Palegoldenrod

Having just returned from a few weeks overseas I’m now in the process of nudging my body back into Australian rhythm – a sleeping rhythm that was already out of whack before I went away due to the usual Daylight Savings unsettling and an insane work / fatigue sprint.

I mentioned to a friend that I was working on getting my sleep cycles back into normality and was asked to share some tips. While I’ve let them slip of late, over the last few years I’ve tweaked and adjusted my sleeping habits frequently, trying to ensure get the best natural rest I can. Now I have a few body hacks that I’ve gathered together.

A lot of this is common knowledge. A lot of it I’ve picked up from resources on the web that are long forgotten, and some is just what I’ve found through trial and error. Don’t underestimate the cumulative effect of it all!

Caffeine is bad

If you drink coffee as a habit, part of a routine, it will have some effect on your sleep, even if that habit is just one cup every morning. I drank one every morning and sometimes one late morning, and when I dropped that habit I slept longer and more deeply, falling asleep faster. Friends have noticed this too (and were surprised by it).

If you are a coffee drinker and have trouble sleeping or falling asleep, consider a trial of cutting out caffeine for a while. Be patient! It takes at least a week for your body to get out of the caffeine expectation and a few more weeks for your sleep to settle properly. That time is haaard. You’ll be sleeping poorly but won’t have the support of coffee to wake you in the morning. Be prepared for that and the withdrawals – I’m serious. Headaches, shakes, heart palpitations, sweats, irritability…

You may try to offset them like I did: I replaced my morning coffee with a Berocca, a banana and a significant increase in my water intake through the day to both help with detox and for welbeing.

If you are too attached to coffee to let it go, make sure at least that you never have coffee after midday.

Of course Coke and other energy drinks with caffeine are exactly the same here. Cut them out completely if you can, or considerably reduce them.

And remember: many teas have caffeine too! If you drink a lot of tea, you may want to explore the broader world of tea and experiment with infusions (non-tea-leaf teas, herbal teas) or at least read more about the tea you like so you know its caffeine content.

Light and Circadian Rhythm – unnatural light is bad

The light wavelengths from screens and other electric sources screw with our bodies which need to see softer, redish (sunset-like) wavelengths towards the end of our day to trigger our brains to prepare for sleep, and brighter white lights in the morning to wake us.

There is a lot of literature on light effects on circadian rhythm, so I’ll stop rambling and list a few key points:

• consider using a tool like F.lux to automatically adjust the tint of your screen based on the time of day
• try to get away from your computer screen at least one hour before bed
• if you read (paper) books before bed, try to get a softer, reddish-orange light bulb, but find a balance that doesn’t strain your eyes of course
• if you can’t sleep at night, one of the worse things you can do is fire up that smart phone or computer. It exposes you to the lights that start your brain waking up, rather than sleeping
• if you can, sleep with your blind open so the natural sunlight helps you wake up. If you can’t (or need to wake before sunrise) exposé yourself to bright light when you wake up. In extreme cases, I know that people have had success with eating breakfast with a bright lamp shined directly in their eyes!

Waking up at the same time

To establish a routine (and get the most out of your sleep) it’s more important to wake up consistently at abou the same time than it is to go to sleep at the same time. What you do through the day can affect how tired you are in the evening and when you get sleepy. At night, go to sleep when you get tired – don’t force yourself to stay awake, but try to get up at the same time every day. Of course, if you’re not tired, you should encourage yourself to head to bed at a reasonable time so you can sleep.

For me, once upon a time that was 4.5 hours before dawn (I did that easiy for years). These days it’s more like around 6 hours before dawn, when I wake. I sleep with blinds open so the sun wakes me, and I also have an alarm not too long after sunrise just in case.

But in my experience and some articles I’ve read, a strict waking regime seems to go a lot further inestablishing a routine than a strict bedtime and flexible waking.

Sugar is bad

This may just be me – I’m particularly sensitive to refined sugar. Just like caffeine, the more sugar I cut out of my diet, the better I seem to sleep. I think it has an effect on my energy levels through the day which carries through to the evening. I’d be interested to hear if this is something that you experience too.

