Share Four Somethings - January

Things I've loved Family holiday in Japan took me away for the first 2 weeks of the Sydney Festival so I've hit the ground running on my return. Plays, circus, concerts - a very busy time with friends and the arts. It's relaxed and thought provoking. I love Sydney in Summer. 10 years ago I wrote virtually the very same thing, my love for Sydney in SydFest time! I always love living in Sydney but it really shifts the vibe during the warm summer festival.

Things I've accomplished This is much harder to answer. I'm strugging to wake up in the morning, I'm running out of time to exercise each day. I haven't done any work. I have managed to get people where they need to be, write a few blog posts and feed everyone (and do massive loads of washing) but I don't feel I've accomplished anything worth mentioning. I did finish booking our anniversay trip so I guess that's a success, right?

Something I need to improve upon Time management, focus and organisation. See above. I think I'm not in routine so it's part of the problem. I'm not keen to think about what the other problem might be just yet.

Things I've noticed My facebook memories is often sharing things relevant to my now. I don't know if I just repeatedly think the same things over and over and then forget about it or if the past is trying to be recognised in some weird way (I know it's not but I like this idea of past me yelling out to me). A meme with Spuddle appeared from 5 or so years ago in my Memories and that's a 17th century word meaning 'to work ineffectively; to be extremely busy whilst achieving absolutely nothing' (see the 2 entries above). There were two other entries this week in my memories that related to conversations I'd been having with friends the day after I'd had them....so strange...

Linking with #FriendshipFriday #ThruMyLens #WordlessWednesday  #PictorialTuesday #TrafficJamReboot  #ShareFourSomethings 

The stage pic is from The Chosen Haram, the circus pics are from Phare (White Gold) - if you are even in Siem Reap, do not miss it! The preshow Negroni was waiting for Masterclass. All great and worth seeing if you have the chance.

Street art in Nakaziki

Linking with #RubyTuesdayToo

Because of the earthquake, we decided not to head to Nara on the kids 'rest day' incase something was to close the roads back (and stop the trains) so headed over to the Vintage shops (and streets) in Osaka.

The man who owned this shop was dressed to match the murals.

Very cool and funky outing, and a most enjoyable alternative. 

Linking with #WWOAT #KeithsRamblings #MuralMondays 

January Reading

Butch ado about nothing - My Christmas present to myself was getting the new Grace Petrie shirt and her script of her show for Edinburgh Festival. When she was in Sydney she posted about finding a venue to practice it in front of an audience and I listed (and tagged) every local venue I could think of. I was so excited! It was so close but didn't happen. She said she would bring it back but it appears not. So I did the next best thing. As I've seen her lots of times, I can read it in her voice. Very funny, very sad and for a white, hetro (read non minority, fits in with society's 'norms') female,it's an insight in to how hard we make it for certain
people. She seems to think that is changing, and I'm glad it is. She is coming to sing at Canberra Folk Festival and I'm hoping for a Sydney date but I will travel (and cheaper than going to Melbourne to see her like I did last year). While I know this is books not music, here's the Ikea song.

On the recommendation of a number of people in this link up, I read (well, actually listened to Truman Capote reading his) Christmas Memory. Free on youtube for those interested. It's charming and sweet with s dash of sadness. Lovely stuff.

Who is Mr. Satoshi? I read this because it was set in Japan, so knew nothing else about it. I found it an enjoyable, easy read (though it has a ridiculous male fantasy sex scene where a young woman likes an older man - which I didn't buy at all. Though interestingly my mum didn't think it was terrible and really enjoyed the book). The 'mystery' is interesting and engaging and the lines about dementia are quite lovely and poetically accurate.

Linking with #Bookdate #StackingtheShelves #SundaySalon

  

Ice Tulips

 I was at DisneySea in January when I saw these. I assumed they were fake but was surprised to discover they were real.

Later googling explained the blooms in winter. They're known as ice tulips because the bulbs have been refrigerated so that they bloom in winter.

Thus all the magficient blooms.

