On reflection

After years of scraping together money to keep myself and family afloat(ish) I've decided to go back to my old penurious ways and devote time to reflection as I used to do. It's a hard decision in hard times but without time one cannot continue to be a poet, and if I am anything at all, that's all I am. After years of being ruled by money, in however small amounts, it's difficult to adjust to the regimen of reading and reflection and thinking without guilt about the treadmill. Reflection begins to feel 'undisciplined' - one's mind has become used to the constant distraction of activity and to the inanition of task and deadline. Instead of being the secondary offshoots of the main occupation, they can take over your entire world.

Today I am reading, thinking, writing. And tonight, when I have finished reading, I will do the necessary literary tasks.

Purity

Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. - Lao Tzu

Salary Information - Latest Pay Rates by Industry at MyCareer

For a truly depressing picture of salaries in Australia if you are a writer. It's not that we earn crap money, that's not news, but that we don't even make a proper classification in the list:
Salary Information - Latest Pay Rates by Industry at MyCareer

DIY lazy person's voting

Try this out: GetUp!

for your own How to Vote card. Not all of the candidates have filled out their profiles, but I found this remarkably accurate when I looked at the candidate's information. It didn't change the way I intend to vote, and I won't follow it exactly, but it did pretty well reflect my vote.

Try it out for yourself, be amazed.

Haiku Productivity: Limit Your Projects to Achieve Completion

How many projects do you have on your projects list? How many balls can you keep in the air?I submit that the more projects you have, the less likely you are to complete each one. And the reverse is also true: the fewer projects you have, the more likely you are to complete them.

read more | digg story

Quote from Tom Paine

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
-- Thomas Paine

Peaceful Simplicity: How to Live a Life of Contentment | zen habits

A good statement:
“Whatever the tasks, do them slowly
with ease,
in mindfulness,
so not do any tasks with the goal
of getting them over with.
Resolve to each job in a relaxed way,
with all your attention.”

- Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master

quoted on:
Peaceful Simplicity: How to Live a Life of Contentment | zen habits

Second Life chairman's stump speech takes us down the rabbit hole [slideshow]: Sciam Observations

This is a great concept. I love it. And I'm not a part of it. Why? It's slow, it's awkward and it's full of people talking rubbish in spaces that have too much advertising. I trashed the protocol (application) after a while because of these things.

This will change, and when it does, I'm there. Watch this (and every other) space.

Second Life chairman's stump speech takes us down the rabbit hole [slideshow]: Sciam Observations

20 Ways to Eliminate Stress From Your Life | zen habits

20 Ways to Eliminate Stress From Your Life | zen habits

An interesting site for those whose lives are cluttered and out of control. Ah.

Editing the text

Watch the video

Short poem on dancing.

One day, this time

When I should have been doing other things, I spent some of the time updating Blusterhead and, though there is much listed, each entry simply points to the fact that there is less listed than I would like to have. This site could take over my life. But there are poems to be written and various prose projects to be avoided.

Reading at Huskisson at the Promenade Cafe for breakfast last Sunday through the rain and the cold went well. Had the privilege of reading with Deb Evelyn, Alison Thompson, Jen Saunders and Colleen Duncan (who organised the event for See Change) and others.

While thinking about poetics, editing a ms - the sound of the shakuhachi in my budded ears - I want to go back to the autobiography of Cellini I have been reading. To be lazy on a winter's night. Nothing better.

After the run

After a long time organising, earning a living (talk talk talk) and writing, after far too long on other people's topic and carting things around and putting up with an extraordinary amount of invective from one apparently in the throes of a nervous breakdown (I surmise), after being all things to all people, I gave myself a holiday and, it being Christmas Eve, I find that, in fact work is my great holiday and I have taken refuge in prose.