Today is blustery and terribly Melbourne-esque. Spring dropped by to say hello and now he has gone away. Christmas is itching and the giant of mental tasks to slow down is hopping around like a jumping jack only ready to bite in frustration. There are books to be read – undecided, tea to be drunk – when there is milk, endless piles of washing and the gory tiredness that comes from dreaming about spending a whole day cleaning up after someone post sorting out your friend’s wedding dress the morning of their wedding – only in my mind. Why is it that date clashes abound this time of year? And days off still demand task after task, necessary or not. I would like to catch up with slowing down. Perhaps I need to learn to run backwards a while?
Category: <span>Life</span>
“You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
I’ve been wondering a little about why I haven’t blogged lately, nor even felt the true compulsion to get at it. I’ve lost my rhythm and my routine was royally screwed this past year so it’s no great surprise. Mr Fitzgerald has said it quite nicely. The bulk of the starkness (and patronisingly easy image/music posts) is that I don’t feel like I have very much to say. This of course is probably wrong when I really assess things…
What I haven’t said is…
Lots about work. It’s tricky you know, because I do work on some quite interesting stuff but I can’t really talk about specifics online. Work needs to get seen by the client first. Fortunately the folio, long overdue for a refresh is in the works of a facelift which shall include more work and possibly some of what I’ve done. In general terms some of the exciting/sometimes intimidating stuff I’ve done includes:
- Full building signage, we’re talking large format, stuff I haven’t really done before and it came up pretty well (not a sign, like a whole building wrap and frosted glass areas etc)!
- An exhibition stand. More large format, and a tricky client topic. It amuses me no end this client, it really does.
- Web. Doing more of web has further encouraged the little burn of happiness that comes when the code just works and your <divs> can magically make a structure as fast as you can type. I have also learnt much about Adobe Business Catalyst, which is a CMS/eCommerce solution > not always the solution but is pretty darn nifty. Lets just hope they keep developing it further.
I have loved being part of a small workplace where I can have interesting conversations, am treated (although I am technically a junior designer) as an equal where my input is valued and where I genuinely enjoy the company of the people I work with. We also play Triple J, Indie/Folk, The Smiths (a lot) and have MegaMix Fridays. There is the additional bonus of being within throwing distance of a superb cafe, props to Pat and Toby throughout the week and the Monday guy/girl team (I’ll get around to asking names).
I have said something about how the first two and a half months of full time work left me wrecked and incapable of normal function most evenings. Good news is that I’m getting used to it.
I haven’t said much about Missio Dei, and the community of new friends, the openness, the great food, girls group and the inspiring people who encourage me to live a better life… and join with me in making that happen.
and I haven’t said much about theology and God lately. This is not due to the fact (upon initial suspicion – my own) that I am thinking less about that stuff or am ‘less into that stuff’ etc. – however you might put it. But more that I have come to the conclusion (or rather the inkling) that God is teaching me in a different way at the moment and it’s more to do with my living than with my head. This is indeed a good thing although a monster to deal with at times. How to communicate that just yet, I’m not quite sure. Perhaps I will have to have a little think…
On the same lines as Missio etc and even theology/God/life stuff we have talked a fair bit (we had a camp you see) about the Enneagram, as many of may know I’m a bit mad keen on anything personality and so I jumped at it (and I am going to talk about it because I find it interesting)… Interestingly the Enneagram has actually genuinely helped me recognise certain responses in myself that are very ‘oneish’ and not always positive, and consequently I can change my response or attitude. Steve asked (I think… I could have this totally wrong) way back if I – as a one, clenched my jaw a lot – I said no at the time, but it’s currently freaking me out how much I am catching myself doing it, as a natural physical response I never really noticed to indicate something such as stress or the glorious ‘internal critic’. There’s something for you to chew on if you’re interested in blackboards, about as interesting as chalk – still, very helpful. I don’t think I really fully ‘get it’ yet in regards to helping me connect better with God – but I reckon we’re getting there slowly.
