the one hundred

Last year, I started writing a list of things that I want to do in my lifetime. Some people told me that I was being morbid - assuming that "in my lifetime" was synonymous with "before I die" - but I'm hoping for the best, and that is that I will be lucky enough to be able to achieve all of these things, somewhere along the line. These are the things I have already accomplished.

1. Travel to Paris

2. Live in a foreign country

3. Travel alone

4. Buy a house

5. Go to Edinburgh Comedy Festival

6. Take dance classes

7. Have a fluent conversation in French

8. Run a marathon

9. Take cooking classes in Greece

10. Take a road trip around Europe

11. Adopt a dog from the pound

12. Join a charity

13. Go mountain hiking in New Zealand

14. Get a doctorate

15. Get published

16. Learn Italian

17. Take photography classes

18. Travel to every continent

19. Learn massage

20. Meet a kindred spirit

21. Give blood

22. Live in a seaside town

23. Swim with dolphins

24. Travel around Australia

25. Become an organ donor

26. Be a mother

27. Learn to surf

28. Fall in love

29. Go on an African safari

30. Go skiing in Canada

31. Walk the Great Wall of China

32. Go on a backpacking trip

33. Learn Yoga

34. Achieve all High Distinctions for one semester at uni

35. Learn and memorise four piano pieces

36. Attend Glastonbury festival

37. Learn meditation

38. See the Northern Lights

39. Swim in geothermal pools in Iceland

40. Travel to Israel

41. Learn to make my own clothes

42. Have a beautiful home

43. Go to lifestyle retreat in Australia

44. Spend a summer in Paris

45. Buy a hammock for my backyard

46. Spend New Year’s Eve in New York

47. Ride a bicycle around The Netherlands

48. Swim under a waterfall

49. Learn Pilates

50. Make beautiful cupcakes

51. Do a first-aid course

52. See a Broadway play

53. Own a business (or part thereof)

54. Work as a teacher (at university, school or TAFE)

55. Attend a fashion show

56. Take art classes

57. Study Buddhism

58. Fly first class

59. Attend an Olympic Games

60. Sponsor a child

61. Do volunteer work overseas

62. Give $20 to a beggar

63. Go to a Christmas service at Notre Dame

64. Learn to snowboard

65. Grow and cultivate a beautiful pink rosebush

66. Watch the sun rise over Machu Picchu, Peru

67. Create an inspiration scrapbook for my daughter

68. Find inner peace

69. Build perfect capsule wardrobe

70. See Miami

71. Buy a Chanel bag

72. Go to Borneo to walk amongst Orang Utans

73. Go camping somewhere beautiful

74. Donate a park bench and dedicate it to love

75. Host a beautiful Christmas Day BBQ

76. Read every book on my bookshelf at any one time

77. Write a memoir

78. Buy a car that I really love

79. Read a book in French (and understand it)

80. Learn to make five beautiful cocktails

81. Attend a film festival

82. Eat pizza in Naples

83. Learn basic Mandarin, Spanish, German, Japanese, Arabic & Russian

84. Take a regular cooking class

85. Own a beautiful piece of art

86. Be a godmother

87. Go to the beach every morning for a summer

(Pictures via Desire to Inspire and Start Breathing)

You may notice that I called this "the one hundred", yet there is only 87 things on the list... I think I'll just keep adding as I go.

Do you have a "Bucket List"? Is there anything close to your heart that you would like to accomplish?

Valerie

"A birth is not really a beginning. Our lives at the start are not really our own but only the continuation of someone else’s story."

- The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

I have been giving this quote a lot of thought lately. It's something that I had never really considered before but now I cannot get it out of my mind.

I was given my middle name, Valerie, after my Nana, my mum's mother. When I was young, I found it embarrassing. I thought that it was such an old-fashioned name. When people would ask me what it was, I would refuse to tell them. Once, in a conversation with my mum, I mentioned how much I hated it. She was upset, of course. She pointed out that, firstly, it was a beautiful name and, secondly, I should be proud of being named after such a remarkable woman. Since then, I have flaunted it with pride, and it's become part of my pen-name. I had always assumed that my Nana had no impact on my life, since I barely knew her. Of course, I was wrong. I've learned that people don't really leave this world, upon their death. Their essence lives through the people they influenced during their lifetime.

