A year ago, I started a new technical writing contract only six kilometres from home. The 10 minute drive was bliss after years of cross-city commuting but, after a while, I noticed the bike paths which followed my exact route. I tossed the idea around but I hadn’t ridden a bike for 15 years, and …
Mum’s L of a learning curve with teen in the driver’s seat
My youngest child drove herself to work this morning. Her after-school and weekend job is across town in the martial arts school where we have both trained since she was five. We have been driving across Sydney, from the trees and water of the land just north of Parramatta River, the river that cuts through Sydney opening into the Harbour, to the denser, dirtier, livelier inner-south-west for twelve years.
Learning Guem Gang in lockdown
Applying technical writing skills to learning a complex martial arts pattern....
Finding flow: the alignment of challenge and capacity
The elements of flow, of indeed happiness, are ‘clarity of goals, feedback, feeling of control, concentration on the task at hand, intrinsic motivation, and challenge’ (89). Understanding this changed my life.
Taekwondo: a discipline for life
My taekwondo school, the Australian Martial Arts Academy, has been in operation for 35 years this month. I've been training there for six years and have a few ideas about its staying power. I was asked recently whether taekwondo gave me a ‘workout’. The quick answer is yes! But you can answer that question on a …
The idea of home
Where is home? What is it? Does it convey a house, a city, a country? The Oxford defines it as ‘the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household’; the Macquarie says it is your ‘fixed residence’. When we’re kids, I think it means ‘where our parents live’. I grew …
Millennial fatigue
I just disappeared down a rabbit hole. Sales, business coaching, marketing, sales, Snap Chat, Zoella, millennials, sales, vlogging. Anything you can read, you can read to screen. Better. Faster. I learnt that blogging is passé. If you want to, you can write it down later, from the vlog. There’s your blog. In words. But it’s …
How to fit martial arts into your life (and stick at it)
The other day my mother noted, surprised, that I’d been doing taekwondo at the Australian Martial Arts Academy in Marrickville for five years and I realised how it’s become a part of my life. With three kids, full-time work and a general disinclination towards exercise, how did I get here? I think it’s a combination …
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Setting goals, savouring rewards
I’ve never been sure about ‘Mother’s Day’. It wasn’t a thing where I grew up and my own mother was ambivalent (‘every day is a mother’s day’). But I’ve decided that if the world wants to offer you a day, take it. Use it in whatever way you want. Maybe think about what you want …
A day at the Boston Marathon
It wasn't the day we'd envisaged. Arriving at breakfast, too early to check in, we dumped our bags and went for a walk. Boston in the spring was nude—the shutters and lace skirts of the grand old ladies sweeping the boulevards visible through the bare branches of the trees. Taking in the old city, walking …
Your Second Draft 