Love books, still do, always have. Bookclub is going great guns, we’re up to our 13th book – I think and have a regular tribe reading the Popular Penguins. We’ve had two engagements (Ana to Blake, Amanda to Tim) and there’s a baby on the way for lovely Cat. Currently we are lacking in the boy department and are working hard (if you’re reading this Norman) to get Norman back and suss out any prospectives. Harsh but true, most of the guys we all know don’t seem to be so inclined to read a book (even in the likes of Dracula or In Cold Blood) and discuss it with great food and wine. Society lacks. Society lacks.
And friends. It has been interesting looking at the past year and what our move North has done to friendships. Proximity is a grand thing. Thankfully many of our friends are above and beyond proximity or we would be dastardly lonely (apart from the new friends… but yeh, we’re still getting there). I went to a friend’s engagement party the other night and caught up with my lovely housemate (where proximity is a geniune issue and not just because we’re lazy about it)… but it reminded me of all the truly wonderful people I know and the richness of those I know who are encouraging and so distinctly themselves. It is so ridiculously good, seeing so many of my friends truly happy at the moment.
Geoff. He’s the best. Marriage is grand.
and now, I have said something. Throw some curlys my way and I might just say more.
Little tiny precious vote,
underneath my overcoat,
snug and warm against my heart,
you and I will have to part.
I must cast you to the horde,
…With your little wooden sword,
And your hopeful marching song,
Little vote of mine be strong.
Should our happy cause be dashed,
And your wooden sword be smashed,
Come back, dear beloved vote,
Dream inside my overcoat.-Leunig
Charming, we have to vote tomorrow, what a pathetic election.
I will consider leaving the country if a certain individual ousts the current situation – not that I’m a particularly strong fan of the current situation, infact I dare say my vote will be elsewhere altogether.
Despite all of the marvelous design specific publications out there, I find myself consistently drawn to a little Victorian publication about fresh Australian writing. Harvest is excellent. It is varied, it is pretty, it is emotive and contains some truly brilliant work and some rather nice illustration. I took Harvest on the train with me to work the other morning and read it with my window seat. The first article was an opinion piece, which you can kindly read here: To Our Generation of Precious Snowflakes and it made me stop. I was struck by either brilliant personal recognition or absolute horror and I couldn’t work it out. It forced me to think about life and about blogging and about youth/my peers.
The opinion piece addresses the thoughts of writer Ted Genoways.
At the same time, young writers will have to swear off navel-gazing in favor of an outward glance onto a wrecked and lovely world worthy and in need of the attention of intelligent, sensitive writers.
By way of overview – this is the opinion piece:
Pardon us for filtering out the unimaginable suffering we watch on live broadcasts with a sickening compulsion and can replay on YouTube. In the chasm between vacuous celebrity and the realities of insidious fundamentalism, perhaps it is only our own lives, logged hourly and picked over, that we can clutch on to for purpose, meaning and creative inspiration, in order to tune out the loud, fast world.
For now, might we be excused our navel gazing? When you have seen men glide down from burning towers on slipstreams of hate, perhaps it’s not too big a leap to conclude that one’s navel is the only safe place to be looking.
And to dear Ted, we are the wrecked and lovely world. It’s there in our writing if you can bring yourself to read it, and while it may not be ‘sterling’ enough for you, it’s as real as the Iraq war, and often as heartbreaking.
I find that I am struggling to hold my intense introverted and internal methods living and processing – my narcissism, with the outward looking life I desire to have. Perhaps this is why this article plucked deep hurt on the strings of my soul.
From letter 89 by Tolkien:
“…I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of truth…. It perceives– if the story has literary ‘truth’ –that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest fairy story– and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love…”
Cannot we find some way to correlate our local and personal sorrow and experiences of living with the greater sorrow of this world, to lean on eucatastrophe and hope – wait and live that reconciliation of the overlapping now but not yet.
There is another response (in a more literary sense) to the Harvest piece here: A response to harvest.