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It’s been a long time between updates, but here we are just about at the end of 2025, so it’s time for a check in.

My goals for 2025:

1. Solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter festivals.

The main reason I wanted to observe the festivals this year was to develop more of a sense of the natural rhythm of the seasons. Overall I think I’ve had some success. While I haven’t necessarily done a lot to mark the solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarter festivals, I think I have become more alert to the changes in the natural world around me. That feels important to me, a kind of intentional anchor to time passing rather than days and weeks and months slipping by without notice.

Yule this year was a bit upside down ( almost literally) because we were about to jet off to the northern hemisphere, so it was hard to focus on anything much aside from last minute travel preparations.

At Imbolc, I was in Roma and partway through my final 8-week nursing placement which limited my opportunities, but I gathered some reeds with the intention of weaving them into a small decoration I could hang in my student accommodation. (I did not manage to weave them). Mostly I made a point of spending some time outdoors, taking in the springtime changes in the native flora around me. Looking at the brightening sky, smelling the trees and grasses and watching birds on the water. So that was something.

While I didn’t do anything concrete to mark the equinox/Ostara, I did find myself paying attention to the growing light and earlier dawns. I have a sense now not just of when the light changes, but the lag between light and seasonal temperature changes – which, not at all coincidentally, is more or less the interval between the solstices/equinoxes and the cross-quarter festivals.

I prepared for Beltane by gathering some rosemary from my front garden and drying it over a couple of weeks. On Beltane, I lit the bundle and cleansed my house with rosemary smoke. By end of October I had finished all my uni work and was in a state of stasis waiting for results, so I thought it was time to rededicate my energies to what comes next. It also gave me an opportunity to think about what these kinds of rituals mean to me. Wafting the rosemary smoke through my house gave me a focus to think about what I needed to do to move forward, and watching the smoke dance reminded me that even in still spaces, there is movement.

The next festival on the calendar is Litha, just before Christmas. As it turns out we are gathering with friends that day for a Christmas celebration, which seems like an excellent way to also celebrate the height of summer and give thanks for abundance, especially the abundance that is friends, family, and love.

I think I would like to build on these practices next year. I don’t think the practical aspects need to be particularly significant, but I think it’s good for me psychologically.

Related: I miss having a faith community and I miss the comfort of ritual, but it’s hard to find somewhere I feel like I can participate fully and like I belong. So this year I’ve explored a little bit to see if there’s a way I can meet that need.

I did a Jesuit mini-retreat in June, ‘two hours of quiet’, which I enjoyed. I like Jesuits, and it is a practice and group of people I would have felt completely at home with maybe 20 years ago. It felt calm and familiar this year and I’m glad I went, but even so I felt a bit of an outsider with the group I did the mini-retreat with. Not because they were anything other than welcoming, just because I’m no longer practising and I don’t have a parish. I suppose there are other ways I feel like I don’t fit too. But the mini-retreat was good and I might do more next year.

I participated in the Stations of the Cross at my local Catholic Church on Good Friday. Admittedly Good Friday is maybe not the best time to ease in after many years away, but I felt like observing it some way. The service was familiar but the parish was not for me at all. I’m not sorry I went, but I knew right away it wasn’t a good fit.

I did attend a service at my local Anglican church this year, and it felt like somewhere that I could belong, maybe. The parish is named St Catherine’s, which seemed apt. They are welcoming and accepting, and the Reverend is a woman which I feel pretty good about. I wrestled with the notion of conversion initially until I realised they don’t think I need to, I’m already a full member if I want to be, without changing anything. I might attend again next year and see how it feels.

2. Pee more/eat more beans

Mixed success. Overall I’ve been very good about peeing every time I have a tea break at work, except for the past couple of months. It is probably no coincidence that I have also experienced a couple of UTIs recently too. So I am rededicating myself to the mantra ‘pee more’, and putting it on my list of resolutions for 2026.

The eat more beans one has been a bit more nuanced. I have been eating more legumes this year, so overall that gets a tick.

