let’s catch up …maybe

These last few weeks have been pretty hectic. Everything’s a bit of a blur. I’ve been doing a lot of overtime at work because of this new arrangement in place involving other hospitals. (Can’t say too much, of course, because of privacy reasons or whatever.) I just worked six consecutive days – some of which were 11-12 hour days – and I am quite exhausted, but also not. I think I’ve just been running on adrenaline all week because I only had a total of maybe 3 cups of coffee and one cup of tea the whole week (and the most recent two beverages were probably unnecessary anyway).

Well, maybe we’ll call it adrenaline and fear/panic. There have been many times these last few weeks when I’ve felt like I was working as if my life depended on it. It’s like a fear of death (i.e. consequences) or fear of God (i.e. management – except I’m not really afraid of management; they’ve been very supportive).

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selling words

Like a lot of people who blog or write in some form on a regular basis I’ve long dreamt of being paid to write. I can now happily say that that dream has now been fulfilled (and it was, in fact, one of the things on my Accomplished List). It’s definitely been a very interesting experience, so, naturally, I’m going to write about it here. 

BWF: Marks left by Masterful Minds

This was the first panel discussion I attended at this year’s Brisbane Writers Festival. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, or if you know me in real life, it’s probably obvious why I’d be drawn to this talk, given its title (I’m alluding, of course, to my love of classic novels). The panel was chaired by Julianne Schultz, with guest writers Dennis Glover, Catherine Lacey and Jeff Sparrow. They had each researched and written books about inspiring and noteworthy individuals: for Glover it was George Orwell, Sparrow followed Paul Robeson, and Lacey researched various individuals in an intricate web of relationships. 

BWF: star struck

The Brisbane Writers Festival was held at the State Library, with panel discussions conducted in several auditoriums throughout the complex. As such, there were many concurrent talks at any one time, and it might’ve been hard deciding which one to go to at each time slot, but this particular one was an easy choice for me.

The second of three talks (yes, I’m doing this out of order) that I attended at the BWF was titled “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives” and, like the title suggests, was about finding extraordinary things within the ordinary and everyday. This was a panel discussion, chaired by Steven Lang, with guests David Cohen, Robert Drewe and Kyo Maclear. I was drawn to this event because it’s something that eternally fascinates me, and it’s part of the reason why I read blogs, and why I enjoy talking to customers at work, and why I usually try to be the one asking questions in a conversation, etc, etc.

Brisbane Writers Festival 2017

Yesterday I attended a few panel discussions that were held as part of the annual Brisbane Writers Festival. I’d previously only attended the BWF once before, several years ago, and, for various reasons, hadn’t been back since. I was either too busy, or had other things on; perhaps I found out about it too late, and didn’t have a chance to get tickets for the talks I was interested in; or maybe there was part of me that thought my time would be better spent actually writing rather than hearing about things that other people wrote.

This year, however, I felt compelled to go, and thank goodness I did! 

in the middle of a list

Not too long ago, I was browsing WordPress, and came across a blog where someone had posted a list of things that they want to do in their lifetime. It’s sort of like a bucket list, but they’d given it a special kind of name. Unfortunately, I did not write this down, and do not remember the name of the blogger or the blog, but I do remember their list. Well, not the items on the list, but the existence of the list, and how they’d progressively crossed off many things on the list. (Come to think of it, it might’ve just been called “The List”. If you know the owner of this List, or you are the owner of The List, please let me know, and I will give full credit.)