I have don't have many memories of her. It is something that has always saddened me, since I know that we would have been close. I have learned so much about her from my family that I feel as though we are connected, somehow.

I have little glimpses of memory of my Nana, in the recesses of my mind. Her running after me in her backyard, telling me stories about her childhood. Us swimming in the pool together, watching Play School on the couch, going for walks together with my doll's pram. Me having a tantrum because she wouldn't let me sit in the front seat of the car. My mother and I waiting for her at the playground when she had forgotten to come. My mum and her dad searching for her all over the suburb after she had escaped the house and gotten lost. Visiting her in the nursing home when she kept calling my Pop "Paul", the name of their son with the greatest likeness to his dad. I think that was the last time I saw her.

Those memories are precious to me and I hold them dear to my heart. I've realised that what is even more special, though, is the insight into my Nana that I can gain though observing the people who knew her, who are still in my life. The fact that my Pop visited her in the nursing home every single day until she died. Even though he is happily remarried, he still tears up every Christmas, at the thought of her. My mum's best friend is, by her own admission, almost an incarnation of her mother, who she misses dearly. My mum, her sister and her five brothers are still incredibly close. They are all shy like their Dad, but, when they come together, the openness and wittiness they inherited from their mother surfaces. Almost all of them have been in only one significant relationship, just like their parents', whose love story set a standard for their children.

I can even see parts of Valerie in me. We both fall asleep in the cinema during boring movies, for example. She also loved to read. When she started losing her memory, she would jot down all the plot points of the story on her bookmark so that she wouldn't have to go over what she'd forgotten. She also studied arts at university, although she did it in her forties, not her twenties. She believed that being happy was more important than anything else, and didn't bother worrying over, what she considered to be, the "small stuff". Something that I can definitely relate to, but don't always abide by. She loved her husband Steve with all her heart, just as I love Andy.

So this is what has been on my mind lately. That, even though I barely knew my grandmother, she has impacted my life in a profound way. Her spirit lives on through her children and the grandchildren who never met her, and will continue to live on through our children and our grandchildren, and so on. These thoughts have made me appreciate that being significant is not dependent on how much money we make or how high we climb on the career ladder; it's about the way we effect the people we come across during our lives. Just as Chuck Palahnuik says, "the goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will". That something doesn't need to be a beautiful piece of art, a musical masterpiece or an incredible novel; it is as simple, and as effortless, as sharing your love and yourself with others.

pretty things

Some pretty things that are getting me through...

Quaint European village... perfect for writing a book

The introduction I will steal to preface my first novel

Snow in Paris

The perfect outfit... and smile

Sexy man on a Vespa

Moving out, into an amazing loft apartment...

... with a swing

Kissing in the street

Cupcakes

Poignantly beautiful song from my high school days

(Pictures via The Sartorialist, Garance Dore, Sweet Home Style, Party Tights)

neuroses

Not long ago, I tried really hard to dig within and identify my neuroses. Eventually, I concluded that I didn't have any. I'm just not a neurotic person, I thought. I'm too easy-going. I was wrong, of course. Everybody is neurotic in their own way, I think.

The neuroses I have since uncovered are all to do with words and self-expression, which is fitting. Here are just a few...

1. I hate using baby words. For example: tummy/belly (even as a child, I have always used the word "stomach", even though I know that the term technically only relates to the organ, as opposed to the general area to which I am usually referring), hubby, telly... Sometimes, I defy my own instinct and use the occasional juvenile word, just to get myself out of my comfort zone. "Silly", for example, which I am now comfortable with using - sparingly (it is a real word, after all).

