A gentle thing Aristotle once said: “The important thing is not to learn, but to undergo an emotion, and to be in a certain state.” I’ve been in my head a lot most of my life. But I’m unlearning. Unfurling. I’m feeling into life more and more. Slowly. Tediously. Of course, the more you seek … Read more
A little while back I had building biologist Nicole Bijlsma do a run-through of my flat to see if it was toxic, and making me sick. It was. Although my initial Sunday Life column didn’t outline the full extent of things. It was a bit too controversial for the magazine… plus, I hadn’t really digested the brunt of Nicole’s message. Now I have.
Basically, my bedroom is making me sick. No bones about it. Here’s the deal: when Nicole did an EMF (electro-magnetic field) reading… the scanner spun around madly. The reading was dangerously high. And erratic. Nicole was shocked.
So we went outside… my bedroom sits right above the fuse room for the whole building (12 apartments).
Back when I studied law, I’d climb trees. When my head got too frazzled from the insane logic that is torts, I would down pen, walk a few blocks to the bushland near my house, and clamber up a eucalypt. Then I’d sit. Bushwalkers passed beneath me, oblivious to the fully-grown woman suspended out on a limb above. Sometimes it took an hour for my head to clear. Once it did, I’d dismount and head back to my desk.
Law does crazy things to a lot of people; I think I got off rather lightly with this tree-climbing caper, all things considered. In fact, it kind of saved me. It was an appropriately odd release that got me out of my head fug. I’d always come back to earth far more grounded.
Nowadays I mostly walk. This column generally emerges from a walk around the block. Paragraph by paragraph, it unfurls as I lap the ‘hood.
As Nietzsche wrote: “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking”.
Henry Thoreau once said: “Methinks the moment my legs being to move, my thoughts being to flow”.
Which is not to imply my column is a work of great thoughts. Just that it probably wouldn’t exist at all if I didn’t walk.
One day I started a blog. I didn’t know where it would head. I spewed forth and it grew like a virus. I just wanted to share things.
Like all things with technology, it moved faster than I was able to adjust. So, truth be known, it’s not really what I thought it would be. But, then, it’s exactly what it needs to be. ‘Cos here it is.
I thought about doing a mass overhaul, to get it ship-shape (redesign, get it looking less “young”, change the name to…a real blog name!). But instead I’ve opted for gentle shifts.
On Wednesday I posted about how I hired a virtual assistant to help with my blog. They’ve kindly decided to offer everyone a discount on Freelancer – three project posts for free! When you register, use this code: “SARAH”. They’re also answering any questions you might have on the post.
Today, though, I want to share two other services I totally dig:
I posted about The Salvos’ Buy Nothing New month a few weeks back. The lovely former Instyle Magazine stylist Matt Paroz (that’s him below) from how big is your eco got in touch and offered this guest post of tips and tricks for swapping/recycling/rejuvenating your threads. Thought you might like. Six Sustainable Fashion Choices to make … Read more
Oh, I have to tell you about Alf and Freelancer.com.au. Oh, my.
I’ve been making a few changes to my blog. It’s a gradual thing. Mostly I don’t really know what I’m doing and haven’t had the time to do it…so I hired a virtual assistant. And it’s made me so happy. A stack of people have asked me about this. So here’s a little rundown:
* Why a virtual assistant?
A VA is someone you hire online to help you with stuff you’re, quite frankly, over doing. People use them to help with their kids’ homework (which I find sad), to manage their diaries, to transcribe stuff…a guy hired a freelancer to plant a stink bomb outside his mate’s place on the other side of the planet!
A VA, though, is perfect for blog help. You can hire someone to transcribe, tag, format, design, upload your posts and videos and images, copy edit (and spell check) posts, manage the comments, do all your social media interconnecting, manage your SEOs (and simply do all the stuff that you need to do to optimise traffic…which does my head in, personally), research stuff, write stuff…pretty much run the whole bloody thing…which is what a lot of corporates and doctors etc do.
* Where does one find a VA?
I used Freelancer. It’s the largest outsourcing service site in the world and they’ve just launched here in Australia. I met them on a Morning Show segment and they offered to lend me a hand finding someone.
