Eleven days ago, when first I posted about being sad, my parents called and asked whether I needed to see a doctor. No, I said. I’m fine. I’m just sad. My mum pointed out that she’d feel a whole lot better if I went to a doctor. No, I’m really fine. It will pass, and I […]
Awake at 6 AM, sitting at the computer. Getting ready to write something, to put new content on the blog. One of those routines in my life that I’ve been ignoring for weeks now, but it’s time to get back to it. My body seems to have decided that 4 AM is the optimal time to […]
I spent three or four solid hours of yesterday sitting on the couch, feeling sad. And I spent those same three or four solid hours cruising the internet for distraction: blogs; Facebook; Twitter; Instagram. Picking up books, reading a page, and putting them down again. Opening Netflix and scrolling through the options, before deeming them all […]
Four days of a sore throat and runny nose. Four nights without using my CPAP machine to regulate my sleep apnea, which means I wake every day with a head full of cotton wool, exhaustion, and nascent craziness waiting to be given form. I slough around the house, coughing up phlegm. I sleep in fifteen minute […]
I have a new phone. Unfamiliar. It makes different tones to the old phone, has a range of different features. None of the notifications sound the same. Some of the notifications I had disabled have now come to life again, as the apps are downloaded, which means my attention is constantly pulled towards the device […]
I am writing a two hour workshop today. I was not meant to be writing it, exactly, but things fell out the way they fell out and now that is my Wednesday and I am frustrated as hell. I have Pulp’s This Is Hardcore on the stereo, ’cause it matches my mood. Cycling back and forth […]
It may be time to move my writing process off the computer again. I went digital again a few months back, when I was working on a redraft, and I found myself lured back into the rhythm of the keyboard and the quick accumulation of words that can be counted. And then, gradually, as things […]
I am doing things on top of my usual work schedule this week. For instance, tomorrow night I am off to Logan Library to do a seminar about some of the myths about getting published. On Wednesday, I will be giving up my weekly write club in the name of working on workshop content for […]
It’s Tuesday, and my RSS is filled with Game of Thrones recaps. Every website seems to have one, even the websites that have previously shown no interest in the show. Even those that have shown no interest in TV. Game of Thrones is everywhere. It’s Tuesday, and the first sign of the election being in […]
Two years ago, I bought an apartment. It was an oddly terrifying prospect then, and it’s an oddly terrifying prospect now. I did not live the kind of life where property ownership was a possibility, and yet here I am. Occasionally I put Once in a Lifetime on the stereo and it feels horribly appropriate. […]
I haven’t finished a short story in years. It’s a thing I’ll bust out in conversations about writing, even though the evidence of its untruth is out there. I have written stories. Some were published. Many were not. This is probably for the best, since they were mostly fiction written in the grip of the […]
It’s easy to forget that Brisbane can be beautiful. Hit the streets of the city and you’ll see the legacy of the seventies and eighties architecture, serviceable high-rises built out of grey concrete that wiped out large chunks of our history. It’s a very functional aesthetic, unconcerned with outwards appearances. History, for Brisbane, is something […]
