Journal

The Narrative Demands It

I’m on the highway, heading south, on a particular June winter morning. I’m doing hundred and the sun is shining and the road is almost empty. Just a few cars, far ahead, well past my turn-off, which means I get some space to myself in a world no longer fond of space. I’ve had the stereo playing ever since I left home, and I find myself listening to the Stranglers Golden Brown for the first time in years. It occurs to me that I love this song. I’ve got things turned up a little louder than usual, and I turn it up a little more, and the music fills my head and obliterates everything else. I’ve got the car and the road and the ¾ rhythms of the keyboard and the harpsicord, Hugh Cornwell singing about the texture and sun and finer temptresses, that slow rise-and-fall of the music wrapping itself around my day like the last touch of a

PeterMBall 12/06/2017
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? I’ve got a few minor

PeterMBall 11/06/2017
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? Working through the feedback on

PeterMBall 04/06/2017
Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

Progress Report

I frequently get the shits with antidepressant medication and seeing my psychologist and all the processes that are necessary for managing the inside of my heaf. Part of that’s the ongoing struggle with self-stigma that any of it is necessary at all, part of it is the annoyance of the month-to-month cost of keeping my shit together, and sometimes it just feels like it’s not goddamn working and all the time, money, and effort is going to waste. It’s not. I spent a good chunk of last night taking a really long walk, ’cause I was starting to get a little squirrely and fragmented. Two years ago, I would have disappeared into a week-long TV binge or computer game obsession where I skipped sleep for days on end, so even when three hours feels like a failure, it’s not. Where I once used to stress-eat incredible amounts of junk food and cola after rising at midday, I will now usually respond to

PeterMBall 01/06/2017
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

The Bloody Chamber

In need of distraction, I started reading Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber aloud to fill the empty spaces in my flat. I’ve adored that book since it was recommended to me back in my early twenties, but I’ve never actually paid attention to the vocal components of the language. Reading aloud, you quickly recognise just how ornate and well-crafted the opening sentence of the titular story really is. Consider, and read aloud if you’re so inclined: I remember how, that night, I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother’s apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter There are rhythms to that sentence you don’t even

PeterMBall 30/05/2017
Journal

Lull

I turn off Lutwyche Road and follow the street as it curves towards the baseball fields. Cross the road to avoid someone young and angry kicking the shit out of a chain link fence. It’s ten o’clock. I’ve walked down to the Valley and back again, just because I’m feeling restless. I don’t want to be in my apartment. Up ahead, the young, angry person kicks the fence six times, starts walking down the street again. They don’t swear or mutter or do any of the shit angry people usually do when walking through my suburb. I want it to be colder. Brisbane has been ignoring winter. I want it to be colder and I want to be thinking clearer.  The fence-kicker goes towards Lutwyche Road. I head towards home. When I’m around the curve, a safe distance away, I start whistling Ani Difranco ‘s Out of Habit underneath my breath. I tell myself that work is coming. That I will not

PeterMBall 29/05/2017
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? In a state of flux

PeterMBall 28/05/2017
Journal

Sleep

I woke several times over the weekend and went to work on my thesis prospectus in the wee hours of the morning. Solutions to problems kept coming to me as I dozed off, found their way into the work in progress because I didn’t trust myself to remember them later. Going to bed at 11 PM quickly turned into working until 5 AM, then sleeping until later in the day. It was great. Incredibly great. It’s been nearly a decade since I worked those kind of hours. It happened all the time before I started working in offices, but the demands of being somewhere at a certain hour meant adapting to other people’s patterns. Getting up early has become such a habit that I’ve organised much of my life around it. I meet a friend for breakfast once a week, at an hour based on the fact I used to rise at 6 AM without fail. I have a certain degree of

PeterMBall 22/05/2017
Works in Progress

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? Two weeks until I have

PeterMBall 21/05/2017
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

What Writing An Offline Journal Taught Me About Writing My Thesis

I started writing a pen-and-paper journal for three reasons.First, because I spent months as a reasonably well-paid blogger and worked around the corner from a store with a wide range of notebooks. Then people started giving me notebooks as presents. And now my flat is overrun with blank Moleskins and Leuchtturm’s and Decomposition notebooks, and I’m working my way through them as quickly as I can (mostly, so I can buy new notebooks without guilt). Second, because I need a place to process things and make notes about what’s going on in my life in way that is not blogging, Facebook, or Twitter. The years I spent writing on Livejournal, and the early days of this site, have been incredibly valuable when looking back and figuring out yearly patterns, and occasionally I need a black-box which reminds me why I made certain decisions that look considerably worse in hindsight. Thirdly, and most importantly, I’d hit a point where various research into why

PeterMBall 20/05/2017
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? Catching up on the thesis

PeterMBall 14/05/2017
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

On Aggressively Curating Facebook Feeds

I spent a hair over six hours on social media last week, which is considerably more extensive than usual courtesy of the extra time spent losing my mind over Riverdale with friends. And I used to think my approach to managing Facebook so it didn’t eat all my time was pretty goddamn tight. Then I read this post on Lifehacker about unfollowing everyone on your friends list to transform the default feed into a desolate wasteland and I was all, holy fuck, that’s genius.   I haven’t quite gone scorched earth yet, but did elect to get really, really aggressive. Yesterday I opened up the new Newsfeed Preference system which makes it far, far easier to see who you’re actively following and began to really, really ask myself if everyone on that list was posting stuff that I either a) wanted to engage with on a daily basis, or b) actually cared about on a daily basis. An hour later,

PeterMBall 12/05/2017