- I’m taking requests…hit me up. While I’m out of here, would you mind telling me what you want from this site in my “new year” (when I get back). This is not an idle call out that’s secretly geared at “including the community” and “crowd sourcing”. I actually need some interesting insights to come home to. 1. What bits of the more
- This is what it looks like when dads get parental leave Many moons ago I did a political internship at Parliament House. I wrote a paper for Lindsay Tanner, then Member for Melbourne, looking at the worth of paid paternal leave. It was all about comparing the Australian situation with Sweden where half of the very generous paid parental leave provisions must/can only be taken by the father. Today, 480 more
- Is Sarah Wilson anti-vaccination? The short answer is NO. So is the longer one. Consider this An Open Letter to Journalists Who Find Themselves A Little Confused. I’ll do this little “cheat sheet” in bullets because, frankly, I don’t have the patience for pleasantries. And I figure I need to get to the point clearly. It seems many journalists more
- Solastalgia, a new type of unease My interest in words that sum up melancholia or human yearning (in a way that standard English just can’t) continues. A Twitter friend (Dr Daz) sent me this read about “solastalgia”, a word invented by (retired) Murdoch University professor of sustainability and environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht. Solastalgia describes “the homesickness you have when you are still more
- The joy of catching others in a vulnerable, unaware moment I derive very happy jolts from glimpsing someone in the middle of a moment. An unawares moment. Some examples: A bike courier singing as he rides through traffic; the woman in the pencil skirt who does a little excited skip to herself as she walks down the street; the power walker at the beach who more
- The best advice to creatives ever: you have to go through a volume of work When I lived in Byron (writing my first book) I used to drive to my friend Annie’s house in the hills for dinner on Sundays. I timed it to listen to Ira Glass on This American Life. I’d time it so I could pull over in the really mind-expanding, precipace-thinking bits. Not listened to one more
- Sonder The best words are the ones with no English equivalent. They invariably describe moments in the human experience that we find exotically ungraspable. Unpindownable. Fleeting. Ephemeral. Often they’re concepts that Anglo culture has – simply – failed to grasp. Some of my favourites include hygge, haimish, mamihlapinatapai and suadade. Today I present you with sonder. sonder, more
- Why my battle to tame my wandering is a good one A thought. I was reading the follow-up to a wellbeing study I’d heard about ages ago that uses a phone app to track real-time moments in happiness. Psychologist Matthew Killingsworth who put the project together tracked daydreaming as well. And found this: Daydreaming is not good for well-being. Which surprised me, and it might you. more
- Am I a hypocrite? There’s a horrible feeling that grips at me from behind the neck at times. It’s like a sucky monster that latches on when I do something seemingly counter to my (often vocal) ethical stance on something. And it whispers in my ear, ”Sarah, you’re a double-standard, Pollyanna-ish flake”. Does he hang about your dowager’s hump more
- I’m going to start auctioning lovely things for good food folk… This is a new idea. Not complex. So let’s see how it goes. You may remember this wonderful painting (below) I shared on New Years Day. My mate Paul from The Art Park in Byron Bay painted it. Paul is a talent. He used to do the poster art for 80s outfits (an 80s word?) more