In September, I began taking a GLP-1 medication. It has been a very interesting process. I have been losing weight steadily which is why I have been using the medication. Not drastic, but steady. I have noticed other changes though:

• I have an ‘off’ switch now – for food, and for alcohol. I get full more quickly, I don’t really eat unless I’m hungry, and a couple of drinks and I generally don’t want any more. In fact, the idea of more feels very gross.
• My tastes have changed. I no longer enjoy fatty foods the way I always have. I don’t dislike them, but I don’t crave them and if I have more than a small amount I feel quite off. I am no longer obsessed with chicken nuggets. Rich foods also don’t hit the spot they way they did previously, I just think ‘well that tastes nice, but it is a bit greasy.’ I have always felt like a meal isn’t adequate without fats and proteins, but some vegetables and rice now often feels like more than enough (I do still need to make sure I’m eating protein though). And I could basically live on fruit now if you let me.
• Lately, I don’t like coffee so much either. I am wrestling with this because a) who can live without caffeine? and b) coffee is part of my personality. Who, actually, am I?

I always knew, intellectually, that human appetite is very hormone-driven, it’s not simply a matter of choice or self-discipline. But it’s absolutely fascinating to discover what that’s like for myself.

3. Chamber orchestra/ballet

My tally so far: one Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra concert, and two Queensland Medical Orchestra concerts. So that hits and exceeds my target of two concerts this year!

I also ended up playing with a highschool string ensemble while I was out in Roma on student placement, and I did a little concert with them too. That was so much fun, and it felt so good to be able to give a little something back to the town that nurtured my musical talent as a kid.

I haven’t managed ballet at all this year, and gym has also fallen by the wayside. I will put these back on the list for 2026. One thing I would like to do is check out Queensland Ballet’s adult classes. I loved classes with 2Ballerinas but part of the issue is that geographically those classes are just so far from home. Queensland Ballet isn’t close either, but it’s closer. We will see.

4. Booze: 75 days for drinking

So this goal fell off the rails, which is okay. There were many beers in the US in June/July which I’m not sorry about, and I never really picked things up again. That said, my drinking habits have changed a lot over the past three months while on GLP-1 medication. It’s a lot easier to choose to limit your alcohol intake if you don’t actually particularly care about drinking alcohol. So for the moment I’m okay with where this goal ended up, and I think I’m just going to see how things go.

It does make planning for Christmas a bit different. Usually we get in heaps of bubbly ahead of time. This year I don’t think we’ll need quite as much, and I’m thinking about also getting in some special low- or no-alcohol options as well.

5. Reduce choices

I got a bit distracted from this goal. Over the next few weeks I will do a bit of a stocktake of where my energies are going and how I can streamline my mental load a bit more.

6. Graduate!

I DID IT. WITH DISTINCTION.

December 30: 2020 24 hours to go (almost).

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This year is the first year we’ve begun and ended in our own home, and that’s probably one of the things I’m most grateful for.

Our house is something that’s brought me joy all year.

It’s a thing I never thought would be real for me, and we’ve done better: we’re not just in a solid place, we’re ahead on the mortgage.

It feels like so many things are possible now for our family long-term.

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At the other end of the spectrum, I went to three funerals this year, which is not something I would like to repeat soon.

Two were older family members and while I feel those losses, they seem somehow like the natural order of things.

The other, I’m still deciding when to smoke the Romeo y Julieta I took from his final stash, and I tear up when I think about it.

It’s sitting on my bookshelf.

I figure I’ll know, when I know.

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COVID has been a strange and constant companion, not all bad: I like not being crowded into lifts.

I like more space on trains.

I’m quite happy to sanitise my hands and I don’t even mind wearing masks when I need to.

I’ve really enjoyed sewing masks for friends and colleagues who didn’t have them.

Part of me wonders why we didn’t do these things before.

People are gross, right?

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During lockdown I bought an electric guitar and started guitar lessons – after 30+ years of playing acoustic.

(That first question from the guitar school was fun to answer: have you played guitar at all before?)

Learning to play better and differently has been really fun and it’s made me a better musician in other ways – surprisingly, especially on saxophone.

I started lessons via Skype, so my first in person lesson was super weird and I was anxious about it, but it turned out my teacher is magnificently nerdy so we hit it off just fine.

I’d like to thank him for the Diablo III tips, which have entirely changed the course of my holiday gaming.

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Lockdown was hard and isolating, but the increased pace of my job was harder.

April was 6am starts and 8pm finishes (not because I was done, but because I drew a line), answering questions from scared and angry people all day on the internet.

Going back to work after lockdown was an added complication.

I found myself incredibly, stay awake at night anxious – not out of fear of the virus, but social anxiety.

I’d forgotten how much people frighten me, but I managed that okay in the end.

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Like most kinds of anxiety I deal with, diving back in and just dealing with it was the most effective way to deal with it.