2. I really don't like ugly Australian slang. Moll, bloody, Pom*, bonking, snogging, yobbo, dunny, mozzie, dag, arvo, snag, even Aussie. I'm not even going to start on those disgusting racist terms still in circulation, which should have died out decades ago.

3. I avoid swearing at all costs. I think I have sworn once on my twitter feed, but I was quoting somebody (a bigoted ignoramus who accused me of being a "sh*t talker" - I made sure to encase it in quotation marks so my followers knew that they weren't straight from my mouth). There are two reasons for my reluctance to swear. One, I always have my mother's advice in my head, which is that "Only unintelligent people swear because they don't know any better". Two, brings me to my next point...

4. I want everything I write to be pretty. You'll often find me combing over my writing, replacing words and phrases that sound jarring. I'd rather sound too flowery and elaborate than even a little grating or vulgar. You may have noticed that I love pretty adjectives (lovely, delightful, adorable, gorgeous are some favourites... and I also love to turn them into adverbs).

So those some of my neuroses. It feels good to have them "out there". Just to be clear, I don't expect anybody else to adhere to my silly (see?), self-imposed rules. It's not that I object to or judge other people for using ugly or juvenile wording. Some of my favourite writers pepper their writing with obscenities (Benjamin Law, for example - his book, The Family Law, is incredible... so funny and poignant). It's just not me. I like to be able to read over my work and be satisfied with the flow and the pretty diction. Writing is one of my greatest pleasures in life, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I suppose I could delve deeper and use those those neuroses to ascertain a greater insight into myself... Perhaps I am a bit uptight and superficial, with an innate desire to ignore or hide the unpleasantries and ugliness that exists in the world. Or, in a more flattering light, maybe I am just optimistic, wanting to see the beauty in everything and share that with other people. Even if the former is true, at least that part of myself is restricted mainly to my prose, rather than being imposed upon everybody I encounter in my day-to-day life.

I guess that's the thing with neuroses. Everybody is weird in their own way, only we all try to hide it so that we fit in and appear normal. Instead of having it (what makes us different) "out there", we express our oddness through private moments - neurotic quirks that allow us to be ourselves, in a raw, natural state. Sometimes we try to fight these traits, but they manage to sustain themselves against our will. I think that, as people get older, they weaken that fight and let their eccentricities take over more and more. That is not necessarily a good thing because eccentricities are not always healthy, and rarely productive. Forcing ourselves to get out of our comfort zone or do things that we don't want to do, in an attempt to please other people, is part of life. It's not always fun, and it's vital to know how to balance it with "me-time", but, ultimately, it makes us better, stronger, more loving, and lovable, people. We live in a world where our happiness, and the happiness of those around us, hinges on our ability to be unselfish and compromising so, instead of resenting our idiosyncrasies, we should treasure them. They are, after all, little crevices in which we can be our true, unadulterated selves.

*Interesting fact of the day... Apparently - according to one, rather shaky, source - my great, great grandfather Edwin Greenslade Murphy ("Dryblower" Murphy) was the first person to pen the term "Pom". He was a journalist and poet during the gold rush in Western Australia, at the turn of the 20th century.

10 day cycle

I am a compulsive list-writer. I love to plan my days, set goals and organise my thoughts and ideas. It's fun, but a lot of the time it doesn't get me very far. Recently, I read an article on Steve Pavlina's blog in which he says:

Beyond the 2-week range, most of us think of our to-dos as being somewhere “over the horizon” and not of immediate concern. We don’t need to deal with them until they become more urgent.

I found this tip very helpful. It's true. A foreseeable deadline encourages me to get more things done, sooner, and discourages me from procrastinating. Being organised also allows me to designate free time for myself (to watch The Good Wife and bake cake), which means that I'm more inclined to do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done.

Steve endorses planning in a 10 day cycle. 10 days is an ideal time-frame because it breaks up the week-to-week drag. Usually, I have lapsed in my plans by Wednesday and I can justify waiting until Monday to take them up again. By creating my own blocks of time I can avoid conforming to the ones set by the calendar, which helps to overcome time hurdles.

