This morning, on my first day of not being employed, I took my son to school and watched him receive a couple of awards.

Normally I would have left after he had received his award so I could get back to work. But because I was in no rush today, I decided to sit through the whole experience.

It was great. It was taking a long, calming, deep breath of air after holding my breath for a long time.

I heard talented student musicians play and watched a year 11 student perform a monologue for 10 minutes in front of the entire school and parents.

I got a little bored listening to every student who won an award get called out, go on stage and shake hands. But it was a good boredom. It was a relaxing boredom.

It was a boredom without pressure and that’s exactly what I needed.

I just realised that because I linked my work MacBook to my iCloud account, I have a lot of personal stuff on the computer I need to return to work tomorrow.

(Heads to Google to work out how to erase everything for his own safety.)

One of the hardest things about being an adult is having to work out what to cook for dinner every night. Especially with 1 child with dietary requirements, another who is a bit fussy, and a wife who says she needs to eat more fish and vegetarian meals, which neither kid likes.

It appears that the trend of decreasing search demand in Australia for “Black Friday” we saw over the past two years has turned around. The data is currently incomplete so it’s hard to be 100% certain though.

Yesterday I was feeling inspired and bought a nice roast lamb for tonight’s dinner. Today though, I have very little motivation to actually cook it up. 

But I have kids to feed, so off to the kitchen I go.

I went to the shops for the first time in ages today, and I think I inadvertently made an emotional commitment to buying a new Sonos Arc soundbar.

I’ve decided I need to do more writing for myself and my own pleasure. This little blog is a key part of that plan, but most days I find myself lost for ideas.

So a question: What is your writing ritual? What do you do to help you commit to composing prose regularly?

How is it my brain can retain the lyrics to pretty much every Bon Jovi song from the 1990s, but I need to ask my kids 10 times what they want on their burritos because I keep forgetting?

I only have one more week of work left at my current job. Today I sent out the “new email address” update email, and it felt really good. I’m thinking 2023 is going to be a great, but challenging year.

I didn’t even realise I had a shallow graze along the side of my thumb until I applied the hand sanitiser.

Then I knew. Oh, how I knew.

Yesterday I spent 5 minutes telling my kids how Batman & Robin was so bad it’s actually funny.

This included me quoting Mr Freeze – complete with Austrian accent – saying, “Ice to see you”.

Today, I discovered he doesn’t actually say it. That quote was from The Simpsons.

🫠

Yesterday was such a big day I’ve been little more than a vegetable today, lounging around without any energy. I would have loved to put Saturday on repeat, but I just don’t have it in me.

Just got home from a great day out with the family. Saw Wakanda Forever, enjoyed a great dinner and then saw David Gray play his White Ladder tour. Still buzzing.

I used to think I would one day write a great novel, but these days I feel I’m probably not creative enough.

Then again, maybe that’s the burnout talking. Who knows what the coming years will bring?

One and a half weeks left to go at work. As much as the meetings tire me out, I will miss working with some of these people.

Years ago I went on a tour of the Bundaberg Rum distillery. I came home with this barrel full of rum, but it was all absorbed into the wood or evaporated before I could drink it.

Now the barrel sits on a shelf drying out, unused.

Still looks good though.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been playing through the Batman Arkham games for the past few months. It’s an incredible franchise, though now that I’m close to finishing Arkham Knight (again), I feel I can say that Arkham City is the best of the three.

This morning I woke to a complete blackout. No power at all. The kids couldn’t cook toast. My espresso machine was useless. My wife had to boil water in a saucepan on the gas stove to have her cup of tea. It wasn’t just us, either. The entire street was without electricity. Turns out … read more

I do not have the mental capacity today to try and find a creative way to include the word aluminium in a post. So you get this fairly lazy attempt instead.

I happily left Facebook and Instagram years ago. I want to leave Twitter too, but I just can’t stop myself from opening up that horrendous bird app to watch the implosion.