Breathing Just a Little

The second quarter of 2026 has come to an end, and what a massive three months it has been! Workload has been intense to (at times) borderline hellish, with three very large projects in play. I travelled twice for work, once internationally (to Auckland for a week in June). I also squeezed in a weekend away to the Mornington Peninsula with the whole extended family. The three months was also chocked full of social and life commitments, including the festival that was my middle daughter's 21st birthday celebrations. I went to the theatre, the movies, parties, dinners. I hosted friends and family and was hosted by them. There wasn't a lot of slack in the days, the weeks or the months. We've adjusted to our new normal as a household of three, and have settled into maintaining our relationships with my two elder daughters who now live independently. It's had moments of being bittersweet, but overall, I am very grateful that we have been able to remain close and loving in ou...

I have entered a season of wanting to pull back socially and shelter in place, regularly engaging only with my family and my close friends. (Of course, I also engage daily with my colleagues; work life is separate from personal / social life!)  I have been through such seasons before, often coincident with periods of health difficulties, anxiety surges, or ongoing fatigue. (All three are in play at the moment, not surprisingly). I know it's coming up when I start being secretly thrilled whenever plans fall over, and feel absolutely no FOMO when seeing photos or posts about other people doing things / going places / socialising (if anything, the opposite - the Joy of Missing Out is strong). This doesn't mean I'm turning into a hermit. I work, and I have good relationships at all my client workplaces. I volunteer once a fortnight and will continue to do so. I'll do some (although more limited) social things out of the house with my husband, my adult kids, my family of ori...

I had every good intention of doing this post in the void week between Christmas and New Year, or, at a pinch, in that void-adjacent first week of January, but I was engaged in an apparently aggressively intractable campaign of doing absolutely nothing except reading, eating, swimming and napping (all amazing things, I think we can agree) and it didn't happen. Still, I do like having these posts to reflect on, so I thought I'd catch up now, especially as I will be back to work next week and am doing set-up tasks for that now (which has me at the computer more than I have been in the lovely langorous early summer weeks). Quarter 4 (let's call it 1 November til today, as this year really only functionally begins on 27 Jan when work and school are back) was a busy and momentous time, with very high highs, and unfortunately one very low low. We were all basically well, barring a mild summer cold just before Christmas, but my perimenopause symptoms are gaining prominence, which ...

The end of 2025 is almost upon us. Tomorrow, I will be posting my reflections on the year as a whole, but today, I wanted to summarise one aspect of the year that has been richly rewarding and important to me - my year in books. Firstly, the stats. I track my reading through Goodreads, which tells me that I have logged 131 titles this year, but that is misleading, as it counts DNFs (things I started but didn't finish) as well as re-reads (I do comfort re-reads quite often!)  Excluding both of these and looking at only new-to-me books (ie books I read for the first time in 2025, and completed), I actually read 105 new (to me) books in 2025, which is an increase of 15 on my 2024 total. I credit this to two things - my discovery of the joy of audiobooks, and a larger than typical (for me) number of novellas and short novels on the list. I read across a number of genres, and undertook three reading-to-list tasks (the Hugo Award nominee list, the Stella Prize nominee list, and, as alway...

I'm back today from 7 days away in Tasmania with my husband - our first interstate trip with just the two of us since before my first daughter was born (22 years ago now!) We stayed in Hobart for the whole time but did day trips to Richmond, Bruny Island and the Huon Valley, as well as exploring Hobart itself (MONA, Salamanca Market, Battery Point, the Museum, the Botanic Gardens, Cascade Brewery, Mount Wellington lookout, and more). We had a great time! Here are a few pics to give a flavour. I've just chosen two pictures per day to be the representative! Day 1 - Richmond (Bridge / Miniature Village) Day 2 - Huon Valley (Tahune Airwalk) Day 3 - Botanic Gardens and Mount Wellington Day 4 - Bruny (The Neck / Lighthouse) Day 5 - Hobart city (Battery Point / Harbour) Day 6 - Salamanca Market Day 7 - MONA

  “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird I've been ruminating (again) this week on the ethics of creating art that is clearly and identifiably about living people, especially when that art is scathing, revelatory, or born from a place of pain.   The immediate catalyst of this thinking has been listening on repeat to an album that will end up being one of my top albums of this year for sure: Lily Allen's West End Girl. If you are unfamiliar, the album charts the catastrophic breakdown of her marriage to Stranger Things actor, David Harbour, and zero punches are pulled. Allen is explicit, raw, and so clearly hurt by what she says Harbour did, that IF the album is an accurate or even semi-accurate narrative, the conclusion is clear - the Harbour who emerges from the connected web of songs is an irredeemable shit. Of course, there is (as always!...