Rather than a to-do list, I tend to base my plan around inspiration and new ideas or techniques to try.

Par exemple -

Books to read:

Recipes to try:

Alicia Silverstone's Carrot-Apple-Lemon-Ginger Cocktail

(via The Kind Life)

Skye Craig's Chocolate Avocado Mousse

(via Wild Sugar)

Makeup look to emulate:

Vanessa Paradis for Chanel

Nars Sheer Glow applied all over, blended outward with fingers

By Terry Touch Expert Advanced concealer applied under the eyes and on any imperfections with Nars Concealer Brush

Nars Loose Powder dusted all over with Nars Yachiyo Brush

Chanel Joues Contraste Blush in Rose Dust applied softly on the apples of the cheeks with Nars Yachiyo Brush

Nars Blush in Zen used under the cheekbones, jawline and either side of the nose, applied with Nars Yachiyo Brush

Nars Brow Powder (it's actually eyeshadow!) in Bali (for brunettes) or Blondie (for blondes) applied softly with Nars Brow Shader brush

Nars Eyeshadow Duo in Madrague - the lighter side dusted onto the brow bone with Nars Large Domed Eye Brush and the darker side pressed into the eyelid with MAC 217 brush

Nars Eyeshadow Duo in Bellisima - the lighter side dusted onto the brow bone with Nars Large Domed Eye Brush and the lighter side applied along the outer corner of the top lashline and along the bottom lashline with Nars Small Eye Contour Brush

Chanel Intense Eye Pencil in black lining the inner rim of the upper lashline

Nars Eyeliner Pencil in Iceberg lining the inner rim of the lower lashline

Chanel Inimitable Mascara in black applied onto the top lashes, two coats

Nars Lip Liner in Rosebud lining and filling in the lips

Chanel Rouge Coco lipstick in Mademoiselle, applied with Nars Lip Brush

Things to do

Watch the finale week of Masterchef Australia

Get organised for a new semester at uni

Do some laundry

(Some more of my favourite Pavlina articles include How to Become an Early Riser, How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off, 10 Tips for College Students, Soulful Relationships and One Week On, One Week Off. You would think that reading all these articles on efficiency would mean that I am getting a lot of work done but although I love reading the articles, applying them is another story.)

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a delicate resonance of longing

"Then she took my hand and touched it to the wound beside her eye. I caressed the half-inch scar. As I did so, the waves of her consciousness pulsed through my fingertips and into me - a delicate resonance of longing. Probably someone should take this girl in his arms and hold her tight, I thought. Probably someone other than me. Someone qualified to give her something."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

live your best life

So, would you do me a favour? Watch this. It is a little long, so feel free to wait until you have about 20 minutes to spare and perhaps some tea. Tim Tams will also go down a treat.

I have already written about my love for Elizabeth Gilbert. I loved Eat Pray Love, and Committed even more. She seems to be polarising in some ways but I think that she is intelligent and endearing. Her ideas and philosophies are incredibly valuable to modern women, whether or not you agree with them wholeheartedly.

Whatever your response to her books, I guarantee that you will fall in love with her after you watch her speak - she is so natural and accessible. I have posted her musings on creativity (see my first ever blog post, things that inspire me), and I recently watched this video of Liz speaking at Oprah's Live Your Best Life, a festival to celebrate the 10th anniversary of O Magazine. To paraphrase, Liz unveils the irony behind the fact that people look to her to find out how to live life (specifically how to get their lives "together"), when she just doesn't have the answers. Nobody does. She also explores the reasons so many of us look to others for the key, "the secret", to a happy, successful and fulfilling life.

Liz believes that this movement is a consequence of our burgeoning world. In a landscape where the possibilities are absolutely endless, it is so difficult to define our goals, hopes and dreams. Our parameters. Infinite options can be paralysing - when there are so many alternatives, it's almost impossible to be convinced of our choices, when we finally have the courage to make them. Choosing just one door, when there is an over-abundance open to us, is scary. I have struggled with this myself. I still do.

