Life, Love and the Everyday

LIFE Each day I wake up and look around me, the fact that this brick and mortar unit now belongs to Alan and I still feels surreal. After years of renting, we have something that belongs to us. Somewhere we can put down the roots we have longed for. These days I am working 4-5 days a week and whatever energy I have left from my day job goes into my ambitions to be a full-time writer, like submission emails to libraries and bookstores asking them if they would like to stock copies of my books and at a book signing last week, I finally had to concede that TikTok is the social platform I need to promote my work. I have been a little reluctant to sign up for it - like digging my toes into the floor reluctant, but maybe once I reach a broader audience - I'll feel differently. LOVE In December, two days before Christmas, we became a family of three when Alan adopted our darling cat, Enid. The joy she has brought to our home in nine months is immeasurable. She's this sassy, da...

I have been up since 4am, fuelled by coffee and a vanilla slice and sent the final edits to my editor - along with second thoughts I had about my author photo. There have been a few changes since I last blogged. Alan and I moved into our first home and adopted a little grey tabby called Enid. Alan and I binge-watched Wednesday on Netflix last year and Alan thought it was a lovely name, I loved the idea of it because I had a great aunt called Enid who passed away a few years ago, she was a sensational woman and is dearly missed - when I was fourteen and going through that phrase when I didn't like the way I looked, she told me I was beautiful and that I could be an actress when I grew up. You couldn't help but light up around Aunt Enid, she had eyes that promised kindness and magic and that is what drew people to her. She had this adorable gap between her teeth. I used to have one too waaaay back in grade eight...like I don't don't even want to say how many years it ...

At the beginning of this year, my husband and I booked our tickets to Singapore and Brunei with no thought of real estate, packing boxes, solicitors and a fuck-load of paperwork. Three weeks ago we started looking around at real estate thinking we were just getting thoughts and ideas. Over the course of two days we looked at six places. I got really giddy thinking about one of them because it is a two bedroom town house with a goregous shelving nook for my books beneath the stairs. Alan's first thought when he first saw it was less than enthusiastic. "Uh, the highway is like...right there." He had a good point. Three years ago construction began on extending the high way in the area we were looking in, two years ago when I stayed over at Sumi's place of a weekend you could hear the sounds of persistent drilling. Two years on the high way is still being built but construction has been moved on a bit further. "But you can't hear it from the inside." I p...

It has been a looooong time since I have written anything here, most of the writing I am doing these days is for my books. I have released my third novel and have started writing submission emails to book stores asking if they would like to order a few copies. Sometimes I get radio silence, other times I get a polite decline and best wishes and every now and then, I get a yes and in those moments it feels like I am living the dream. One of my biggest challenges as an indie writer is not letting fear, doubt or anxiety get the better of me. There are times when I run a horror movie in my head which begins and ends with boxes of unsold books in my living room and then I remind myself that I do not like horror movies and I'm tuning into something more hopeful and uplifting. But most of all,I think about how I want the right people to find my books and fall in love with the plots and charaters, that the universe is taking care of when, where, how and why. Inspiration to write has b...

Each day brings it's own joys and sorrows, acheivements, challenges and failures. On those days when we are tested, challenged and fail - the important thing is to see it through eyes that are wiser, kinder than the day before and begin afresh. Sometimes that is really hard, espeically when there is a melacholic part of human nature that likes to wallow in what cannot be changed. Crawling out of the mud of self-blame and pity is a tough slog but once we stand up tall and let the promise of a new day fill us with hope and faith that we can do better, will do better, then it's all right. Because with failure comes the blessing of awareness, of knowledge and with awareness and knowledge comes resilience and strength. And with that, the opportunity to be tested and challenged again, to succeed where we have failed. That's what life is about, being tested, challenged, failing and succeeding, then being proud of what we can do. - Sarah x

So...does anyone else think Mercury Retrograde sucked? I knew the exact moment that Mercury Retrograde started for me, it made a dramatic entrance with a feathery beaked pheasant shitting on me one drizzly Tuesday morning as I was about to cross the road to work. I can't even talk about the second thing that happend. It was that bad. It was like Glee and Gossip Girl combined without the added flair of a crowd pleasing hit song. And I was a nervous wreck during my first radio interview, I'm pretty sure I could make a drinking game out of how many times I said, "yeah, exactly!" And I finished my interview with "Amen, amen..." I mean, I guess there are worse ways to end your first public debut but because I was so nervous I wasn't myself. To be fair, it was a live interview. My very first one. And because of Mercury Retrograde being an asshole, I wasn't feeling particuarily sparkly... I don't think it will be my last live interview, the next on...

Blog inspiration dried up after my last entry. I think it was just a little bit of everything. Dealing with the move, Covid-19, then there was this heavy exhaustion which made me go nigh-nighs on my days off work. For awhile there I just wanted to sleep every chance I had, which I guess is only natural when you are low on iron and I would wake up in the early morning, around 2:00am and not be able to fall back to sleep until 3:30-4:00am. It was really rough and the best sleep I had was during and after an operation. Sleep apnea is a real drag... Fortunately things are better now. Most nights are restful (for me, anyway!) But it wasn't all doom and gloom. In these past two years I have published two books and the third is in the works. It took a year to feel at home in what I like to think of my little writer garret. Alan is ever the same, ever as kind, ever as loving, ever as good. I normally say that I don't have time for cooking, but the truth is I don't make ...

