Monthly Archives: January 2014

A “strawberry” kind of story.

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Sunny Ridge Strawberry Farm, Main Ridge, Victoria

I recently ventured with my sisters on a “sister date” to a local Strawberry Farm. The whole experience turned out to be a lot more (wait for it) fruitful, than I would have ever thought.

You see, as I was making my way through the rows, upon rows of juicy, juicy, ruby red strawbs, I came across some not so juicy, not so red, somewhat demented fruity friends (did I just refer to strawberries as friends, I have officially lost it).

Then I got to thinking.

Imagine if one of the greenly-tinged strawberries had eyes (they have eyes now too? Oh gawd.), and looked over it’s more-ripened friend, and was just so sad that he was still pale. So sad in fact, that he started to hide from the sun under the leaves, trying to avoid being seen. The poor strawberry (in my head), has no idea that if he just stays out in the sun for that much longer, he will very soon be just as, if nor more scarlet red, than his neighbour!

Secondly, among the super red ones which I did come across – and wow were there so many – delicious too If I might add – many were not the typical, genetically-modified-to-perfection strawberry shape.

Oh no, there were some which looked like they had been hit by train, rolled twice, side-swiped by a semi, then poked by King Kong. They were certainly not “perfect” by any standards. But they were still, so, Yum! Like delicious in fact, sometimes even sweeter than the larger, pointed ones, as their flavor was concentrated into a retarded octagon figure.

I wonder if from these mutant strawberries’ perspective, they were bad, imperfect or unworthy. Poor things, little do they know they are more delicious than their “perfect” brothers.

It’s a sad thought, and a bit creepy to be thinking so deeply about strawberries, but hey, there is always a moral to the story, and in this case, a Dr. Seuss-ical lesson to be learnt.

(I apologise in advance for being so whimsical, I blame Miss. Mocrieff, YOU encouraged this!). 

So here it is, Fun Fact #256: You are delicious! Yes, delicious, just like a demented strawberry who isn’t quite ripe enough yet. If your not delicious now you will be, just wait and see. Just stay out in the sun, I promise you’ll be red and juicy soon!

Stay delicious. 

 P.S I am so sorry, but I couldn’t resist including this vid. Nikki’s PR are geniuses for me reminisce this song whenever I think of strawberries!

When dreams you didn’t even know you had, come true.

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The world is continuing to inspire me with every passing day, and I’m noticing that even though I need at least 3 lifetimes to effectively execute my current bucket-list, and no mater how hard I try to practice some crazy, wild child ambitious dreaming, it seems that there will be some morsels of gold thrown my way, materializing fantasies I haven’t even ‘dreamt’, conjured, tasted, or felt yet.

It is precisely at this point, (when I see paddle-boards on someone’s car roof), that I not only realize that I now want to paddle-board along the entire bay, but also, that my bucket list will never be complete.

I will always need another leaf of paper as soon as all the dotted lines are filled, and a trip to the newsagent, once I have exasperated every option on my 4-pen.

Surely, as soon as I tick off hiking to Base Camp, the Everest trek will supersede my next day-off hike, and just when I think I have seen every crevice of Barcelona, I will acknowledge that Granada is only a short train ride south, with an inevitable backyard of even more spectacular things for me to touch, explore and appreciate.

From that location and perspective, I just know that another place, idea, experience, ride, walk, talk or book will come flying my way and a whole new world will open before me, for the thousandth time.

What I’m learning today, tomorrow, next week, and now, is that this world is fast, so fast that if you blink you might just miss it, the way that you might miss the Town Centre of Yackandandah, if you look down at your volume dial in an attempt to turn the radio up whilst driving. (Shout out to my fave, and only Yack-er, Harry Quealy).

We never really know where the de-tour is actually going to take us, or if we might just find the next big thing on Bean Hunter if we go left instead of right.

The implications and consequences of every thought, word, action, chance encounter, and brief meeting is something we will never truly grasp.

But that’s the beauty of it right? Making rules in order to break them, and setting plans so you can bail last minute for something better, greater, funner?

So keep dreaming, little dreamer, as Cinderella says, a dream is a wish your heart makes. Corny I know, but everyone loves a little Disney flashback (or maybe that’s just me…awks).

A passionate discussion on passion, not pashing.

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There’s a lot of noise at the moment about passion.

Passionfruit has always been delish, and Passiona a somewhat refreshing beverage.

But take away these suffixes, then your’e just left with little old passion. Just. Left. With. Passion. A 7 letter gem that shapes a lot of what the mystics call their ‘life-purpose’, what the entrepreneurs label their ‘calling’, and what I like to call, something bloody massive I just cant decide on.

I mean, personally, I want to be a writer, a dancer (currently I’m perfecting the moonwalk), a surfer (thanks Blue Crush), a corporate bitch, a band-member, a hippie who lives in a combi in Byron and sells handmade jewellery, a yoga instructor, a Buddhist monk, a mining magnate, Miranda Kerr… basically, everything under the sun.

I guess in my fiasco of options, I am desperately just trying to define my, wait for it… PASSION.

As I learn more about the said, 7 letter-er, I can safely say the two of us are slowly becoming friends.

Motivational books will tell you to “follow your passion” if happiness is what you truly seek, but thanks Confucius, how am I meant to follow something when I don’t even know what it looks like? There is no road-sign, no Google answer, not even a Wikipedia article that precisely tells me what my passion is. So, your notions of living a purposeful life are really of no help to me at all, not unless you help me find it anyway.

So I assigned myself a James Bond mission to get to the bottom of the P word. What I found was surprisingly simple.

What. Do. You. Love. 

