family did holidays real good. I’d like to do the same.

 

Holidays Life

I have been reading Richard Rohr’s book on Advent: Preparing for Christmas. My commitment to reading it daily is atrocious. In it he references (after having done a bit more research) Carl Jung, where he talks about Knowing Jesus rather than Believing in Jesus.

Believing in Jesus is (holding this lightly) is somewhat conceptual. Knowing is more concrete and in essence requires so much more of us.

Not to get too hung up on semantics, but I do find this a helpful way of looking at things. It strips away some of the intangible ambiguity and draws you into a place of action over thought. Something terribly important for someone who spends a lot of time in their head where concepts can be thrashed to billions and the whole thing shattered. Knowing carries implications for solidifying how living this life is something we can join in with and not something out of reach.

Christianity Holidays

Holidays Life Photography

As you would know (if you read this blog – despite the fact that I seem to post quite infrequently) I am working at Blick Creative full time as a designer. This post is mostly to mark how much I am enjoying it, despite this week being a lot of simply learning the ropes. The people are great, the studio is lovely and the work is varied and fun. In terms of it being a Saturday, it appears the slightly earlier start (and probably the happy-stress of newness) has caught up with me and I am quite exhausted. It will be lovely to get into a proper routine.

Geoff and I were talking the other day about how since we got married 2 and a half years ago we have:

  • Lived in three different houses
  • Moved from the East to the North (of Melbourne)
  • Geoff has had 3 jobs (Including a career change)
  • I have had 3 jobs (plus freelancing)
  • I have completed my uni degree
  • Geoff has been on teaching intensive and has also done some additional study at Tabor
  • Two family weddings
  • Two family funerals
  • Overseas trip to the Solomons
  • Three churches (YVV, Ranges, Missio Dei)

Not all these things have been bad, infact on the whole they’ve been a step in a direction toward the better. But we are fairly tired and are both looking forward to some kind of vague stability for a while.

So here we are. Perhaps we’ll have a holiday in New Zealand later in the year, but besides that we’re probably staying put even if you try to drag us. Lets think about actually living for a while.

Culture Design Experiments Holidays Life Solomon Islands Work

It’s peculiar coming to the end of a year – a year I have yet to really reflect on – and not really knowing what next year holds in terms of work or friends or what living in a completely different part of Melbourne looks like. I don’t dislike the changes but I do prefer things to have a bit more of a lid on them. I’m not so comfortable in limbo land.

For Christmas Geoff bought me From Sometimes which is a conceptual book of postcards. I am inspired to find a mechanism to write down small things.

I truly love the new Imogen Heap CD Ellipse. Here is a youtube clip of ‘Wait it Out‘, do listen.

Books Holidays Life Music Words