Timing your wake up – knowing your sleep cycle

Sleep cycle is generally about 90 minutes, and you usually have about 6 a night. It’s much easier to wake up and feel refreshed at the tail end of a sleep cycle rather than in the middle. For me, I know that I’m very close to that 90 minute block: I can sustain 4.5 hours of sleep for long periods of time, waking naturally with dawn, but waking at dawn after 4 (or 5) hours of sleep would leave me feeling extremely sleep deprived and drained.

Get to know your sleep cycles and how much sleep you need, and try to adjust your waking time to suit – or determine a waking time and calculate backwards to determine your ideal bedtime. Do you need 8 hours sleep? 7.5? 10? Want to wake at 7am? Now you can know when you should hit the sack.

Water or tea before bed

One tool to help me wake on time is to drink tea or water before bed. Personally I enjoy either a chamomile and jasmine tea, or a mug of warm water, or a few glasses of cold water. This does a few things: hydration, of course, and my bladder helping me to wake naturally in the morning (can you tell I’m a huge fan of a natural, alarm-free waking?); if I drink chamomile tea or warm water, this also helps to relax me and make me a bit sleepy.

Waking movement

In yoga and some eastern monastic environments, people are encouraged to sit up almost as soon as they wake. Then to either stand up and stretch or start stretching before they even get out of bed.

The most important thing is sitting up. Commit to waking. Don’t stay lying down, or under warm covers – you’ll just fall asleep again! Sit up and stretch, or better yet, get up and out of bed soon after waking. Stretch your body slowly at first. Wake up each of your muscles gently.

Getting into a morning routine of yoga or some other exercise (jogging, star jumps, whatever) can be really helpful to wake you up first thing and get your day started.

Your bed (and bedroom) is for sleeping

Don’t study on your bed. Don’t lay on your bed to do anything else. If you can help it, don’t use your bedroom for anything except sleeping (or… ahem… bedroom activities). This is mental association. We want your brain to know that when you think of bed, it should think of sleep.

Exercise routine

I’ve already touched on morning exercise, but your exercise routine in general is an important part of your daily rhythm. For me, a jog at night about two hours before I want to sleep is great. It’s not so late that I’m pumped and unable to wind down and sleep when I want to, and after I’ve cooled down and showered my body is happy and tired which makes it easy for me to fall asleep.

Evening meals

For me, I try to take my evening meal at least four hours before I normally go to bed. If I eat too late I feel bloated and heavy and have trouble getting to sleep.

Learn More

There is a lot of info out there, just Google it. To draw your attention to one particularly useful article though, check out this one from Lifehacker: How to reboot your sleep cycle and get the rest you deserve.

Above all, be gentle with yourself. If you start adjusting this stuff do it slowly. Try one thing, give it time, and if it doesn’t work then abandon it and try something else. Don’t try to force your body into something that it can’t do. Listen to your body, and of course talk to your doctor if you have serious sleeping problems – there are a bunch of medical reasons for poor sleep, none of which will be helped by any of the above!

Well I think that’s it. I hope you found it useful. If you have any other tips or tricks with sleep, let me know

On my walk to work this morning I saw a young man on office attire sitting on some steps near the Arts Centre, back from the path a little. Quite still, leant forward, elbows on knees, face lowered and trailing tears. Not more than ten metres away the endless throng of morning pedestrians surged along the path, throwing occasional glances at him but continuing on, detached.

I walked over, put down my backpack, knelt in front of him and gently asked if he was ok. He raised his eyes to me, and blinked. I touched the top of his hand gently and ask again, “Are you ok? Is there anything I can help you with? Can I get you some water?”

He blinked again. “No… no. I’m fine,” he croaked, putting his hand on mine and giving it a gentle squeeze. “Thank you. Thank you for asking”.

“Are you sure? I can sit here a while if you like.”

He shook his head slowly and smiled a little, dismissively, I thought. “Thank you. I’m ok.”

I nod. “I hope everything is ok.” I give his hand a squeeze, pick up my bag and continue my walk. I turned back to see him looking after me, hundreds of anonymous faces hurrying around me, past him. A heartbeat’s time before I disappear into that crowd.

