Words In Winter Festival

Hi peeps! I am very excited to announce that I will be part of the amazing Words in Winter festival this year.

I will be doing a 'edgy' reading at 9.30pm on Saturday 9th August at the Rex in Daylesford, along with some very talented emerging writers.

Check out this link and hope to see you there!

The Kissing Disease

That's right folks. You guessed it. I have glandular fever.

The sad part is that I ain't been kissin' nobody 'cept my purdy twin nieces.

After 12 months of boot camp and general good health, I now have glandular fever, anaemia and a vitamin D deficiency.

I guess this is the universe's way of telling me to stop procrastinating with extracurricular activities, stay indoors and bloody well write!

Ideally I'd take some time of work to rest but I have no sick leave left, cos I kept getting 'colds' for the last few months and taking off a couple of days here and there.

Oh well, I'll just slash and burn my social calendar for a little while...except for something very exciting that I have coming up next month. It deserves a separate post though, so I'll sign off for now.

I did it!

Everyone...I just finished the first draft of my first novel! I already know heaps of changes that I wanna make but that's beside the point. I know there will be HEAPS of redrafting to do and I know that the end result will be nothing like the first draft is now but it doesn't matter. I FINISHED IT! It took four years but I did it!!!

I know lots of people write novels but what you may not know is that there are hundreds more who start them and never finish. Finishing a novel is like running a marathon. Like birthing a babe. With a very long gestation period. And now my baby is here and it might be missing some fingers or toes and it might have a wonky smile but its here and I'm gonna love and nurture it into something special.

Watch this space.

Body Knows Best or My May Meltdown

It seems like everytime my brain tries to outsmart my body, my body turns around and opens a can of whop-ass on my feeble will. Huh? Well you get what I mean, don't ya?

No matter how hard you push yourself, how much you try to cram into your 7 day week, if you're burning the candle at both ends, your body will just stop and welcome in a virus with open arms. It won't even let you dwell on what you should be doing. It prescribes sleep, dead, delirious, drowsy sleep.

As you've probably guessed - I've been sick. No, not just sick in the head ;) I've been properly sick with a cold. This one was another doozy. It took 3 weeks to take hold, then a week of bed and snottiness and then finally, I gave up trying to fight this thing on my own and filled my antibiotic prescription.

So now I'm finally on the mend. Anyway, enough wallowing in self-pity, I'm here to blog goddamit! I've got lots to tell you!

For starters, May didn't go quite as I planned it. I was soooo excited about life in April, the weather was still good and I signed myself up for every possible distraction (from writing my novel) that I could in the month of May.

Then May happened and I couldn't keep up the momentum. I failed my yoga challenge (I went 18 times in 28 days instead of the prescribed 24) and only meditated a few times (I comforted myself by the fact that I would meditate for 5 mins at the end of every yoga class). Instead of having a totally zen month, I got sick and then my stress levels rose to an all time high till about a week ago.

Hence, why I've kept quiet on the blogging front.

After all my amazing bragging about my life and the changes I'd made, I hardly wanted to jump online to admit to you all that I am a charlatan. But I guess I'm doing that right now anyway!

But the yoga challenge ended up teaching me something worthwhile.

Listen to your body and leave your ego at the door. 

I realised that I couldn't do 24 sessions of yoga, not because of some personality flaw or lack of willpower but because my body, the dear old vessel that carries me around every day, was tired. It just needed a rest. It needed to get sick to clear out the debris - the ultimate detox.

The best thing to come out of 'My May Meltdown' was that it reminded me to focus on my writing. Although I haven't been blogging, I've been writing a lot more of my novel and I am so close to the end of my first draft, its scary! I never thought I'd get here. I bloody hoped I would but I'm not always 'follow through' girl. Most of the time I get bored and give up on things. Not important things like people, work and study, I mean little creative projects that I have started over the years. And this is probably because I haven't allowed myself to consider creative things as 'important' or acceptable ways to spend my time.

For example, I have a little black travel cosmetics case (probably about the size of an old-fashioned hat box) that I got given years ago. Inside I used to put all my writing from dinky diaries I kept as a child to teenage journals and angsty poetry. For about 20 years, this is where I put anything I wrote. Occasionally, I would bring it out and read through my scribblings, laughing at how much things had changed and how much they had stayed the same.