So there are the choices. There is also that imminent fear of failure. When we have the world at our feet, it's difficult to justify falling flat on our faces, not in the least to ourselves. We are bombarded with this ideal of "perfection", which we are expected to uphold in all realms of life - we should be good people, successful in our careers, supportive of loved ones, calm and collected, healthy, beautiful, interesting, happy... the list is never-ending. This all-round perfection is, of course, completely and utterly unattainable, which means that failure is inevitable. It's a viscous cycle.

Women are especially prone to this brutal discontent. As Liz notes, we are the first generation of women in the history of mankind who have had freedom, autonomy, literacy and access to their own power. We don't have strong, independent women to look to in history books. We are on the front line. No wonder it is so difficult to carve out our niche.

Liz uses the metaphor of the "maze":

When I look at my life and the lives of my female friends these days—with our dizzying number of opportunities and talents—I sometimes feel as though we are all mice in a giant experimental maze, scurrying around frantically, trying to find our way through. But maybe there's a good historical reason for all this overwhelming confusion. We don't have centuries of educated, autonomous female role models to imitate here (there were no women quite like us until very recently), so nobody has given us a map. As a result, we each race forth blindly into this new maze of limitless options. And the risks are steep. We make mistakes. We take sharp turns, hoping to stumble on an open path, only to bump into dead-end walls and have to back up and start all over again. We push mysterious levers, hoping to earn a reward, only to learn—whoops, that was a suffering button!

So this all brings us to the "age of memoir", (arguably) ruled by Oprah, the queen of self-discovery and self-examination. The popularity of the memoir is precipitated by our need to see how everybody else is solving these universal, endless questions. Snippets from other people's lives provide clues for our own "scavenger hunt". The danger, of course, is to compare ourselves with other people. The resulting envy and self-doubt is nothing but harmful and self-destructive. Consider this quote by spiritual guru Osho, from The Book of Understanding: “In this world, it is very difficult to find a happy person, because nobody is fulfilling the conditions for being happy. The first condition is that one has to drop all comparison. Drop all these stupid ideas of being superior and inferior. You are neither superior nor inferior. You are simply yourself! There exists no one like you, no one with whom you can be compared. Then, suddenly, you are at home.”

As Liz says, the only thing that we can do is to get up every single day and do our very best with who we are and what we have. To do what we can. To try to do better. And when we, inevitably, fall short, to pick ourselves up and carry on. We all want to live our best lives, so go for it. Aspire - but mitigate that aspiration with self-forgiveness. And make a promise to do ourselves no harm on our aspirational paths. Ultimately, being kind and understanding to ourselves, throughout our life journey, will be so much more productive than continually beating ourselves up. Our greatest challenge in life is to accept and, eventually, learn to love who we are, unconditionally. That is the one and only true "key" to happiness.

"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us."

— Marcel Proust

the library

"Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

lean into life

I know that I sound like a broken record, constantly referring to Sarah Wilson's blog, but her column of a few weeks ago has made such an impact upon me that I just have to write about it.

Sarah interviewed Seth Godin, a marketing expert:

...Seth argues the workforce has changed radically and that it’s not enough to be a lemming employee any more. Lemmings are dispensable, as evidenced by the mass sackings of finance types across America in the past few years. Now, the only way to truly succeed and be remarkable is to create art. Not (necessarily) the pastels and parchment variety. Art, says Seth, is simply a gift that changes the recipient. It’s a generous act that sees you “lean into life”, like an aerial skier leans to travel further.

It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. Art is when a waiter gives great service. Because she cares. Art is not following the manual. It’s Susan Boyle ignoring the cynics and fronting up and singing. It’s smiling at the courier. It’s writing a book when there’s no guarantee of it being published.