I hope he’ll be ok.

If I could make the world as pure and strange as what I see

I’d put you in the mirror

I put in front of me

I put in front of me.

Linger on, your pale blue eyes.

Linger on, your pale blue eyes.

Pale Blue Eyes, Velvet Underground

I don’t know. I’m just digging this song this afternoon. nods to self

I finally posted again on Kleene Code! Poor neglected old blog…. pats it fondly

Here’s the gist (not my best writing, but hey… I’m working on two hours sleep here, all my fault):

“Last week I had the pleasure of attending Web Directions South in Sydney – a conference I’d long heard about but had never had the chance (and good timing) to attend until this year. There were many great presentations there and the one I’d like to introduce you to first is by one brilliant Dmitry Baranovskiy. Dmitry built a javascript library called Raphael which essentially provides a lightweight, cohesive solution for vector graphics across browsers from IE6 onwards, including iPhone and iPad.

Why do you care? So. Many. Reasons.”

http://www.kleenecode.net/2010/10/20/raphaeljs/

I woke up very early this morning to find a lovely email from a friend of mine with nothing but this link. D’awwww.

The Benson Campaign – Something About You

I just wanted to share it with you all because it made me smile, and I heart you guys. ^_^

<3

A stranger. We sit on rocks on the beach in that odd part of night where the moon looks surreal and everything seems made of quicksilver. The air is crisp. It’s been raining and my nostrils are full of the smells of sand and ocean and freshness. My mind is full of everything and nothing.

Toby gently finger-picks his guitar as he talks.

“For music it’s easier sometimes… It can be a memory that brings it out. But you have to be careful with the blues because the memory is most likely a sad one. You need to make sure it’s from the right place, you know.”

He pauses to let the guitar come through. This has been the last few hours of my life: conversation over guitar tinkering, punctuated by those pauses… to listen to the music. To reflect. To gather one’s thoughts. We don’t know each other but this seems to come naturally to us both and I’m glad – it’s been a while since I’ve been so comfortably quiet in someone’s company. There are a very few people I know in Melbourne who would enjoy company in silence (mostly male, I observe wryly) but even then some situations would suit it more than others and those well suited seem rare occurrences these days.

“It can’t come from a place that’s too intense – from a place where you died a little. Well, you can’t sing or play that. That’s passion dying, that is, when you feel that part of you die… You’re lost if your passion dies. No, it needs to come from that other place.”

He’s talking mostly to himself. Musing aloud. His speech is relaxed – he’s in no hurry. There’s time. I used to be like that, I thought. Smooth, chilled mind. Or it could just be part of the New Orleans accent that I’ve not grown used to. Or it could be the touch of herb in that smoke hanging off his lip. I grin quietly to myself.

“A person needs to have that place, you know,” he said slowly, letting each phrase hang there for a moment before carrying on. “Where your feet touch the ground, but don’t at the same time… Where the music comes from… Where the feeling comes from.”

I nod and accompany his playing with a quiet and unamazing harmony on the mandolin. This sort of talk doesn’t come easily to everyone, making it even more remarkable that this conversation was taking place.

“You know the place I’m talking about. You seem the kind of person who knows it.”

His hat hides his face from the moonlight, but I can feel his eyes are on me. The guitar is a counterpoint to the waves gently running up the sand a few metres from us. I look out at the play of light on the water, threads of my mind turning over different thoughts, memories, feelings and senses. Yes, I know the place you’re talking about. I used to live it, and now my fingers brush against the outside every now and then. I say nothing. I don’t feel like I need to.

“You think you’re lost, don’t you?” Toby says finally. “A lost soul. You can’t find what you’re looking for.”

He stares at me for a long while before returning his gaze to the ocean and changing the tune he’s playing. He falls silent again and I realise my fingers have halted lightly on the strings.