Sometimes I would even read parts out to my best friend or boyfriend at the time. But apart from that, it was sealed tight and kept buried at the bottom of my wardrobe.

It was only a few years ago, when I started writing my novel (and I couldn't keep my computer in this box!) that I realised what I had been doing. I was a bloody closet creative. I had locked away that part of my personality, as if it was 'wrong', as if it should be hidden from public view. It was my deep dark dirty secret.

And now, I know this is bullshit. I know I can allow myself to create. I know it makes me a happier, better person. I know it helps me make sense of this crazy world we live in. I know this is my path in life. Finally I have found my passion, my dream. (Maybe not found, more like rediscovered or admitted to myself!)

It feels so good, I want to join the bloody literary mari gras! I wanna get on top of a float, covered with books and magazines and periodicals and gyrate to songs about literature (if there are any and they can be mixed into dance tracks, that is!) I wanna wear my author status with pride. I wanna make a big badge saying "I write and I'm proud of it!"

I wanna go back upstairs now from my lunch break and tell them that I quit. Effective immediately. They can stick their office job where the sun don't shine cos I am worth more than all the dollars and pounds and yen in the world. I am a writer!!!

Hmmm...maybe I've had too much caffeine today? ;)

Minding the Gap Within

Hi guys! I've missed you. I've been itching to blog but stuff kept getting in the way. I know, excuses excuses.

Anyway, we're halfway though the month of May, so I thought I'd give you a bit of a rundown on how my mind and body challenges are panning out so far.

The meditation challenge has been difficult. I have kind of improvised on this one to make it fit into my day. I meditated for the first few days by using the 'body scan' meditation supplied by Mindful in May but to be honest, I found it really boring. I didn't like the voice on the meditation and I found myself becoming really restless.

I think the voice on a guided meditation track is REALLY important. I guess I have been a bit spoilt because my meditation teacher, Sara, has a really soothing, calming voice. Her voice makes you relaxed but even more importantly, it doesn't distract you from your meditative state. A voice that is dull or too quirky can be very distracting.

So anyway, after a couple of days of using the supplied meditation, I switched to some chakra meditations that I already had in my iTunes. I instantly was able to connect better with my inner stillness. These tracks have music only, so I simply listened and let the music take me deep within.

I've been meditating off and on for the last decade, and pretty solidly for the last four years. It's something that I've been aiming to do everyday but  haven't been able to settle into a pattern. What I realised with this challenge is that I feel like I have 'moved past' guided meditations and need to experiment without a guide.

Which brings me to my yoga practice. This has been going great guns (what the? where did I pull this stupid saying out from?) I am on Day 11 of my 28 yoga detox challenge and I am loving it! And the great part is that we finish each yoga class with a meditation! So I have been able to combine both my challenges.

The hardest part of the yoga challenge is the detox. In particular, the no sugar part. It's really tough. I didn't quite realise how much sugar I had in my diet. I've always been more of a savoury person but for the last couple of years, I have managed to grow a sweet tooth. A really big one. Not a day went past that I didn't eat some chocolate or biscuits or cake. My sometimes food had become an everyday food. But because I have been exercising consistently as well, I didn't really see it as a problem. Until now.

Why you may ask? Cos sugar makes you feel like shit. It shoots you to the moon but instead of doing a Buzz Aldrin, you come plummeting back down again to earth with no parachute. Ok, maybe I'm being slightly dramatic but now that I have moved past the difficult first week, I am feeling alot better. Happier, more energy, more pizazz! No people, not pizza...pizazz!

So far I have drunk a couple of green smoothies and although the ingredients were highly questionable (think spinach, coconut butter, chia seeds and chlorophyll - yep the green stuff from plants!), I really love them! They taste good. Really good.

I'm not sure what's going on with me...maybe I'm having my mid-life crisis early. Nah, if the was the case I'd been doing something far more exciting, like cougaring the neighbourhood and cruising around in a sportscar...

Until next time folks. Arrivederci!

Mindful in May

I have a BIG month ahead of me. For starters I'm doing Mindful in May which is an absolutely amazing initiative! The idea is you make a donation to Charity Water - a fabulous charity that passes on 100% of donations received to setting up clean, viable, easily accessible drinking water for developing countries.

