So the first monthly theme for the year is due in a week. We got the date a little wrong in the original post — the first Monday of the month is actually 7 March.
To give you some idea of what you might be able to do for this theme, here’s a work-in-progress on the theme by Pseudo Rhys, who’s a Monday Projector from way back. He calls this “Reducks”.
Hope you’re all having fun with the theme — happy creating!
If you want to find out more detail about the theme, have a look over here…
I decided I’d copy Mr Sketchy and write here about some of the reasons behind the Monday Project — and more specifically why I personally am involved.
Before we started the MP blog a few years ago, Kate and I both spent an inordinate amount of time whinging to one another about how difficult it was to stay motivated to actually produce anything. It is difficult, to be sure, but there comes a point where whinging about its difficulty is just another form of procrastination.
Read more here…
I love airports. They always give me a little rush of excitement.
When I lived in Melbourne, being inside an airport usually meant I was on my way to spend time with my family, or had just done so. If not that, then being at an airport meant I was heading off on an overseas adventure, or picking up someone I had missed.
That’s part of it. The other part is the other worldly nature of airports. They’re like their own little universe. People are in transit in airports — on their way to somewhere or from somewhere, stuck in between two places. Planes are similar. But I guess airports still allow people to move around, and therefore be more interesting. I love it.
I get nervous when I travel — have I packed everything, will I get to the airport in time, will I be able to find my way? — but once I’m at the airport the nervousness is replaced by excitement. I’m always excited to be going somewhere. And, once the nervousness dies down, I’m thrilled to have (re)discovered that I’m capable of doing this on my own.
Overseas travel excepted, pretty much all my time in airports has been spent alone. And I like it that way. It’s a different kind of adventure when someone else is along for the ride.
Being on my own leaves me free to people watch, and to strike up conversations with strangers. I love talking to and observing strangers. People are so weird and entertaining. Especially when they’re between places, in the midst of a journey. An airport, after all, is not really a destination.
I’m writing all this because this weekend I’m spending time in various airports (being weird — and maybe entertaining — in the corner, furtively doing a few quick yoga poses to realign my spine after sitting in the slump-inducing plane chairs), as I make my way to and from Adelaide for the Academy of Words. I’ll be on a panel today, and hanging around at various other things all day. If you happen to be in Adelaide, come say hi.
These last two Saturdays I’ve wandered around the corner to the local farmers’ markets (I act cool about it, but really I’m ridiculously excited that I live so close and can do my shopping there each week… But more on that in a later post) and come back with a few little things to put in the bare garden. Last week I got baby spinach and chives, this week curly parsley.
I brought my worm farm with me from my last house, and the worms — collectively referred to as The Barries — are settling in nicely. I’m a wee bit fascinated with the worm farm. You put food scraps in, basically do nothing, and out comes this amazing fertiliser. From that fertiliser you grow more food, from which there are scraps, which you put in the worm farm… Etc etc. It creates a neat little ecosystem in your own house/garden.
I’m a bit obsessed with The Barries, if I’m honest. I’ve been known to pick apple cores up off the street and bring my food scraps home from a weekend away to give to them. When I used to work in an office, the other women on my team used to give me their food scraps to take home. I love The Barries. Maybe a little too much.
Anyway, they’re helping me out in the new house, with my new responsibilities as resident gardener. In my last house I helped with the garden occasionally, but I was by no means the decision maker. Now I’m kinda in charge. And I’m sure I’m going to make mistakes, kill things and hopefully imprint into my brain some of the plant names that come so easily to my Mum and my old housemate Erin. Gardening regularly is a new adventure for me (any tips are welcome).
In the last few days the rocket seeds I planted last weekend sprouted, and this morning some tiny, tiny shoots from the carrot seeds are tentatively peering out of the soil. I’ve spent a whole lot of time this morning crouched down next to them marveling at their tiny green-ness. I might just be eating them in a month or so.
Here are the little rocket sprouts. Hello little friends… Keep growing strong, won’t you?
Every now and then I go back through the little notebook I keep in my bag, or through the notes section of my phone, and come across something worthwhile. Today I found this:
Sunscreen collected in the creases at her elbows.
A little more on moving house…
This last fortnight I’ve been using my Sydney yoga practice a little differently. I’ve been moving house. Reluctantly. As well as taking up all my time and energy, it’s been a sad experience for me. The move was not a voluntary one – our landlord was returning from overseas and wanted to move back into her house. This house has been one of the best houses I’ve ever lived in; my housemates have become almost like family – and it’s the longest I’ve lived in one place since I left home all those years ago.
Unfortunately, it’s also taken up so many of my resources, material and otherwise, that my yoga practice has been substantially reduced. Again. It’s been frustrating.
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Read the rest here: Yoga for Moving House | om gam yoga | Sydney yoga, Yoga Sydney, Yoga class Sydney.
This last fortnight I’ve been moving house. And it’s been harder than any other move I’ve made. Harder even than moving out of home, or moving from Melbourne to Sydney. It’s strange, because I’ve only moved from one end of Newtown to the other. Both the aforementioned moves involved a great deal more distance, and probably more obvious emotional upheaval. So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why this move has been as difficult as it has — and wondering whether I’ve just turned into a big wimp.
