Make the most of your weekend, especially if you're lucky enough not to be in lockdown.
Linking with #HappyTuesday #WednesdayAroundTheWorld #WonderfulWednesday #ThruMyLens #NaturesNotes
We have all hit lockdown fatigue. There was a good webinar out of Sydney Uni on it (focusing on young people and children), and the transcript will be up soon. It's worth checking out. I am apparently young too, because I recognised me in there a few times.
I am now mourning even that half life I was complaining about.
So get your vax, stay home and let's get back to the crappy old socially distanced, restricted numbers normal we had before.
If possible, buy takeaways (delivered) from your locals to keep them afloat.
My theme song for now.
It's a tough one. There is inevitably a lot of rejection with writing. But just aw writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised to strengthen, you also need to work on how you deal with rejection. You have to get so used to rejection that you form a callus. Take heed, work out what you're doing wrong, improve but don't give up.
I have a couple of friends who wrote books and at one point or other both decided their books weren't any good. One is deciding to give up sending it out, just because it's been rejected a few times. I am trying to push him along, make him realise that one or two rejections is nothing. Stephen King's Carrie was rejected 33 times, and he threw it in the bin. His wife dug it out and insisted he persisted and we know how the story ends.
I enter a lot of short story competitions. That is the easiest way to learn to be unfazed by rejection. You don't have to put in a year's labour, and you get relatively quick feedback. A few pats on the back make a huge difference, but when rejected, you learn and grow.
In Age against the machine, a podcast I mentioned last week, Marcia Hines talks about what causes Imposter Syndrome. "Somewhere along the way someone told you you'te not worthy, and you believed it". She concludes, 'You should never believe it'.
I learnt from Art Spiegelman in Maus, 'Why not me?' Look at the logical statistical outcomes and then set out to do everything necessary to make it happen.
I am in two book clubs and read a broad range of books. Not all of them are good. Not even the best sellers. So don't think you have to be good to get published. You need a hook, you need a market, you need appeal. Listen to feedback and criticism and work with it. Get it out there, in front of as many eyes as possible.
See it more as a challenge or a game than the rejection of your baby, and you.
And write a few quick shorts to get your confidence back before returning to the big labour of love.
How do you deal with inevitable rejection as a writer?
Linking with #InspireMeMonday #FriendshipFriday
It gets different perspectives on ageing from around the world, on appearance, power, confidence and relevance. Our normal is not necessarily normal. Or maybe there are some warnings of where we don't want to follow.
The big takeaway for me came from a woman called Joan Nestle, an activist and author, among other things. She says "If history comes knocking at your door....Open it." As this country seems to be widening the inequity and inflicting so much suffering on the population, perhaps as we age we need to start carry the load for others. We need to demand change, not just for our own interests, but for what is ethically wrong. She finishes with "Don't be afraid to stand alone....Don't be burdened by the yoke of respectability and all that means...If you see there is a real need to step into an unsafe place, to make yourself marginalised because of a larger issue, do it...Knowing even if it was just once, you stood up and said "I can't accept this..." Perhaps the real thing we need to embrace as we age, is our responsibility to make this country, and the world, a better place for the generations to come. We have failed at that, however maybe this will be where we benefit most in purpose and drive once our children have left home and we settle into retirement?
As an aside, I have a very successful friend in a high powered job who is taking a dramatic pay cut to work for a non profit. Another friend has moved from a prestige workplace to do the same. It manifests in different ways but the drive to do something with meaning, over something that makes money, brings purpose and fulfilment in later life.
I think of that meme 'Never pick a fight with a woman over 40. They're full of rage and sick of everyone's shit.' There is a nugget of truth in that, so perhaps we need to harness that rage to change the paradigm (a fancy word for other people's shit)?
This is not a podcast specifically on menopause but it does frame the headspace in a more positive lens for embracing it.
As always, it starts with you, it starts today.
Linking with #WeekendCoffeeShare because if we were having coffee I'd be recommending this podcast to you....
As facebook does, it reminded me with a flood of photos of what we were missing from years gone past. One of my rituals in the Hunter is to get up early and take photos of the kangaroos at sunrise.
Sharing these pictures, because like the roos, I seem to be a creature of habit and the fact that these photos appeared over a span of two years on the same day, it appears I follow a very strict routine.
I really loved this ripped male, though was completely intimidated and zoomed in with the lens, rather than approached.
Did you find your surrounds change rapidly when thrown into lockdown?
Late 2019, I was lucky enough to get to China. In Beijing, we stopped at the Panda House, more because I felt we 'should' while we were there, I thought we'd tear in and out and move onto something more interesting. What I failed to realise was how delightful these animals are. 
The Chengdu Panda Reserve has a panda cam for anyone keen to watch them in action from afar.