I wonder how someone I barely know can have read me so well. Maybe I haven’t had enough one-on-one “real” conversations with people on my wavelength lately. Too many crowded bar conversations, too much social media, too much whiskey. Too much time with erratic minds in erratic states. Too much haze. Not enough clarity. To much rush. Not enough calm. Not enough space. Too affected by what’s around me rather than maintaining equilibrium as I once could.

“That’s why you keep on that phone of yours, now, I think, ” he interrupts my tumbling thoughts, referring to my habit of checking my phone and playing with twitter. Earlier in the evening he’d taken my phone away from me in an attempt to get me to pay more attention to him – I’d zoned out a few times in conversation. “Are you looking for it there? I can tell you it’s not there.”

His posture settles back a little, a sign he’s not likely to speak again for a while. His fingers go on caressing the strings.

“I’m not even sure I know what it is,” I murmur, admiring the crescent moon and rejoining the music-making. Even as I say it I know it’s not entirely true. Home. That feeling of Home. I’d had it in the arms of someone I love and in the company of some very few close friends who are in step with me. I’d had it in short stretches and for certain experiences during and since travelling. I see glimpses of it in some places in my life that have yet to play out, parts of my life that hold untested potential for amazing things. I know that Home – that feeling of knowing you’re in the right place, even just for that moment – is part of it for me and that the thought of finding it again (or ever) is something that frequently occupies a thread of my mind.

I wonder then how much that city babble and chaotic energy has affected my once-clear thinking and immediately afterward am forced to acknowledge that much of it is my choosing. I use twitter heavily, compulsively. When I follow someone I think of it as inviting them into my living room. In effect I guess I constantly have about 180 people in my living room talking, venting, whinging, joking, squeeing, being cute and at times vulgar. A constant babble and in some ways with its own social politics baggage that seems, as I think of it, glaringly obvious and equally as unwanted. A far-too-large part of my socialising is at night and involves drinking in a noisy and chaotic environment and while I love my friends I have to admit that I need some friends that are happy to just hang out quietly …

Toby abruptly stops playing and mutters “You don’t know what it is!”. He lays his guitar in the sand, places his fedora on top of it and rolls up his trousers to knee height. He reaches over and gruffly rolls up my trousers in the same fashion as I put the mandolin on the ground. Pulling me to my feet he says it again, shaking his head in disbelief. “You don’t know what it is!?”

He takes my hand and strides down the beach into the icy water until we’re up to our knees. The shock of it brings me fully awake and I gasp. He grabs my shoulders and turns me around to look out over the water at the moon. “You’re not a lost soul, girl,” he says to me then, his voice near my ear. “You just forget how to find the place every now and then, is all.” He gives my shoulders a squeeze and lets go. Behind me I hear him sloshing his way up to the sand again.

I don’t turn around. I’m standing in the ocean – the real ocean with waves, albeit small and gentle – under what is now a mostly clear sky and a crescent moon. I can’t hear anything except the soft wash of the waves. I can feel the sand between my toes. I run my hand through the water and taste the salt on my fingers. Not surreal. Vivid. Solid. Now. I have nowhere else to be, nowhere to rush off to, nothing that needs my attention more than this. I’m here. I look up at the moon.

I’m a human in the ocean under the night sky, feet on the ground.

It dawns on me that in our using twitter and social media in its restricted form to keep our friends in touch in our lives we have (well, I have) started to lose the sense of human contact – something already paled in city life. Compounding that with a habit where our main catchup is an alcohol-fuelled night out, or in a large group… Yes, I thought. I too rarely have proper human contact where I really get to know someone. I want to go spend more time with friends. I want to meet for coffee and talk to a pal for hours about their life and nonsense, or crash on a beanbag with them and explore each others’ music collections, or just go and lie in the park with my head on their shoulder and not say a word…

I want to be able to hug them and take their arm and eagerly say “It’s so great to see your smiling face, my good friend! Tell me all about what you did on your weekend” and have it be news to me. I want to be engaged and focused and able to give them my full attention, without needing to spread myself out over a group. Not distracted by others or alcohol or noise or managing a sluggish brain after a big night.

The hum of Toby’s guitar flows out to me over the sound of the ocean, another interruption to tumbling thoughts. A friend of mine would have called it a mindfulness bell – a reminder to pay attention. I stop thinking about anything other than the information being fed to me by my senses.