It’s been different to any other move I’ve made though. For starters, it was a reluctant move. My housemates and I got a phone call halfway through December telling us the owner of our house was returning from the UK and would like her house back. Two of my housemates were already planning on leaving (they’re travelling around Australia this year in a pop-top van — you can read about their adventures here), but Housemate Three and I were planning on staying in the house. When we realised we’d all be leaving the house at the same time, the phrase “end of an era” found its way into conversation more than a few times.
This house had become home, these housemates like family.
So I guess we began the process of sorting, packing and moving with… well, heavy hearts. Sometime towards the middle of January, I found myself thinking about how I’d only walk this route to a yoga class (or get off the train at this station, or stare out my bedroom windows, or go for a walk in this park, or see this or that neighbour on the street) a finite number of times. And every now and then the four of us would be standing together in the kitchen talking and/or cooking, and one of us would sigh. Sentimentality became a big part of our last weeks in the house.
Then I suppose there was the move itself, which was a bit of a shit fight, if I’m honest. We were really settled in that place. Which is really just a nice way of saying we had a lot of crap, spread out all over the place. Packing, sorting and cleaning was not fun.
For the fortnight it took us all to pack up and move out, I felt like I didn’t really have a home. My new housemates and I had picked up the keys to our new house, so a lot of my stuff was in the new place, but so much of me remained in the old place. For the last week I was sleeping at the new house, and getting up each morning to go to the old house to work more on moving out. That week felt more like ten weeks.
That last week the five of us (four housemates plus Housemate Three’s girlfriend) went out for dinner and drinks — a kind of farewell. I had such a great time with my little sharehouse family.
And I drank a little too much wine. Getting up the next day was difficult.
When we finally handed the keys back last Friday, and went out together for a final housemate breakfast, I think we were all ready to leave. We were glad the move was over (we were also very hungry — we’d all been up since 6 or 7am and we were eating at midday). So in a way, I guess the sadness that had made the process so difficult in the first place was kind of worked through by the horror of the move itself. Or at least pushed to the background for now. I’ll miss that house, and I’ll miss my housemates, but for now I’m ready to focus on what’s going on in my life right now.
I’m excited to be working again. I’ve got writing projects slowly starting to make their way from my head onto paper; next week I’m going to Adelaide for Format Festival’s Academy of Words; and I’m preparing for some new yoga classes I’ll start teaching in the next month.
This move though, and the process of moving in general, is still flitting about inside my head. I’m writing about moving for this month’s Monday Project theme, and I’m thinking again about some of the other writing I’ve done on travel, moving and connection to place.
As difficult as it’s been, moving house has certainly got the cogs turning again. Change, as they say, is as good as a holiday. Except that I feel like I need a holiday to recover from this particular change.
The Monday Project is up and running, as of today! If you’re looking for some inspiration to get yourself started on a creative project of any kind, feel free to play along. We’d love to have you.
More details can be found over here, at the Monday Project site.
Theme: Redux | the monday project.
If you’d like to go on our mailing list (we’ll only contact you at the beginning of each new theme — once a month — or if there’s something really important to tell you), you can email us at themondayproject85@gmail.com.
I’m really excited about the Monday Project starting up again. When we were doing this a couple of years ago, we met some truly wonderful people, and had some fantastic responses to our monthly themes. I’m looking forward to more of the same.
This morning I’ve been busy organising. I’ve planned out a rather large project across 2011, breaking it down into smaller sections, which will be much easier to manage — and will hopefully mean I actually get started on them.
I think having those eyes peering at me over the computer monitor is a good thing… I feel like I’m being supervised. (Supervised by myself incidentally — the picture is a portrait a friend of mine drew for me many years ago in high school. I keep it there to remind myself of me at that age, and all the possibilities that lay ahead of me then.)
On the weekend I cleaned up my desk, organised all my files and stored stuff away under my bed. I have to move house soon, so I’m trying to get rid of anything that I don’t really need, to avoid simply moving it to another location where it will get under my feet.
I think 2011 might be the year of being organised. Last year certainly wasn’t! I’m hoping I can strike a balance between last year’s extreme go-with-the-flow attitude and the more rigidly organised person (otherwise known as a control freak) I’ve been in past years. Fingers crossed.
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Today is my brother’s 22nd birthday. Happy birthday Tomarse!
This, believe it or not, is a picture of me. I’ve got cat ears on, but I’ve no idea how I managed to get my face looking so animal-like as well.
Occasionally I go back through all the photos on my phone, camera and computer, and I usually manage to find at least one strange one. Especially if I’ve spent time with my brothers — the younger of the two likes to borrow a camera and take macro shots of… well, anything really. I have to take credit for this one though.
I seem to have gone through a stage of looking back over old art journals, photos and writing journals lately. It’s sort of a strange concept, looking back through yourself for inspiration. And it’s funny just how much of your own brain-stuff you forget. Memory is an intriguing thing.
avocado and lemon 