Well, I see in my previous quarterly post (in July) that I had intended in my mental schedule to do this a month ago, but what can I say - life has been busy! This self-appointed Monday off before a public holiday seemed like a good opportunity to catch up. This quarter, which now extends til 30 October, has been packed for everyone in my household. There haven't been any disasters, but there have certainly been stressors, sad things, and irritations. Overall it's been pretty good though. I personally have been well for the quarter, although two of my daughters had pretty dreary bouts of flu. My gallbladder recovery is complete, which is helpful, and my dietary capacity has returned to normal, with the caveat that I still need to be careful with dairy food. Interestingly, I have not gained any weight as a result, but my steady weight loss (driven by a very restricted diet) has also stopped. It seems my perimenopausal body has found its comfort level in the "chubby little H...

I am doing Steptember this year, the fundraiser organised by the Cerebral Palsy Alliance, which targets 10,000 steps a day for the month. While, in ordinary circumstances, there are a couple days a week I hit 10,000 steps anyway, I never usually get it daily, so this does require a bit more intentionality from me (no bad thing, physically or mentally). Each day so far, I have walked somewhere different. My walks have been: - Day 1: Creek path near my house (with dog) - Day 2: Cherry Lake, Altona - Day 3: River walk, Werribee (with friend) - Day 4: Wetland path near my house (with dog) - Day 5: Melbourne City walking  - Day 6: Berry's Beach, Phillip Island (with husband) - Day 7: Conservation Hill , Phillip Island (with husband) - Day 8: Churchill Island Circuit, Phillip Island (with husband - Day 9: My own backyard! I thought it might be nice to do a photo record of my walks, so here is days 1-9 - just one image from each walk. Day 1: The creek near my house Day 2: Cherry Lake...

I've been thinking about travel a lot lately. Perhaps it's a time of life thing, or perhaps just a time of year thing (end of winter, especially the end of a bitterly cold winter, is often a restless and dreary time for me, doubly so when spring is dragging its heels in arriving). There are many, many places that I haven't been yet and would love to go, and some I've been to and want to revisit. Japan is somewhere I adore and (having been twice) will definitely go again. New Zealand, the site of several prior visits, is a country I intend to go again. Vietnam was beautiful, and I'd love to go back. I saw very little of Canada, and want to see more. There are many places in Australia I want to revisit, and many more I haven't been yet that I want to go to. The countries I have been to (and enjoyed) that I won't revisit now are the USA (which is a shame as it is magnificent in terms of scenery and landscape, but it's just not for me anymore); and Cambodia,...

(This is a weird form poem, almost but not quite a prose poem, inspired by the ground-breaking theoretical work being done by my close friend Emily, who is a rising star in the literary and cultural theory world and who I am enormously proud of). On the menopause of whales  did you know, she said, that some whales go through the menopause too? orcas and so on, the ones with teeth. only humans and toothed whales and chimps, that's all, and I said no, no I didn't know that, I didn't know that any other species stuttered and faltered and plunged into the twilight the way we do the way I am doing with a body that tries and tries to bleed every month but only sometimes, only fewer times than sometimes, succeeds with a mind and a heart and many sets of pyjamas drenched with a misery that has no name and has many names  my daughter says they learned in biology that menopause is a rare and strange evolution, counter-intuitive and seemingly aberrant, because breeding from first matu...

The second quarter of the year, for me, runs from Easter until the middle of the winter school holidays (ie this very week). I realise my division of the year does not align to anything particularly, but it's just how it is in my brain! This has been a very busy, very tiring, but ultimately pretty good quarter.  I've been mostly well in an infectious sense - only one cold virus to report - although my digestive woes from my borked gallbladder were on a steady rise through the months. Thankfully, I had the surgery to remove the offending organ 2 weeks ago and am now about 80% recovered from the wounds (it has taken longer than I had hoped), with some digestive improvement already. In other health news, I have also finally entered the perimenopause, so I'm still working out what that means for me (both physically and mentally / emotionally). I've been very busy, you might say over-busy, with work - some big new projects have been claiming a lot of time - but the work has,...