Rest, retreat, recalibrate

You haven’t heard from me for awhile. My instinct (as so many of us do) is to excessively apologise, in fact I’ve written and deleted lines to that effect for the last ten minutes, but I’m trying to resist the urge. There’s a lot going on in the world, and I know, for each and every one of you, and my words in your inbox are the least of your concerns.

A few weeks back, in the middle of a big day between interview recordings and an event I was hosting as I tried to cross off one more thing off my list, I had a wobble in the middle of a shop and nearly fainted flat out on the floor. The people there were utterly delightful and caring (looking at you good folk of Radical Yes) and looked after me, as did my beautiful friend who wrapped me up in bed for a few hours and literally put me in the shower and got me to the event, but I was forced to listen to my body.

How does your body tell you you need to take a break? I’m privileged to experience good health most of the time, aside from a pesky anxiety disorder which I learnt ten years back was best managed with medication (thank you PBS and access to mental health plans). When I push it though, as I’d been doing, I can run out of steam and for me that looks like my body demanding bed, sometimes with flu symptoms, sometimes with all over body rashes, sometimes just heaviness that makes normally easy tasks feel like enormous burdens.

I’ve shared before how much I love Austin Kleon’s newsletters and a recent one really hit the spot. In Defined by Negatives, Kleon includes links to artists who set limits and boundaries for creative practice. They are rules that apply equally to life.

In fact, it might be crucial to your artistic survival to break your own rules.

Austin Kleon

If my rules are generally to say YES, to take on MORE, to attempt to DO IT ALL, what does it look like if I break those; decide instead to say NO, to take on LESS, to realise there is no way, ever to do all the things?

If you listened to this week’s episode of The First Time podcast you’ll have heard Katherine and I speaking with author Anna Downes while the three of us were on a self-run writing retreat. I spoke about the fact that I was so grateful I’d booked the time in way back in May, knowing that I would be coming off the back of the book tour and that if I didn’t carve out time to start on the new book before December, the year would get away from me. I call this forward planning ‘dropping things in my own path’. By the time the booking came around, the timing was less than ideal. I’ve been on the road a lot and I felt guilty about leaving the family again - but my goodness, the five days of reading, writing, sleeping and getting ‘beauty in my eyeballs’ (as Anna called it) was exactly what I needed to reset and come back home with renewed energy.

On retreat with Katherine Collette and Anna Downes in Rawson, Victoria

So much energy in fact that I hit the weekend with an urge to get on top of the chaos at home, and spent Sunday with my youngest decluttering (just ONE room - but still eight hours, two full bins and a car boot full of donations and e-waste!). I chucked out receipts from the kids’ childcare ten years ago, found at least one hundred hair ties (when literally EVERY morning we struggle to find ONE), located gorgeous photos in broken frames I’d never got round to fixing, established that we have about a zillion phone chargers and leads, and that more than half of them are broken. It felt luxurious to spend time getting on top of this stuff, to walk into the house and not be faced with a wall of stuff spilling out of shelves.

I stayed off the phone, but still I knew I was taking time to deal with all this stuff with my daughter while mothers in Gaza are trying to keep their children safe while bombs drop around them. I have no words to try and make sense of that horrific cognitive dissonance. Except that I felt privileged and terrible and my daughter and I observed that; remembered how much we had, how lucky we are and how we could do with less, that it would be better for the planet if we made some new boundaries about what we needed, where we put our energy and our resources.

Small stuff in the scheme of things, but worth remembering that we can’t do the work of life without putting the oxygen mask on ourselves first.

On the bigger things, three things I’m doing this week when feeling helpless:

• Donating to UNICEF to support the Children in Gaza Crisis.

• Contacting Penny Wong, Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

• Adding to the Christmas shopping list to contribute to the First Peoples’ Health and Wellbeing and Nairm Marr Djambana Christmas Gifts Drive. Details here. Also prepping for the Djirra Reverse Advent Calendar Hamper Drive in December.

Reading

• Richard Flanagan’s new book Question 7 has been described by Tara June Winch as his finest yet. I think I agree. I loved this book but I loved, even more, finally getting the opportunity to interview Richard in person at State Library Victoria this week - a conversation I’m thrilled to be able to share with you on The First Time podcast next week.

  

  With Richard Flanagan at State Library Victoria, after recording an interview for The First Time Podcast this week.

• Also read Lucy Treloar’s new novel Days of Innocence and Wonder and spoke to Lucy about her writing life and the book for the podcast. Lucy writes the landscape of rural places and character’s minds so very well.

• Picked up Barbara Kingsolver’s collection of poetry How to Fly at the wonderful Cracked and Spineless in Hobart, and loving dipping in to these sublime poems.

Watching

• Loved Bodies on Netflix: Four detectives. Four timelines. One body. To save Britain's future, they'll need to solve the murder that altered the course of history first. Reminded me of the SBS series Beforeigners which I adored.

• Watched Beckham with my sports mad big kid. She loved the sport, I loved remembering the 90s. Great accompaniment to Ted Lasso which we finished recently as a family and adored. Also led to one of those lightbulb moments as she’s currently reading Gleitzman’s Boy Overboard for school and has loved connecting the soccer dots.

Coming Up

Ironic, I know, to write all of the above and then tell you how many events I’ve got coming up! But, as Richard Flanagan said to me (off-air unfortunately!) - ‘this is part of the work’. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to continue to talk about The Hummingbird Effect with readers and booksellers for this final leg of the tour before I take a break in December. Would love to see you if you are in these areas.

• I’ll be talking about The Hummingbird Effect at Wheeler’s Hill Library on Thursday 16th Nov at 7pm. Free but bookings required.

• Chatting with Katherine at Great Escape Books in Airey’s Inlet on Friday Nov 17th. Free but bookings required.

• At Escape Hatch Books, Kew on Tuesday Nov 21. 6.30pm. Bookings required.

• Visiting the Book Grove Book Club, Ocean Grove on Wednesday Nov 22.

• Dinner and Book Chat at Flinders Golf Club for Writers Talk at Flinders. Thursday Nov 23. Bookings required.

With love, K x