Crystallisation.

I take a deep breath and smile at the universe. It’s great to see you, my good friend. I think it’s time we made some changes, don’t you agree?

In keeping with my tradition (interrupted by travel in the last little while), I thought I’d post a blog on ANZAC Day.

This morning I went to the Dawn Service at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. A few days ago I asked a friend of mine if he wanted to come along – he responded that I “know his views on that” (patriotism and war). It gave me pause to think about why I go every year.

Disclaimer: I am not telling you that you should agree with me; I’m not telling you that this is all there is to gain from reflection or attendance on ANZAC day. I’m just telling you how I feel about the day and what I get out of it.

Not why I go

Nationalism has never quite made sense to me, partly because it is usually demonstrated by people that were born into that heritage to begin with. They’ve done nothing to earn their nationality – why be proud of something over which one has no say or no control? You might as well be proud of your race or your eye colour. If anything it would make more sense for a “new” Australian to be proud: they have chosen to be called Australian, with all the good and bad and expectations and responsibilities that come with it (and that’s if they’re lucky enough to be born into a situation that allows them to travel and change their nationality in the first place: many people in the world still can’t leave their country of birth).

In addition to that, a country is essentially a group of people organised under a government. Australians may have an easier time of identifying with that because our borders are pretty much our continent (and haven’t really changed since federation) and we’re essentially a European nation in Asia, so cultures outside our borders are a strong contrast for us.

This is something that has been indirectly reinforced for me during my linguistics studies: there is a saying “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy”. Meaning that the difference between a dialect and a separate language is the establishment of a government to emphasise it, but there is essentially nothing special about that dialect as opposed to those around it. In the same way the separation of people into countries is only by declaration of a government. It’s a division of convenience, of politics.

Humanity has no lines. Lines are division, division causes aggression, aggression causes violence. The world could do with less lines.

Lastly, I don’t believe in war. I don’t believe in the glorification of war. And let me be quite clear here: my opinion on war is not a judgement on people in the military, it’s a wish that there was no need for the military in the first place.

So I don’t go to see that Australian flag waving and get a tear in my eye while honouring our military achievements. I have other reasons I think are important, to me at least.

Why I go

I have never been in a position where my life has been seriously threatened by violence or war. Almost all of my friends have never been in contact with war or military conflict – certainly the only Australian friends I know that have seen it have volunteered to the military for combat roles.

But I know that there have been (and are now) people who have died, willingly or unwillingly through war, like the children in my grandfather’s generation that lied about their age to enlist.

My grandfather faced the Japanese in the Bougainville Campaign – from what I know, he was enlisted from when he was 18 years old and most of his time was spent in Papua New Guinea with the 9th Australian Infantry Battalion. He came back with post traumatic stress and malaria.

He spoke to me about it on occasion. Only pieces – what man wants to tell his granddaughter horrible stories? – but enough for me to know that he lost many friends while under attack. He spoke about the time he spent in hospital in PNG with malaria and some of the men he got to know as they died.

I have a trinket he sent home to my grandmother from there… a small clear pendant with a palm tree etched in the back: a gift carved by a fellow soldier out of a windshield fragment from a downed Japanese plane. Sometimes I look at it and try to imagine how different my grandparents’ life was to mine: thrown into war in the prime of youth; the community losing so many friends, partners, husbands, brothers. Fearing for their own safety and feeling like the world was being torn apart.

When I used to go to the smaller dawn services in Newcastle, NSW I would wander down to the RSL afterwards and buy the local diggers a pint or to and chat to them. I have to admit, I’ve missed that small-town community feel this time around (my first ANZAC day in Melbourne and my first in a big city). Each of the diggers have stories of their own that are interesting, humbling and important to the community.

I go to ANZAC Day be reminded of all this horror, so I can appreciate what others have been through, what others have lost. So I value what I have.

I have been born into a time, place and culture where I have never (and hopefully will never) be put in a position where I will face violent conflict, either because I am told I have to or because I need to defend myself or my community. (There are many other things I appreciate about my life like access to education, free speech, equal rights etc, but I’ll stick to my main thoughts related to ANZAC Day).

