Over the weekend I went on a food tour in Sydney’s Bankstown with one of my housemates, as part of some research I’m doing for a story.
I learnt so much — about Bankstown’s culture, about food, about my own likes and dislikes.
I won’t go into any more detail just yet, but here are some pictures I took on the day. Yummo!
I never wanted to be a teacher. Actually, I was a little bit insulted when my careers advisor suggested it while I was still at school. I was an arrogant teenager then — I think my reluctance was partly because I thought that teachers didn’t “do”. Which is actually totally untrue.
And brings me to my point. Teaching has taught me far more — about writing, about words, about reading, about yoga, about myself than I ever thought was possible. Case in point: last week I taught a yoga class that was based around the theme of dharana, and I read out something from an old issue of the Good Weekend about how multitasking is actually really bad for our concentration. So of course I started thinking about how much I multitask. Or attempt to, anyway. And I realised that a lot of my frustration over the last few weeks at not getting anything done could simply solved by actually concentrating on one thing at a time, rather than flitting from one thing to the next and back again to the first.
I tried it this last week. I left the house so I couldn’t be distracted by the kitchen and its need to be cooked in, and I took one project a day up to my favourite cafe. I let myself be okay with the fact that I wouldn’t get anything done on the projects I hadn’t brought with me, and I put all my effort into the one I had.
I got so much done. And by the end of the week I really felt like I’d achieved something.
Teachers definitely “do”.
The other great thing about teaching is that you get to explore things you are interested in but might not otherwise have got around to looking at; and you get to re-visit other things you might not have had an excuse to otherwise. Last week I got to read both Friedrich Nietzsche and Roald Dahl.
Today I had a picnic in Centennial Park with a few good friends. We ate, we drank, we chatted about writing. Most of all we soaked up some welcome winter sun. I feel refreshed for what’s shaping up to be a fairly busy week.
Or at least I was until I allowed myself to be distracted to write this post…
So, I’ve been cheating on this blog a little in the last few weeks. I’ve been working on another online space. But the good news is that I’m pretty much done there, so I’ll be back here a little more frequently now.
I’m kinda excited about the thing I’ve been working on. See, it’s a yoga website, and yoga (doing and teaching) have pretty much been taking up all my head space lately. Have a peek!
As for writing, well, I seem to be taking a break from doing it regularly. I’m not writing every day, even though I’d like to. But I have had a few fairly intense sessions in the last few weeks, where pages and pages have flown out the end of my pen. I’m not writing anything new. I’ve picked up an old short story with renewed interest and have realised how much more work I need to put into it before it’s anywhere near finished — an exciting prospect, really. It never ceases to amaze me how a little space from something can completely change how you look at it. I’m going to try and get a few more pages in today.
It’s such a lovely day in Sydney that I might even take a picnic rug down to the park to write. Ah, sun.
This is either a sign that I’ve been working hard or that my room is in need of a clean. I’m yet to decide which…
I haven’t been all that well for the last couple of days. I think I’m slowly fighting off a cold or a throat infection, or something equally thrilling. So today I’ve tried to take it slowly, ignoring the guilt that usually comes with not rushing around trying to do a thousand things. I’ve had a very quiet day, listening to music and doing a little research here and there for some classes I’m planning and some things I’m writing.
Over the weekend, I went up to Maitland for the birthday party of a very good friend of mine from high school. It was a lovely weekend — I hope she had as nice a time as I did. And perhaps because I spent some time over the weekend reminiscing, I’m now listening to a Coldplay album that I played to death throughout high school. At some point I either bought or was given the sheet music for their first album, Parachutes, and learnt to play and sing a number of the songs, just in case having them on repeat on my CD player wasn’t enough. This was one of my favourites.
Throat infection or not, I’m about to go and sit at the piano to try and play this song again.
(Happy birthday Rylie!)
avocado and lemon 