From the time I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted to be married. I mean, after seeing Disney princes sing and slay dragons to win the hearts of their princesses - I was totally for it, espeically if I got to wear a Disney style dress (which I did when Alan and I tied the knot.) In my late teens and early twenties, I wondered what it was that made two people decide that they wouldn't run out of things to talk about and to be around each other so much and not get on each other's nerves. I have always been a hopeless romantic and I was happy to learn what this was as I went along. You learn a lot about a person the more you get to know them, you get to know them so well that you can read their face like the pages of a book, you learn about give and take, to appreciate there is a time and place for everything and their pet peeves, the best way to annoy them in a way that they find frustrating yet endearing, what is absolute no-go and yet, they are still a mystery and every...

Back in the 1998, Dawson's Creek was the show to tune into. I was too young to watch it but every now and then, nine year old me would sneak into the lounge room and gawk at the goregousness of Joshua Jackson. I never actually watched a full episode until I binge-watched Dawson's Creek on Stan. Full disclosure. Even at the tender of nine and from the snippets I was able to watch, I was Team Pacey all the way! I don't know how it happened, but The Dawsons Creek CD ended up in our CD stash. My pre-pubescent heart fluttered at the lyrics to Kiss Me by Six Pence None Richer, wept at the sound of Cry Opheila, swooned at the lyrics to Lose Your Way and I belted out the lyrics to Life's A Bitch because nine-year old me didn't know bitch is a swear word. But there is always one song that I'd play on repeat and that was Feels Like Home. Feels Like Home is a love-song, it is about the safety and intimacy of a solid relationship. But for me, what else comes to mind w...

All of us did our best at the beginning of Covid-19, it affected and challenged all of us in different ways. Emotionally, mentally, physically, financially and spiritually. Life as we knew it changed for the foreseeable future, perhaps forever. Before Covid-19, we never thought twice about the germs which could be spread through the handles of plastic grocery basket. We never thought twice about using our hand to press the button at street light. There were so many things we did not think about that we now think about daily. I imagine this is how Adam and Eve felt after being evicted from the Garden of Eden - two bites of forbidden fruit and there they were in a new place where they were afraid, vulnerable and wishing they could go back the way they came. Instead they had to undergo a period of adjustment, learning about their new environment through failing and succeeding - becoming stronger emotionally, mentally and physically so that in time they were not afraid, they were br...

At my old house there was a walking track in the park which led to my prayer bench. Nowadays my prayer bench overlooks the Brisbane River. I used to think the Brisbane River was nothing special. I thought it looked bleak and muddy but it wasn't until I saw it everyday that I saw just how beautiful it is. If you see it at dusk or dawn and how it reflects the colors in the sky, you would understand what I mean. Or the way the mid-morning sun rays leave a trail of glimmering diamonds across the surface that makes you want to swim out to find them. Or how the water becomes greener as it reaches the rivers edge where the mangroves thrive. Or how it becomes a witches cauldron that laps and stirs in different directions. I love the river, how it moves with the grace of a waltz. My favorite time of day is standing at the helm of the ferry and being mesmerised by the water. My thoughts and feelings don't matter because there is so much beauty surrounding me.

Sometimes the things we find hardest to forgive are what other people have done out of love for us. There have been times in my life, (as I am sure there has been for you too) situations where the decision that you could have made for yourself was taken away from you. You may have been told it was in the name of your best interest or some other vague reason though it sure as hell doesn't feel like it at the time or at best, you spend months, even years, hurting over a choice that somebody else made for you that was the opposite of what your heart desired. At the time you may have felt too hopeless to do anything, you may have been too young, you might not have been strong or brave enough to go against a decision that was made by somebody else about a choice that you feel should have been yours. The grief, anger and disappointment we feel weighs heavily on our minds and in that head space we look for somebody to blame. Who would be a better candidate than the ones we feel are ...

Alan and I have lived in our new abode for three weeks this upcoming Sunday and we have settled in really well. Public transport to work is a bit of a time juggle but otherwise, things are going good. What I love about our new home is the ten minute ferry ride I take every early morning and evening. It is absolutely exhilarating standing at the front of the ferry and feeling it glide over small choppy waves. The frigid wind slaps against my face and wakes me up quicker than my morning dose of Moccona. I enjoy watching the enthusiastic kayackers and rowers paddle along the river in the frosty chill of morning, pitting themselves determinedly against the biting wind and rain. At my local park I see children play, families ride their bikes and middle-aged Chinese women do tai-chi in the gazebo and a P.T group being put through their paces. I have been able to pick up on the rythem of this new home and have warmed up to it. I did have my reservations about the move initially but...