When I stand at the Dawn Service I think of those people who have died in all wars on all sides, and I do cry at the thought of how terrible it was for them in their last hours or minutes. I don’t care how or why they got there, whether they were conscripted or bullied or volunteered or had to defend themselves. I see avoidable agony and lonely, terrifying death. I hope that I never have to see it and that our children and grandchildren never have to see it.

If there are restless spirits of soldiers somewhere I hope that it’s enough for them that I’m standing there of my own choice to remember the fallen, their experiences and pain, to appreciate the life I’ve been born into and the peacetime that I am fortunate enough to live in.

So, you see

I am not proud to be Australian. I greatly appreciate that I am lucky enough to be one, and one in the Australia at this point in history.

I am not proud of our military history. I sincerely appreciate that I don’t have to be a part of it.

Being in temp accommodation (sans internet) after my house-hunting trek this morning I dropped into the office to use the net and prep some lease applications among other things.

And then the hail started, followed quickly by the flashflooding. I threw out this video of the view of Elizabeth Street from my office window.

Twitter picked it up and it suddenly ended up everywhere, which was interesting to watch . I’d not really had a chance to see that happen realtime on Twitter before – it’s no wonder there is research on social media in disaster areas and its use as a source of info for emergency workers and the media.

(Here’s another video of Elizabeth St after the waters receded, for comparison).

Knowing there was another storm front coming, and preferring to be in an office with internet and music than at my apartment, I stepped outside to get some food and beer when the water receeded. And I remembered what it was like after every minor incident I’ve experienced: there is energy in the air. That sense of community creeps back in.

Strangers were candidly sharing stories about where they were and what they saw. I saw the same thing years ago after the huge storm in NSW that derailed the train I was on, shut down half of the state, caused multiple fatalities, millions of dollars damage and ultimately beached the Pasha Bulker at a city beach in Newcastle.

I understand why it happens. Several reasons:

• Something out of the ordinary brings people out of their distracted world / sort of a wakeup
• Excitement / adrenalin
• Wanting information
• Sort of bragging / desire to share (the story telling)
• Shared experience (context)

I just wish that this removal of barriers was around more often. It would be much nicer to have more nice random conversations and connections with strangers – we do live in the same city, after all

#justputtingitoutthere

I’ve had such an odd start to the year, those who know me can probably tell things have been strange just by looking at me. I was talking to a friend today about some of it, and he used the term “shrouded in mystery” (particularly relating to my online absence) which didn’t sit well with me. Frankly I didn’t think people would pay so much attention to it, or assume it was caused by them.

So here is my spiel, leading into the year (some explanation rolled in, but not a full story).

There have been key points in my life where I’ve been aware that I am about to take that next step in the evolution of the personality labelled ‘Carly’. Almost always this involved me hibernating for a period of time. While I used to think that this was a bad thing I’m beginning to embrace retreating (either formally at an ashram or temple or just by myself) as something that I need to do regularly (a realisation on its own).

For some progressions the catalyst has been a significant event (joyous or terrible), some have been simply caused by self reflection without having anything actually prompting it. In those cases where something has happened, it almost always was an event involving people.

This time, people were not the primary cause, though several have (in different ways) put their momentum (unknowingly) behind the retreat and were responsible for several minor realisations.

This time it is my health in the driver’s seat – something I’ve never really had reason to be concerned about in the past.

In the last month or so leading up to Christmas I became concerned about my health – my regular exercise routine seemed to be tiring me rather than conditioning me; my sleeping patterns were deteriorating; I felt sick often; and I observed that it was increasingly difficult for me to remember things and get my brain working (to be honest this was what worried and frustrated me the most – I think even my ability to speak and write coherently is affected).

I took myself to the doctor and had a full checkup. Being used to the response “you’re fine. stop worrying. why are you even here?” – I was not prepared for the hesitant concern expressed by my doctor or the five million gallons of bloodwork she ordered.

