understanding patterns; connecting dots

Last weekend I did my first solo bushwalk and swimming excursion. Saturday’s hike wasn’t particularly long, only about 10kms. But more than half of it was spent on soft sloping sand walking into a stiff breeze. By the time I climbed the track back up the escarpment I was wasted, and when I dragged myself into the camping area about 2.30 in the afternoon, my appetite for further adventure that day was near zero. And so I found myself in my tent, shutting up shop for the day in the near broad daylight hour of 7.30pm! At Maria’s suggestion I’d downloaded a couple of podcasts for such a time as this. Truth was I was pretty confident I’d not listen to them … I didn’t imagine myself with headphones in on a solo bush excursion, but there you go. It turned out to be one of two encounters I’ve had this week with prominent Australians who have recently made a major professional transition. The story of those transitions is not the main point here, they deserve proper consideration in their own r...

We recently visited family in the Northern Rivers hinterland. It was good in the usual ways. Except that one morning a few unrelated and incidental things unsettled me, and I lay in bed mulling over them. It wasn’t a great start to the day. It had been a while since I’d felt that way and I wondered not only what had triggered it, but why I wasn’t able to re-centre as quickly as I normally do. It helped me appreciate how significant my regular morning routine has become, so this post is to record something of the story of how it evolved into the multifaceted practice I now enjoy. I’ve always been a so-called ‘morning person’. Whether it was being up before anyone else in my residential college during uni days to think and study, or cleaning supermarket floors at ungodly hours to make ends meet when our kids were young, I’ve always felt at home in the morning hours, while most others are sleeping. We were incredibly fortunate to move into this seaside village across the road from Karen a...