They call it exposure therapy.

Exposure therapy is the most effective kind of anxiety therapy for me.

I also started seeing my psychologist again and that too was helpful.Hit me up if you need a referral, because he’s awesome.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy sounds kinda woo-woo, but getting back into it meant I re-learned the value of intention: of doing what you mean to do because it matters to you.

Many things are easier if you have conviction.

Choice is power.

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Speaking of health professionals, I sacked my rheumatologist this year, which was a relief.

She is perfectly competent and actually probably bloody good really, but I have always felt her judgement.

After sticking with her for 5 years I reckon I’ve given the relationship a decent chance, and I’m tired of feeling on the defensive every appointment.

I have a 15 year plus relationship with my psychiatrist, and she challenges me but doesn’t make me feel like shit when she does it.

So you know what?

I realised it’s not me that’s the problem.

And I realised there are plenty of other competent rheumatologists out there.

So I have an appointment with a different one in a few weeks.

I’m told she’s kind.

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This year I also became the mother of a teenager.

Which sounds a bit like I just adopted one from somewhere, but actually the kid I already have turned 13.

He’s huge, incidentally.

He’s a monumental dickhead at times but I love him more than he’ll ever really understand.

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I changed my job in February.

Still in government, but moved into digital media.

I like my job, and more importantly, I like the people I work with.

I’m less keen on my job security being tied to the election cycle and I’m even less keen to go through an election campaign again.

So I don’t plan to.I’m kinda done with politics.

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In October I applied to study a Bachelor of Nursing.

I’m now enrolled in two units, and I start in February.

I already have my student card.

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I feel like the pace of this year – with coronavirus, and the election – hasn’t given me a lot of time to process all the big events.

If I pause to reflect, there are a lot of feelings there and I kinda tear up a bit.

I think I might be processing some of these things into 2021.

But that’s okay.

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The most important part of this year has been my partner.

He’s kind and resilient and he has beautiful hair.

And he’s here for me whenever I need him.

He’s my touchstone.

My rock.

My anchor.

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I have hope for 2021.

I hope you do too.

We already know it’s going to start out strange, but I believe there are better things ahead.

An elderly woman rang the office today to offer some tinned goods for donation. We talked for a little while, about her cockatiel and his love of baked beans and celery, and her husband of 62 years who’d gone into respite care that day because he has dementia.

He will never come home, because his dementia is the kind that caused him to become violent towards his wife. He was especially angry this morning, and went after her with a broom.

And I don’t know that we resolved anything really, though I suggested setting jelly inside drinking straws for her cockatiel to nibble at. And we couldn’t pick up the tins of food she wanted to donate, so she will need to find someone else to take them, or else throw them out. She doesn’t have family nearby who could drop them off to us, or to help her manage her husband’s condition.

Senescent, wasting, her breath rakes across hospital linen.

Tonight, a whispered invitation floats toward her hospital bed: the ferryman has saved her a seat on the prow and they shall set sail by dawn. Her hair will once more fly in the breeze.

She refused chemotherapy and cut off her breasts.
Her children are pulled ever to her bosom,
faces pressed relentlessly into bitter scars,
airless.

Under the sheet, she is still.

I spent some time thinking while I was deadlifting this evening, as you do.

In conversation a few nights ago I was asked if lifting is like aikido, and at the time I said ‘no, not really’. On reflection I think the truth is a little more nuanced than that.

When I lift, I know exactly where the bar is before I start. I move the bar into position – when I deadlift, I roll the bar gently toward my shins to set it ready for the upward pull. Before I lift, I put tension on the bar – it’s not quite a lift before it becomes a lift, but I get the feel of it first before I pull. I have heard it described as if when I am lifting a hundred kilograms, I need to be consciously lifting at least ninety-nine before I try to break contact with the floor.

Moving the bar into position is a little like blending with an opponent – it’s finding my opponent’s centre and moving it to where I can apply force. Applying tension before actually lifting is reminiscent of finding an opponent’s balance point before I throw. The movements are slower, more deliberate, and I am always in control; but I think there are some parallels.

It’s different though, significantly enough that I find cross-disciplinary translations confusing. Lifting is a calculated process, thought out before a lift begins. I approach the bar with intent, like I move with intent in aikido, but unlike aikido I more or less have a fully formed plan to work with and I can follow it to its conclusion.

