Share Four Something - August

 Something I loved  It's been a really quite month as my mum was sick so I had to cancel a few things - fortunately, as there were the exams, I hadn't booked as much as normal. So after a rough an lonely few weeks, it was great to get out and sing 90's songs with friends (and dance!) at Sing it!. If you haven't been and you like to sing, definitely get yourself to a show. It's so much fun!     

Also good to get to a couple of comedians - Bobby Lee and Kitty Flanagan. Nothing makes you feel better than laughing AND thinking! Kitty raised an issue that I raised with friends after a talk at FODI on the weekend. I can't stop thinking about it. So more on that to come in a post....

At the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, you could dig through a HEAP of dirt for 5 minutes (timed) looking for art works. I was surprised that it was deeply satisfying and pleasant to feel the dirt under your bare feet (obviously something I don't do enough of) and while it was a test in patience - I said to my friend 'I won't be able to do this for 5 minutes!' I was genuinely surprised when we were called off the heap because our time was up...so it was in fact a very zen exercise.

Something that sustained me I spent the weekend at Festival of Dangerous Ideas and went to about 9 talks over 2 days. There was so much to think about and I learnt a lot, and it was great to discuss it all with friends over a lovely lunch on the last day, and in the breaks between talks if we had them. One of the best ones was Enshittification and you can listen to it here ($17). It's well worth it, in my opinion. There are plenty of other talks from past years on demand here. One thing that came up in the session on Bad Education is that in Australia, education is transactional. It's for a job or for marks - it's not about learning and the love of learning and what feeding interests can do for you (shame on Morrison for what he did to the Humanities). I realised that's what everyone in the FODI audience was doing. We were learning, we were thinking about points of view we may or may not agree with, we were nourishing our souls and exercising our minds and feeling invigorated by learning. I think it's really sad what we are becoming. And you just have to go on Twitter to realise how many people don't understand how elections work (regarding preferences) or how Super is paid. It's extraordinary. So we have lost something in the last 40 years with our decline in education and more importantly, not valuing education, and that's very sad to see. If you have never been to FODI, I suggest you go to at least one talk next year. It's by far my favourite talk festival of the year.

Something I'm carrying forward from this month to the next As I mentioned in this post, my youngest is now 18, so I am finding the balance of parenting an adult, but also dealing with a school kid, who has school obligations. It's a tricky line to tread....you have to find the balance of adult independence but also remind them to study, to get enough sleep, to be doing all the things required for school in the last months...and not damage our relationship in the process by over parenting, but not damage their options by under parenting.... 

Something I'm making space for Grip strengthening and arm weights, plus some neuro-exercises. They're just off the internet so who knows if they do anything, but I'm working on the theory that they don't hurt (if they're the right ones). This is because I read that poor grip strength is linked to cognitive decline. I don't know if it's true (there are a lot of medical articles so I'm guessing it is) and I guess it makes sense that if those neural pathways weaken, those weaker connections show in a physical way, But whether you can correct them in reverse, strengthening the physically to strengthen the mental, who knows? (Sorry to leave you on that cheery note). The John Olson painting looked like a neuron to me, in case you were wondering why I included it...ha!

Linking with #TalkaboutitTuesday