Category Archives: long

It’s been a long year, but I’ve finished two more college subjects and have only one to go. I’m celebrating by taking some time out with the family. Looking forward to it, and to starting to plan out some new projects (and my last college subject).

Time for reflection is rare at the moment: my dance card (as it were) is pretty full at the moment, and it doesn’t leave a lot of time for thinking big thoughts. At least it’s only for a season. I’ve had this idea for a post percolating for a while. Here we go.   I […]

More insights from The Verge’s Paul Miller as his year without the internet continues. The goal for me, in this year and beyond, is to do things consciously and purposefully — submitting my time to my personal goals and values, instead of the next clickiest link. Someone on Reddit warned me that I’d be bored […]

An odd experience on the trip home last week. I bumped into a friend from church at the train station, and then he bumped into a friend while we were on the train. There we were, three young(ish) fathers, awkwardly chatting. It wasn’t long until we decided to share photos of our kids. And so, […]

Listening to the speeches at a relative’s 60th birthday party with my too-tired son resting on my lap was as good a chance as any to take stock of how my life is going, and what might need changing. One speech – by a lifelong friend – talked about how they had met, decades ago […]

Having reached 70 million views faster than any previous YouTube video, unless you’ve been living under a rock (or offline), you will have hear of the Kony 2012 campaign video. In fact, you may already have completely moved on – the media coverage certainly has. Kony 2012 is so seductive for precisely the same reasons […]

This is a tricky subject for me to comment on, but I thought I might just put a few thoughts out, and see what comes of it. I should start out by saying that I haven’t actually watched this movie: I watched the kids while Kel went with some friends to watch it in a […]

With each trip around the sun, my perspective changes. What seemed the inflexibility of old age starts to make more sense. One excerpt from the sunscreen song that seemed particularly poignant over the weekend was “the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.” There was something energizing […]

Talking yesterday to a friend who is a working mum was a chance to reflect on commuting. The busier your life gets, the more you appreciate a chance to commute. You’re stuck for a period of time, doing something necessary (travelling to a destination), and you’re physically removed from a range of responsibilities (housework, child […]

In the past I’ve raised money via movember for depression and prostate cancer, but there’s another form of cancer that I haven’t mentioned before, at least here: bowel cancer. Second biggest cancer killer in Australia: 1 in 12 Australians will be diagnosed with it by age 85, it’s a big deal. But we don’t talk […]