When I lift, tension is key. As in anything, unnecessary tension is counterproductive, but a successful lift requires muscle groups to be set in position and held firmly. For a deadlift, that’s a held breath, a rock hard torso, shoulders set back and gluteal muscles engaged. Deviation from a set motor pattern means a failed lift – or injury. My commitment to a lift requires a full body response, and I do not begin until I have connected with every muscle I will need.

Aikido seems a polar opposite. When in doubt, relax. If the technique isn’t working, use less strength – feel for the tipping point, gently, gently. The more muscle tension I hold in my body, the less able I am to feel where I need to be and how to join with my opponent. I impose my will on the barbell, but I need to blend with my partner’s will in aikido – and I find myself having to completely relearn physical responses that I have worked hard to build in a weightlifting context. Aikido feels completely counterintuitive, where weightlifting seemed to fall naturally into place.

O Sensei said, ‘one should be prepared to receive ninety-nine percent of an enemy’s attack and stare death right in the face’.

I lift weights which could permanently disable me if I slip. It’s not melodramatic to suggest that some of those weights could even kill me, given a sufficiently unfortunate accident. Were I to fall underneath the weight of a loaded barbell across my shoulders, the consequences would be distinctly non-trivial.

When I approach a significantly heavy weight, at the same time that I am preparing to take hold of the bar I also want nothing to do with it at all – because I know my opponent, and it is powerful. To take the weight, I prepare for the force it will exert on my body: I know that it will tax me, perhaps to my limits; I know often it will hurt. Bruises are a regular take-home from the gym. Although I take precautions to prevent accidents – safety rails, or help from a ‘spotter’ – I take that danger and absorb it. It becomes mine, and I commit to the lift.

In his essay ‘The Iron‘ Henry Rollins reflects on the lessons he learned from lifting. He sees lifting as a journey of self-discovery, an anchor to reality and a form of meditation. Rollins’s essay resonates with me deeply: lifting is a solitary meditation, a teacher which leads me to insights about myself, the world, and my place in it. It calms and centres me, and leaves me better equipped to respond to others thoughtfully and kindly.

Aikido is less solitary, but there’s something about landing repeatedly on the floor that also offers insights into who I am and where I belong. There aren’t so many meditative moments – at least not while I’m on the mat – but perhaps that will come in time. The one point I access with my hands on a barbell seems elusive on the tatami, which frustrates me, but once I find it consistently perhaps I will find more overlap between disciplines.

Rollins said, ‘Muscle mass does not always equal strength. Strength is kindness and sensitivity. Strength is understanding that your power is both physical and emotional. That it comes from the body and the mind. And the heart.’

And in this, I find the same mind in both lifting and aikido.

December in Auckland can be surprisingly cold for a Brisbane native, and I found myself escaping the wind inside a pub in Durham Street East with a secondhand book and an India pale ale.

I perched on a stool at the pub’s front window overlooking the tables outside and opened my book. It was warm enough inside that I could take off my windbreaker, so I took the chance to settle in comfortably for a while.

To my right were a man in his twenties and a woman I think he was hoping to impress, and outside were an elderly husband and wife. I sipped my beer and turned pages, half-reading and half-listening to the people around me.

A waitress went to the outside table to take down their order, and the husband chose three dishes from their tapas menu. He asked the waitress how he should pay for their food – would she bring a bill, or should he go inside and pay at the bar?

The waitress said, ‘He’s already paid for your food,’ gesturing upwards to the man to my right.

I lost interest in my book, then, as the confused man asked the waitress to clarify. She repeated: the man sitting beside me had paid for the old couple’s meal.

Initially hesitant to accept her explanation, he looked up to the window and asked, ‘But why?’

My neighbour shrugged. ‘I just wanted to. Enjoy your evening.’

His wife had said nothing throughout, and I looked at her more closely. She seemed tired, perhaps; her eyes appeared to wander, and she seemed to forget she had a glass of wine in front of her. Her husband would remind her now and then by moving her hand to the glass, at which she’d focus her attention and lift it to her lips.

If a relationship could leave visible traces, theirs would be a series of trails drawn from hand to shoulder, fingertips to mouth. He seemed always to be touching her solicitously:  reaching across to gently dab the corner of her mouth with a napkin, or guiding her hand to a plate.

The young man seated beside me moved outside then to smoke a cigarette, and he and the husband began to talk. The conversation began with the older man offering to buy the younger a beer, and moved into an exchange of stories: who they were, why they were here.

The older couple were tourists in the city, like me. But instead of travelling on a whim, they had come to visit their daughter on this part of a longer journey.