In return for your donation, you sign up to a one month online meditation program, whereby you get daily emails, a meditation journal and tips on how to mediate.

I have joined Sara's Space In-Betweeners to raise money for Charity Water. We are trying to raise $2000 and have raised $800 so far. If you'd like to join our group and make your own life and a lot of other people's  a happier one, click here. Or you can just make a donation. 

I am still yet to meditate for Day One, so I better stop dilly-dallying and switch off my laptop! Just before I go, I wanted to mention that on top of meditating every day, I will be doing a 28 day yoga detox course starting this Sat 4th May. My challenge will be to do yoga 6 days a week, go on a detox which will involve drinking green smoothies and god knows what else and generally curse myself for getting over excited and signing up to do every interesting course or challenge I come across!

Watch this space! I may need some encouragement this May! 

More on Reiki

Friday morning, I was thinking in the shower. As you do. I think great things in the shower. Especially when its something positive and not a silly nagging worry to set the tone of the day. I did yoga that morning at 6am, so I was feeling pumped and also excited because it was my Mum's 70th birthday.

Anyway, I was thinking about how I've always felt divided. Split in two. Like there are two sides to me, one being the good girl, the angel on my shoulder. The other, I'm sure you can guess, is the bad girl, the devil incarnate. Ok, so it's kind of an extreme view, and really I'm not usually so black and white, instead I revel in the grey areas of life. But when it comes to myself, I'm highly critical.


Scrolling through my phone the other day, I found some shit poetry I wrote a while ago. As mentioned, it is shit but it kind of encapsulates they way I have always felt about myself. And how I have always tried to keep my shadow side just that, in the shadows so no-one can see.


Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,

Split personality,

Whatever you want to call it,

I have two sides to me.


But I'm not torn;

Each side works in isolation.

Each side gets airtime.


I have a hunger.

It starts with a tired lethargy,

Then moves into a twisting knot in my belly. 

It becomes unbearable - well almost,

Don't think I've ever really tried to resist.


Yoga, beer, running, cigarettes, vegetables, 

Talking to strange men,

In the wee hours of the morning.

I've always had this.


I wrote this on 7th September 2009 at 11.32pm. Exactly 1329 days ago. No, I'm not autistic but my iPhone is. It tells me this kind of stuff ;)


I guess you're wondering what the relevance of this is to the title of this post. Well folks, in the shower the other morning, I was thinking about how lately, I no longer feel divided and that is thanks to, you guessed it, Reiki.


During the Reiki I course, I had a bit of an epiphany or maybe it was simply a merging of myself, my separate halves. On the second day, Sara from The Space in Between, gave the group several attunements as a kind of initiation into Reiki.


Attunements, for those that don't know, are a spiritual ritual performed by a Reiki master to open up the student to the Universal Reiki Energy. The student goes into a meditative state whilst the master performs the ritual. Once a student is attuned, they have the Reiki energy for life. For more info on Reiki, click here.


So during the last attunement of the course, actually it was during the last moments before we came out of the meditation, I experienced a powerful merging of my halves. At first I saw a vision of two people making love, one black, one white. At first, I thought to myself, bloody hell I shouldn't be thinking of sex right now! Haha. But then I realised that it wasn't a titillating experience, it was more like watching a dance, the bodies swirling around in space and fading into each other. The more I watched, the more I realised that this was a metaphor, the black and the white was my good and my bad self merging, I was becoming whole again. My soul was returning home.


The attunement has proved to be a kind of healing episode that has allowed me to make changes in my life. I no longer have to hide my 'bad parts' from people. I am a normal human being with good and bad traits. By shining the light on my darker half, I have been able to accept the negative parts of me and through dong so, I have the power and the will to change them. How crazy it is that we fight ourselves so much, that we would rather live in denial, than approach our failings with the same love and compassion we would give to our family and friends.


All of a sudden, I feel like I am back to where I left off in my early teenage years. The years when I was beginning to work out who I was and what I wanted from life. When I had so much creative energy and the world amazed me. When I felt like I was a massive sponge, wanting to absorb as much information as I could and experience everything I could. When I had an amazing memory for facts and languages and schoolwork was a breeze.


The time right before I started drinking, doing drugs, partying and basically trying to wash it all away. Wash myself away...into the shadows.


But now...I'm back baby! Sober and loving life!