A true gift is given without expectation of a reward. Although, they invariably become their own reward. Which is hard to fathom, so let me explain it with an anecdote. Last Saturday night, Seth attended the opening of Shepard Fairey’s art exhibition in Manhattan. Fairey created the now-iconic Obama Hope poster. He gave away 500,000 of the posters – at his own expense – during the US election campaign. He had no idea how it would be received. He just gave anyway. But as a result he’s become one of the most influential artists in America. Seth tells me a 4000-strong crowd attended the show and his work sells for $US30,000 a pop.

Fairey’s generosity made him remarkable. And, thus, indispensable. Any artist could’ve created that poster. The difference is Fairey fronted up, he gave, he leaned into life and took a risk. As Steve Jobs famously said, “Real Artists Ship”. That is, they deliver.

So how do we start giving gifts? How do we become remarkable? “The aim is to elevate connecting and sharing to the same level as breathing or eating lunch every day,” he says. By which he means, we start giving and then give some more and eventually it becomes a way of life.

And Sarah, on spending a day giving unconditional gifts:

It felt free, and expansive. Leaning in, letting go and not caring about being reciprocated felt natural and in tune with the creative process. It also felt more than a little bit daring.

This is something that I need to embrace, especially at my part-time job. I'll be frank: I am not an excellent salesperson, and never will be. (Too "nice", apparently.) It gives me anxiety because I want to be good at everything, both in my own eyes and in the eyes of those around me. So what I need to do is to bring something else, to make up for my lack of natural talent. Something human, and indispensable. It's easy to feel like a mouse running in a wheel, always trying to win praise and appreciation from superiors but never getting anywhere. It's demoralising. It makes us tired, and we wonder why we bother putting in all the effort. I guess what is really important is to set our own standards and live by them, instead of trying to reach the heights that other people pressure us to aspire to. It's the only way to truly live in the moment and be happy with ourselves. For me, I feel accomplished by making somebody feel prettier or giving them valuable advice. I try not to let whether or not they spend hundreds of dollars phase me too much. And, the thing is, it doesn't usually phase my bosses too much either. My "niceness"* outweighs their disgruntlement, apparently. Yes, that very niceness hindering my selling prowess is also my greatest asset — which, I guess, is the point I'm trying to make.

As for the other facets of my life, "leaning" into it is the perfect way to describe the best way of approaching it... and by "life" I mean love (human connection), excitement and joy. Embracing things that are enriching, rejecting those that are inhibiting, going above and beyond what is expected and offering more of myself with no expectation of reward or even recognition. Being self-aware and self-confident is something vital to this movement but something that I constantly need to work on, because it doesn't come naturally for me. The key, I think, is to embrace the things about us that make us special and unique, and exploiting them so that we are irreplaceable - not only in the eyes of others but, first and foremost, ourselves.

"No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all."
— Haruki Murakami (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories)

* I say "niceness" in quotation marks because I don't think I'm all that nice. I could be a much nicer person... I'm working on it.

older love

So, I opened up This Is Not the Story You Think It Is by Laura Munson* to, of course, the last page. I always read the last page of my books first, so I know what's coming. I do it for the same reason that I often read the plot of movies and tv series on Wikipedia before I watch them.** I don't think that it spoils them for me (unless the ending itself is disappointing). I just like to absorb stories with the conclusion in mind. It helps me to comprehend them better, as a whole.

Back on topic... at the end of Laura Munson's novel I found this beautiful love poem that I want to share.

Older Love

His wife has asthma

so he only smokes outdoors

or late at night with head

and shoulders well into

the fireplace, the mesquite and oak

heat bright against his face.

Does it replace the heat

that has wandered from love

back into the natural world?

But then the shadow passion casts

is much longer than passion,

stretching with effort from year to year.

Outside tonight hard wind and sleet

from three bald mountains,

and on the hearth before his face

the ashes we’ll all become,

soft as the back of a woman’s knee.

— Jim Harrison, from Saving Daylight

(via Dragonfly's Poetry)

* Sarah Wilson interviewed Laura for this column, one of my favourites.

** Thankfully, I didn't do this before watching Remember Me (starring Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin). Please don't.