School holidays slide show

When people ask what made me decide to be a teacher I often recount the story of having glandular fever in my third year of Uni. I lay in bed for three weeks, too tired and in pain to do anything, but bored out of my brain, so I had a bit of time to think. I knew that I would fail my Psychology statistics subject and didn't really mind as Psychology had started to all sound a bit iffy to me anyway. Too many of our 'normalcy' benchmarks seemed to have involved experiments on animals and prisoners...
Subsequently, I started to rethink my career-trajectory-life-direction-path.... and found myself leaning towards the idea of having lots of time off.

These holidays I attended the National Young Writers' and This is Not Art festivals in Newcastle.

This is what I did:


Swam at Newcastle Beach


Took lots of photos of rocks





and seaweed.



Attended panel discussions:




and performances at the Festival Club:


I did some writing:


and some busking:


and took my life into my own hands by riding the worst piece of dangerous, rusty crap on the streets of Newcastle:



Not sure if it is clear here the degree to which this derailer is not only rusty, but also bent. Makes it hard to keep a chain in the right spot, like on the cogs, for example.

Cursing at a bike in front of strangers aside, Newcastle was generally a pretty inspiring experience. I really enjoyed the anonymity of a new town, staying in a youth hostel again, and meeting some interesting people.
Busking was good fun too - I love playing outdoors, but I wouldn't ever feel comfortable sitting in a park and singing my heart out. Somehow having a few coins on your guitar bag legitimises what, for me, is otherwise overt people watching and being a self-involved outdoor nuisance.

I participated in a morning writing 'playgroup,' which was just five of us sharing some writing exercises and doing some timed freeflow-type writing around dumb topics. I suggested shoes. It was really liberating to introduce myself as a singersongwriter, rather than a teacher. I divulged to these clever strangers something that I have never really articulated to anyone else, that writing songs is so enjoyable for me because I feel like I can get away with a lot, intellectually. My writing is not very high-brow, but is unique, because only I get to sing it. I guess it's just unique to me; in reality it's pretty similar to the masses of folky-acousticos out there, although, in Newcastle there didn't seem to be many of these. From my 3-day-stay-snobby-Melbourne perspective the best approximation of live music seemed to be Kareoke at the pub on Friday night.

From Newcastle I caught the train to Sydney. Sydney offered much less chance for creative contemplation and writing, and much more opportunities for partying and shopping. However, I did get to do some guitar practice in the flat about the shop, and have begun to foster a more amicable relationship with my cheap nylon string Martinez Slim Jim. It is still a piece of shit with annoyingly high action though.

In Sydney I...

played a lot of backgammon:



hung out at Circe:


went to the beach:


found pretty things:







and went for walks on cliffs:



I also bought a new digicamera and think I am very smart... may or may not have been obvious from this very labour intensive post.

Back to school on Monday = lots of rushed marking to do, but a sunny holiday has done the world of good.