This concern sat in the back of my mind over Christmas and New Years and I have no doubt it (and often feeling ill) contributed to the short fuse I had with many of my friends over that period.

Early this year I received the results of those tests – which were not great, but I’m not about to drop dead (so stop worrying – it’s the effect of the news and not the news I want to talk about). This was a slap in the face for me.

Essentially I am broken. There are several things that my body can’t do properly – one of which indirectly impedes my brain such that my ability to think and my mood are affected (in addition to the usual low mood that sometimes comes with feeling sick for long periods).

That particular problem has apparently been there for a long time, and has been steadily deteriorating over the last year due to me neglecting and pushing myself in ways most people can handle. Luckily there are ways to help compensate for most of what my body is unable to do for itself. Some other things are just broken and always will be.

My doctors have made it very clear that my body can’t take much more abuse (in no uncertain terms) as well as a few other things that affect my future self. And this is where I find myself assessing my current situation.

Am I doing what I want to be doing, big picture? Am I where I want to be at this point in my life? Have I succeeded in keeping my life free of those things that I know I don’t need or want (or at the very least made a good attempt at it)? Have I filled my life with those things that I do value and do need (or at least made a good attempt at it)? Do I at least have a rough idea of where I want to go from here and am I happy with where the current momentum is taking me? Have I maintained perspective?

There are two things that I want from my life so that when I’m on my death bed I can look back and be satisfied:

1. To have as few regrets as possible; and
2. To have left a positive impact on the world, no matter how unrecognised or quiet or local that effect is. (I guess the flipside of this is to reduce the negative impact I have on the world while I am here).

And the answers I find? This last week or so I’ve been more aware that medication is making me feel sicker rather than better (I was warned – it will improve soon apparently) and that my brain is only just starting to work again – a welcome change as I’d been doubting my ability to assess and respond to situations or make decisions. This fear of making bad decisions, executing poorly chosen responses and generally feeling ill have been the main reasons I’ve been keeping to myself so far this year (both online and IRL).

I realised I’ve recently made some decisions that I regret, that I’ve handled some situations poorly: I’ve trusted people that have mistreated me, I’ve mistreated people I should’ve trusted. The last fortnight has been especially eventful: I’ve lost friends, made friends, and had a few old friends step back into my life unexpectedly (and for the latter, happily). You know who you are – I was (and am) glad to hear from you. I’ve also found out that some people have taken this retreat / hibernation personally. For those of you I hope this post explains it well enough. You are not the centre of the world

I realised that in some ways I’ve managed to get caught up in little-picture issues, rather than keeping view of the big picture as I normally do. I’ve been holding a few pebbles up to my eye and losing perspective of the fact that the path is strewn with millions of them, and the right place for them is beneath my feet. A part of me wonders if living in the city (city pace, city space, city people) is contributing to it… I don’t know yet.

My plans for study, regular volunteering and aid work prep are progressing as intended. My exploration of Melbourne and Victoria continues, albeit slowly. In these things at least I’m happy with their part in the big picture.

I’m more grounded when I’m in the big picture mindset: this is one reason I like to be outdoors – not necessarily to get away from the city and people (although that does have it’s advantages at times) but more to look up at the sky or the stars and think about the weather system or the universe and how tiny I am. Or look at the trees in the forest and think about time – how much has passed, how much more will pass, and how fleeting my life is.

It sometimes has the opposite effect on people but for me it makes my eyes wide in wonder, helps me feel the breath in my lungs and the feel of the soles of my feet on the earth. I can’t help but smile and laugh there. I am at my best there.

This is the place I’m slowly regaining. This is where I was in the year before I left Australia, where I was while I was away and is a place I’ve found only fleetingly since I returned. This is the place I want to be, am determined to be.

I hope I arrive to find like-minded people standing there with me.

I’ve teamed up with my mates for Movember 2009. As I have a moustache growing deficiency, I’m mainly providing support to the boys and also sporting a fingerstache

Movember is a charity project, with funds going to support causes of prostate cancer (support, education, research) and depression in men. Please support the cause by donating to the team, or join us! It’s not too late

Our Movember Team – Hashtag #Mo