But here’s the catch, you have to limit it to 10. And list them in order.

These are your passions. Voila!

A 10-point list could very well include:

·      Cheerleading,

·      Shopping,

·      Travelling,

·      Eating McDonald’s fries,

·      Being with friends,

·      Reading,

·      Watching the Disney Channel,

·      Playing in the pool,

·      Playing with dogs,

·      Being in the sun.

Please note these are the Top 10 ‘passions’ of my 12 year-old sister.

So enlighten me, how on earth is she going to make a career out of being a dog-loving, junk-food munching, cheerleader? Truth is, mate, she’s not.

So as an informer big sister, do I tell her to discard all these fun things because, well honey, that ain’t gon’ pay the bills? 

Nope, I tell her to lap them up, do these things, and do them often!

Do them for as long as you stop loving doing them, and when you do, find something more fun and enjoyable to replace them.

Because they are your passions.

(P.S she later argued, telling me that people actually can make money being a cheerleader, enough for a 50-cent cone anyway!)

I think what we get caught up in, is thinking that you have to find passion in a job or career, but truthfully, that would be condemning your crazy passions into a tiny hole and saying, ‘don’t move, breathe, or smile. No fun allowed’. Passion is so much more multi-faceted. 

Sure, we would all love to be Oprah, or Kelly Slater, doing for a job what we LOVE, but let’s be realistic. Don’t think that if you are not able to land your dream job on Getaway, that you are going to live in misery, you can be as happy as Pharrell, even if you are the toilet cleaner at Flinders Street Station on a Saturday night.

But “how” you scream. I’ll impart my wisdom with you, it’s all about how you spend the remaining 77 hours of your week (considering a 35 hour work week and 56 crucial beauty sleep provisions).

That my sweet child, is where you live your passions. Read, dance, bake, write, sing, play, laugh and laugh some more!

Even if you just spend half your free time doing the things you love, you have already outbid your day job. Kapish?

So basically, yeah. Homework for this week, list your ten passions, and sacrifice Game of thrones to play out your own fanstasy!

I would love to hear your thoughts on the passionate topic, and what activities and things come up in your Top 10 list.

 

P.S Take a leaf from Janey’s book, this gal is one passionate painter!

 

So in Sync.

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I’ve been reading a tad about synchronicity lately, and testing the waters with a newfound awareness of how in sync, well, everything really is. I guess I am finally beginning to comprehend the reality of that age-old adage, “everything is connected”.

At work today, I told one of my biggest fans and favorite work mate, that I would be writing a blog post, at this point, I wasn’t sure what I would choose as my topic, but I assured her that throughout the day, I would FIND something to write about. (Remember the word FIND #keyword). I also promised to dedicate the post to her, so here you go Till, you looked great behind the till today ;).

Back to the post – So it’s New Years Day and the café is filled to the brim, with Melbourne beach vacationers proudly disrupting the usual flow of regulars, and ensuring that my pedometer reaches an impressive 10,000 steps before 12pm.

In between collecting latte glasses and picking up the marshmallows that children forget to eat with their baby chinos, I see in the middle of a major walkway, amongst the chaos that would undoubtedly resemble that of Chadstone on Boxing day, and amidst the clamour that I imagine to fill the mosh pit of Justin Bieber’s last pre-teen concert – I hope you are getting how crazy our little coffee spot was! – I see a feather.

Firstly, I don’t see any birds.

Secondly, I don’t see any blackbirds.

Thirdly, its raining so I’m not sure where anyone could have seen a bird, let alone a black one on a day like this.

Fourth, how did it get inside? a.k.a who is the creepy bird keeper, this isn’t Hogwarts.

Fifth, how has someone else not stood on it and kicked under table 5 yet?

Sixth, how lucky is it that I looked down at the exact moment that I could a) see it, b) pick it up, c) realize that within an hour of professing my need to FIND something to write about to my gal pal Tilly, that indeed, I had FOUND exactly what I was looking for!

With a little imagination and a touch of enthusiastic vocab, this post is borne, and a profound “moral of the story” shared.

After finding this little treasure in the most unlikely of places, I got to thinking about the whole synchronicity of the whole event.

Then I started musing over the other synchronicities that I experience, and often overlook.

  • How many times have you thought about a funny night out, and nek minnit, someone “likes” one of the photos from that night on Facebook.
  • Or, you have a song in your head and nek minnit it’s playing on Fox Fm.

But do these coincidences delve much deeper? Carl Jung (who is a pretty big deal in the psychology world), called it the phenomenon of synchronicity, and over the years, the reports of epic flukes are countless. Type in “coincidences” in Google, and the results are pretty “wow-wow”! (Seriously do it, there are some loco stories out there), but think back throughout just today, and I promise you will find at least one event of synchronicity, but don’t just look for huge ones like wishing to be rich, then winning the lottery. Think about these bonds basics:

  • Wishing Melbourne turned on summer a little better, then seeing an ad in the paper for sunny Bali.
  • Thinking about your uncle in Sydney and then hearing about someone’s recent trip to NSW.
  • Considering what to have for lunch then you pass Subway.

Whatever it is, believe me, it is connected. We are all connected.

Even people. On my last overseas trip I realized how small the world was and accepted that I just HAD to be in Krakow, Poland in order to make some new Melbourne friends, and I HAD to be in London to finally learn the name of the guy I used to scroll through Tumblr with in our first year Business Law Lecture.

It’s just the way the cookie crumbles, and it’s pretty exciting stuff, if you only become aware of it, notice it and appreciate it.

So here’s your mission if you choose to accept it agent 007, keep an eye, ear and hand out for the coincidences! I’d love to hear what magic comes your way! Holla!