Linking with #MySundaySnapshot

  #WWOT #NaturesNotes 

Heron in flight

I was lucky enough to look up at the right time. Slightly off centre but I think it adds to the photo in a way. 

'Like the air-invested heron, great persons should conduct themselves; and the higher they be, the less they should show" Philip Sidney 

Linking with #GardenAffair (birds)

In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary ~ Aaron Rose.

It had been an overcast day for our big day of sightseeing in Kyoto. Thankfully not raining but grey and dark.

Then as we hit Kinkakuji, the temple with the famed golden pavillion in the afternoon, the sun came out to hit the gold in just the right angle. It glowed.

It would have still been beautiful but with the sun as a spotlight it was breath-taking.

The camera doesn't really pick up the shine emanating from the building but you can sort of see it comeing from under the roof.

I was told by a friend that the reason these buildings survive the many earthquakes is that they are placed upon rocks, so the rocks move with the earth when it shakes, bearing the brunt of the movement.

In short, they go with the flow. Perhaps that is the lesson we take from these stunning edifices? Events might shake us but if we remain steady under impact, we will still be standing at the end.

Linking with 

  

The Road Less Travelled

Linking with #SkyWatch

I'm not really fit to talk about this topic. I may have taken a little longer to get there, but I did eventually get married and have kids. I worked a run of the mill corporate job for 15 years or so. I became a stay-at-home mum after my second child was born. All my roads have been pretty conservative norms by society's standards. 

However, I have noticed that a number of my friends have switched from high powered,high income jobs to lower paid, not for profit work in their 50s. So perhaps the road travelled by most of us, or the pathways of 'success' are not as fulfilling as we're lead to believe? These people are deciding they need 'more', but it isn't more money that they're chasing.

I struggled to write this post. I don't feel I choose the road less travelled very often. So I put it to friends. They came back with stories of adventures in remote places, like meeting an old lady on the TransSiberian Railway, a smuggler who was fascinated by them, the tourists, because they seemed exotic. One woman reminisced about the time she hitchhiked across the Nullabour with her dog. Another told a tale of getting lost trekking to Base Camp on Everest and spending the night in a shepherd's corral with his goats. the tales where curiosity is rewarded or when getting lost brings a gift of unforgettable experience. There were many tales of adventurous youth, choosing to go off the well trodden path, both in the travels or working on cruise ships for years.

Then came the stories of missed flights, getting on the wrong plane to arrive in an entirely different destination than intended and one friend changed her flight because she didn't want to have to get up and go to JFK so early. Her original trip was on flight 173 on December 28, 1978 which crashed when it ran out of fuel while trying to fix an issue with the landing gear. These decisions that change everything, or throw you into unanticipated experience.

Which got me thinking. Sometimes the road less travelled is accidental. Our lives are a million different choices, often imperceptible, made daily. Any of those decisions, no matter how small, might steer us onto a road less travelled for awhile. You may remember when booking a trip to Norway, I didn't really pay attention to the map and booked us to Svalbard, the northern most settlement on the planet, for a family holiday in the Polar Night. I realised when we were the only tourists on the plane, the only people with children in a sea of FIFO workers and even the airport staff were asking us what we were doing there that perhaps this wasn't the most thought out plan of mine. This lead to our encounter with a polar bear and a wild near death experience, saved by an amazingly quick thinking and brave dog sled guide!

A friend who lived her whole life travelling the planet, since she was 5 and then from 17 working in many countries and in the travel industry, was forced to give up her own travel agency when COVID hit. She got a job at the ATO and to my surprise, she loves it. So which is her road less travelled? The nomadic life she lead in the first 45 years of her life, or the 9-5 government gig she's revelling in now?  Maybe there are many roads and it's only our world view that makes them see more alluring and remote?

Maybe we don't always choose the road less travelled but when we look back, we find out we ended up on it anyway, and that willingness to take a chance or having the curiosity to explore, to throw ourselves in wholeheartedly and back our decisions, as the Robert Frost poem ends "has made all the difference".

Linking with #WaterThursday for the first and last shots