We’ve had warm sunny days, icy nights, foggy mornings, rainy afternoons. Have been snuggling up, growing antsy, becoming frustrated, playing music, writing stories, drawing pictures, scraping paint, drilling off rivets, cleaning up – many times over, and being torn in two.
If home is where the heart is my home is both here and in Canberra, and so I’m waiting for the reconciliation, which is coming in a few days. I had a near meltdown yesterday and the best thing to do is give myself space and stop putting the pressure on. Sometimes one woman can just not do everything. The most pressure I get is the pressure I put on myself. The pressure to have a clean house, to power down on the bus, to feed everyone, to engage the children, to be putting time into and succeeding at all the things I want to do myself. Letting go of those ambitions can be the hardest. It almost seems as if I would be letting go of myself.
What’s the antidote to this, people?
Maybe I think it could be about enjoying the process. The process of life. And taking note of the detail, like the way the colours play out on a table covered with pencil shavings and pencils, or the steam coming off a pot of porridge, or the pattern created from cut fruit, or the light shining through green glass, or children eating their peas, or my son wearing a fake mo.
And photography is so great at forcing me to recognise and appreciate the small details…though I don’t always like the way it pushes me into spectatorship. Sometimes spectating brings objectivity, so I suppose all things in balance is a good thing.
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I’m meaning to take some photos around here of the houses. As I drive I find myself distracted by the absolute hodge podge of buildings. There are federation style building interspersed with el cheapo weather board. Solid, aging brick and restored relics. I love the absolute variety and the lack of cookie cutter housing plantations that happen in larger cities.














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