So much for checking in regularly on my adventures with sageing this year! It’s the end of September, and whilst I have been steadily reading and working through the books I laid out to guide me on this path, much of what I have been unearthing is too personal to share in such a public forum. Combined with having Mr Collier home for a solid year and my desire to spend a lot of face time with him and settle into this life rhythm with him, I haven’t made the time to write much for either the blog or my newsletter. However, I have started synthesising my expedition into some shareable points.…
-
-
Orchestral Manoeuvres in…Sydney
A couple of months ago, I mentioned in passing to Mr Collier that I had never seen an orchestra live. After his initial shock, he booked us in to see the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Opera House. He wanted something suitably large and impactful for my first experience, so Beethoven’s Third Symphony concert was selected as the ideal opportunity. Last weekend we took ourselves up to Sydney, and I was inducted into the company of those who have had the pleasure of experiencing the music and spectacle of a symphony orchestra in person. But first! A trip on the ferry over to Watson’s Bay so that I could also…
-
Tackling the second half of life — Sageing is my word for 2024
Each year I select a word or phrase to guide me through the year and provide a focus for growth. This year’s word is SAGEING. I first read this term in a comment on Elizabeth Gilbert’s newsletter where the commenter described it as the act of growing older and wiser, i.e. becoming sage-like. I hadn’t heard the word before, but it would not let me go, so I have known since the middle of last year what this year’s word would be! I did a little digging and found a couple of organisations with this exact focus to help me understand a little more. According to Sage-ing International, sageing is…
-
6 things I learned about going slower
When I slow down, I can dive deeper—and that’s how I prefer to live. — Cait Flanders In 2023 my word for the year was SLOW. If you’re new to my blog, you can catch up with the posts throughout the year about my journey here. To summarise what I learned before I share a few of my favourite quotes collected throughout the year, here are a few takeaways that have found permanent homes in my mind: Slow living is, above all, an act of self-preservation and self-compassion. If you wish to slow down and are looking for some more practical suggestions, Courtney Carver provides a fantastic list to kick-start…
-
Fast or Slow? You get to choose!
This year, I have been exploring what it means to wrap a philosophy of slowness around my life. I haven’t posted about it as much as I had expected, but that’s ok! The focus continues, and I am here to update you now. The concept that has been messing with my head for the last six months is that some things cannot be slowed down. I mistakenly and very naïvely thought everything could be slowed down to a more manageable pace. Wrong. Not everything can be slow, but conversely, not everything has to be fast. Certain things fall into either end of the spectrum, and there is a whole range…
-
The slow and gentle work of love
I came across this quote from Maria Popova in someone else’s newsletter a couple of weeks ago (I wish I had noted who it was.) and wanted to share it with you. “The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love—whether we call it friendship or family or romance—is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.” — Maria Popova. What a tender…
-
Does Slow equal Lazy?
I have been trying to write this article for several weeks now, which in and of itself is not really a problem. What has been tying me in guilty knots is that I had set myself a publishing schedule and was not sticking to it. I kept putting it off because I was too tired or more interested in painting or whatever. I have procrastifaffed left, right and centre. I called myself lazy. This guilt is silly because I am not being paid for these posts, and nothing happens if I don’t post on schedule. And yet, I have been berating myself for not publishing when I told myself I…
-
Caught in the hallway
I mentioned in my empty nesters post that I felt like I was starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel between the phases of life … just a crack of light. That space in the middle there is the liminal space. A place of transition where you don’t sit comfortably in either the young or the old categories. The word liminal means threshold, it comes from the Latin word limen. The idea is that you are standing on the threshold of something new and waiting to be let in. Waiting for beginnings and endings — it’s a weird place to be. Sometimes it feels chaotic and uncomfortable like…
-
Why is curiosity so important?
In this month’s newsletter I wrote about curiosity and cats… here’s a sneak peek… We are born curious, have you ever witnessed a baby stare in wonder as they discover they have fingers and toes? Or a toddler taste things, stick their fingers in things or ask interminable questions? Kids are curious! The problem is that throughout our school careers answers are more acceptable than questions, so curiosity is slowly but surely drummed out of us. Big businesses tell us to stop thinking and focus on revenue. Not very inspiring is it? Curiosity is chaotic and unpredictable, and this is not at all welcome in a world that likes order…
-
We’re empty nesters!
“Mum!” “Yeah mate?” “My offer was accepted on the apartment!” Those were the words that signalled the imminent and gentle flight of my oldest chick from the proverbial nest towards the end of 2022. The youngest chick had flown a couple of months earlier with little warning. Don’t get me wrong, I knew it was a possibility at some point, but one afternoon he announced that he was going to be living in his father’s granny flat from here out, and I was happy for him! You see both lads had been shuttling between our place and their father’s place ever since we separated, spending alternate weeks with each. But…