I am someone who enjoys the quiet life. Tranquil places off the beaten path, calmness in my soul, stability in my relationships and predictability in my routine. After living three years in our cosy little house in the southside of Brisbane, my husband and I are moving onto a new adventure and in my foreseeable future is a lot of adapting to do. We are moving a little further out, for me this move is very emotional because for the past twenty years I have lived inside a particular grid where I can make my way everywhere, by bus or by foot. We are still going to be on the southside but we're going to the other side of the river, it is the furtherest that I have ever moved and when I am not day-dreaming about the lovely walks I will take, strolling through the local Sunday markets or shopping in my new local supermarket - I am fucking terrified, to tell you the truth. Because this grid that I have lived in for so long is practically imbedded in my bones. I used to hate that grid unt...

For the last month, I have been thinking about soul ties and after four hours worth of YouTube - I was left with two questions.  What made my soul choose to have these people in my life?   What made their souls choose to have me in theirs?   These two questions drove me crazy for a little bit because I over-analyse things to bits and then I realised that at that time and place, the people who have come and gone out of my life, by their choice or mine, that my soul chose them because at the time it resonated with something in them and there were lessons I needed to learn and conversations I needed to have.   Sometimes the hardest lessons in life are taught to us by the people we love, what the hurt teaches us from those lessons is how we will love ourselves and other people better. When I see things in these relationships begin to unravel and I know the end is nigh, I always ask God.  "Why did it have to be this person to teach me this lesson? Coul...

Alan and I are moving in June, I am dreading it. Twenty years ago, my family and I moved from the Redlands to Mount Gravatt so we could be walking distance to school. I hated it in the beginning, because life is unpredictable and those of us who don't like changes prefer to be where life is comfortable and familiar. I remember being eleven, awkward and overweight and at that time I just felt like my parents were ruining my life because they wanted to save money on petrol rather than Mum make the half hour journey to drop us off at school and then head home again. Eventually I adjusted to our new home, I can't count the number of times I bumped my toe against the floor eaves, I remember feeling grumpy because I had to wake up earlier to walk to school and my legs were sore from walking. Around that time my Mum enrolled us into dance and drama. I loved dance, hated drama but I did it anyway and six months later, my challenges had become my strengths. Ironically, drama was my fav...

Variables is a word I have been tossing around in my head for the past couple of weeks. Something unexpected happened that made me think about the variables in my present and future and where they might take me. I did a bit of Googling into the definition of Variables and according to http://linguistics.byu.edu,there are five different variables and on the website the five variables are used in a different context relating to learning a new language. Yet these five variables had me thinking and I applied this method to my own thought process about what I think and feel about the situation about my present and future health. Late January 2020 brought me an opportunity to address and resolve a few things that I have been putting off for awhile in relation to a health condition I have called Poly Cystic Ovaries Syndrome and I am relieved that this season for me has begun with a relative amount of peace, love and support from my family and close friends and I know when this situation i...

Christmas and New Year holidays is my favourite time of the year, completion and renewal. This New Years Eve, as well as welcoming a new year, we are heralding the beginning of a new decade. Before I pull the party popper to cheer for the end of the old and the beginning of the new, I want to pay tribute to the last ten years. 2010 - Leave the things that do not bring you joy. 2011 - Trust your intuition. 2012 - Celebrate the here and now. 2013 - Let the light in your heart illuminate the darkness in your mind. 2014 - Be strong for yourself and those you love. 2015 - Make the most of what you have and what you know. 2016 - Live, laugh, love and create with passion and dedication. 2017 - Travel as far as you can go. 2018 - Live life with those who love and value you. 2019 - Pieces fall into place. Pray, Ask and Receive. While I was out walking today on this rough, beaten track in my local park I saw patches of grass scattered over this rocky, dusty path and this is what c...

2019 has been a year that life has fallen into place and I feel like I have found a part of me that I lost a long time ago. I have been many people during my 20's. Some of them I liked, some of them I didn't. It's kind of like being back in kindergarten and trying on different clothes but the outfit you wear the most is the one you love the best. It took me the best and worst of my 20's to find that girl, this wildflower that was as beautiful as she was headstrong. I missed her while she was gone. The one who dressed in vibrant clothes, the one who was not afraid to be herself no matter what other people thought of her. And when I tried to smother that flame that was in her so I could fit in, she stomped off and told me to call her when I was ready to reclaim my true self. Two years ago, I called her back and little by little; we have come full circle. Since then my life has changed in such a way that it has blown me away. I was afraid of so many things but now tha...

It is an act of great courage to be in a place we never thought we would be and to be okay with it. There is a time of sadness and grieving for what could have been, should have been, would have been if, to our thinking - things had been different. The 'what ifs' are the things we leave behind when we move on. We leave words unspoken, feelings often kept inside that feel impossible to speak, there are a lot of threads left severed or tangled so tight that we would not know how to unwind them. The threads that bind us to places, people and the wishes and hopes we had. Those are the things we will miss the most. Other times, we feel it in our hearts when it is time to go. When we have done everything we can and cannot bring ourselves to go any further. We leave in our wake the disappointment, the anger, the hurt that was eating away at our souls in search of something that will bring us back to a place of joy and contentment. Where we can rediscover our sense of self, where...