Three things from the experience: 1. Akmal is a very kind man. A lovely heart behind those gags. 2. That jacket is from Sass and Bide (I’ve been asked a few times). 3. I consider myself very lucky to have had the experience. It’s a good one. Just sitting there and witnessing funny people in … Read more
So, below is my insta-fix for my thyroidy days. But, really, it’s a remedy for crap days in general – if you’re premenstrual, toxic, hungover, over-worked or got another type of auto-immune disease or illness I reckon it will be of use, too.
HAPPILY, after three years of trying EVERY trick in the book, I’ve got my auto-immune disease under some kind of control. But I’ve got to this point by managing it day-to-day with little tricks and techniques. Some days I’m great. The next I’m dead thyroidy.
Which can only be described as a cross between a hangover and being pre-menstrual, with a dose of food poisoning thrown in. And a sprinkling of a rash (enough to make everything feel like its burning).
In the past, when I felt this flat I’d push harder. Cummon ya lazy beast, fire up! Now, on these days I stop. And correct. It’s taken me ages to work out that I can actually steer things back to normal in about 48 hours. It’s a gentle steering. Nothing too violent, because that would just tip the boat.
Sooooo, this is how I do it:
Abort what I’m doing. This sometimes means dropping work or cancelling dinner with friends. Yep, people get the shits. And, nope, they don’t really understand (because the next time they see you, you look fine). I say, so what. This is what I have to do to cope. End of story.* Then I turn inwards (stay home, turn the lights low, go slow).
Drink dandelion tea. Loads of it. Then move on to some calming teas in the afternoon. One way or another I try to get as much warm water into me as possible. It soothes. It calms.
Take a teaspoon of licorice root and rehmannia (practitioner dispensed). This tonic calms the adrenals pretty much instantly and also reduces the damn inflammation I get.
Did you read this on the weekend? A column by Fairfax national affairs writer Tony Wright on celebrating the ordinary things.
It’s not your usual “feel/think nice things” pap that circulate the web. It’s a frank reminder of how we respond to the news cycle. And how the media and politicians have to rely on sensationalism to get our attention and make a headline. While the ordinary things never make the cut. I’ve run the whole thing below. A REALLY important way to look at the immigration debate.
But I also like this about it: it’s an example of a hard news journalist taking a gentle approach. I hope we’ll see more and more of this over time. I think the world is shifting. I think, soon, we’ll crave this kind of gentle, ordinary approach to the news cycle. And we’ll seek the true evolution happening behind the sensationalist headline.
Celebrate the ordinary things
The apparently mundane doesn’t impress us, whether it’s a successful plane journey, hot water on tap or a successful immigrant.
THE shower threw steaming water into the dawn at the twist of a tap, just as it does every morning; a flick of the light switch rolled away the dark, as always.
The kettle boiled and there was tea; toast leapt from the toaster .
Outside, the car awaited. The engine turned over at the first touch of the key and I rolled into the day, rain falling onto the weather-tight windscreen.
Things work. Little things that we hardly take the time to think about. Oh, there are traffic jams and demands upon time, mortgages to pay and all manner of frustrations and niggles.
I have a robust disdain for banana bread. Wrapped as it often is in rustic sandwich paper, all brown and chunky-looking, the stuff poses as an innocuously wholesome breakfast food. Banana. And bread. So breakfasty! But what a slippery sell-in. One slice of the stuff contains up to 2339kj. You have yours with butter? Hold onto your digestive juices for this: this tasty package comprises a whopping one-third of your recommended daily dietary intake and contains up to 44g of sugar. Or, to keep things tangible, 10 teaspoons.
Disdainful much?
Slippery sell-ins are the reason why we’re getting fat. We’re bludgeoned with competing diet tricks and plans. And food is confusing; it’s rarely what it says it is. The net result: we have no bloody idea what we’re meant to eat anymore. We have food fatigue. And so we eat banana bread.
It’s not that we don’t know the information – the most read item in the home is the back of a cereal box. And yet, how many of us know that those little-flakes-of-corn-consumed-at-breakfast, for instance, are drenched with more salt than potato chips. One pasta sauce I found in the back of my pantry contains more sugar than chocolate topping. And plain old orange juice…jamful with as much sugar as a can of Coke, about 10 teaspoons. True!
In my studies to become a health counselor I’ve weighed up more than 100 different diets. None work. The human condition is not made for restriction (we’re forward-moving beasts) and so our bodies rebel against diets at some point, in most cases putting on more weight than might have been lost (the evolutionary purpose of which might just be to teach us not to try such a stupid stunt again?).