He said he had retired from working to care for his wife, who had dementia. They were travelling now, for as long as they could – for as long as she could enjoy visiting new places, and for as long as he could continue to care for her.

The wind had cooled further, and she changed seats to sit beside her husband. She pressed in close to him, and he put his arm around her. She seemed a little more anxious, so he leaned in to murmur in her ear – and she burst out laughing.

Their daughter arrived then, and she ordered more wine. I could see though that her mother was uneasy: she was cold, and her eyes darted about anxiously. She stood several times, and each time her husband held her hand and spoke some soothing words so that she would sit down again.

Her daughter reached in to her gym bag and pulled out a towel, which she placed on her mother’s lap in an attempt to capture a little warmth. I could see that she and her father wanted to stay a little longer, but it seemed they would soon need to leave. Their glasses were close to full, and their conversations only just begun.

I looked at my jacket, and considered things. The next day, I would fly back to an oppressively hot Brisbane summer. I rather liked my jacket, but it was inexpensive and could easily be replaced before the following winter.

Outside, I saw a family who were running out of time. They had perhaps an hour at most to sit outside the pub in the falling cold; but more than that, they were inexorably losing a wife and mother.

‘Hey, excuse me,’ I said. The daughter looked up, and I held out my jacket.

‘Here. She’s cold. She can wear this.’

The daughter thanked me, and began to fuss over her mother. ‘Here, put this on. No, here, let me help. There you go.’

I gave them a few minutes, then quietly put my book in my bag and slid off my stool. Wearing my jacket, the old woman was calmly leaning in to her husband, tucked comfortably under his arm. He and their daughter were laughing, and I walked quickly to and through the door and out into the street.

I didn’t look over my shoulder as I strode away – I didn’t want to catch the daughter’s eye, because if she’d realised I was leaving she’d have tried to return my jacket. I could not have explained my reasons to her clearly, but I had been in the presence of a relentless love that evening, and a jacket was trivial.

I clutched my arms to my chest as I hurried back to my hostel.

I used to dread ageing. When I was in my teens, I joked that I didn’t really want to live beyond thirty-five or so. Old age (or even middle age) seemed like a life sentence: I’m not sure what I thought my mind would be like in my later years, but I remember thinking my body would be tired and breaking down. Ageing seemed to me to be a drawn out unpleasantness of increasing degree.

At thirty-seven (already two years past my use by date, if my teenage self is to be believed), I look forward to becoming older. I’m just old enough to feel the beginnings of the physical breakdown I so feared: I have early osteoarthritis in my spine, and mild arthritis in some of my finger and toe joints. My hair is almost entirely grey, though I don’t mind that. I don’t mind wrinkles either; but function matters to me a great deal and there are some tiny, cumulative griefs in my joints already.

Having spent the last eighteen months or so morphing into a recreational athlete, I have become much more invested in my long term wellbeing. I’ve begun to learn that although some change in function is inevitable, there’s also an argument to be made that the human body doesn’t stop working due to age – as long as you keep moving.

One of the yudansha in my dojo is an older woman, and she is older in the best way possible. She’s bright and articulate and lively, and I love watching her roll and breakfall and throw other students. I watch her and see a world of possibility: I want to reach retirement age and be able to throw students to the mat, and leap over an obstacle into a quick-sure forward roll.

That I feel strong and well contributes to this desire for a long and active life: it feels possible in a way that is new and exhilarating to me. I have come to realise though that there is another, maybe even more significant reason that I have aspirations and goals for my sixties and seventies and eighties and beyond.

The link between physical health and mental health is a complex link and not one we understand well on a conscious level, but on a more visceral level the connection is very clear. The effect that physical health has on my affect is clear and immediate: if I spend enough time in each week training for strength, I am calm and resilient, and my day to day existence is smooth enough that I can move through it confidently.

More profound though is the realisation that I now think about the future at all. I think about times a long way ahead of me, and my contented place in them. And this, this is something. I spent many years looking no further forward than a week or a day.

There were times when the black dog placed his heavy paws on my chest, and breathed hot and claustrophobic over my shoulder, and then life was a matter of minutes: just one, then another, then another. But those are not the times I’m thinking of: I’m thinking of the expanse of years, the decade or even two where I forgot how to dream. Life wasn’t bad or even particularly sad: it just didn’t have a permanent sort of texture, and I didn’t grip it firmly enough to climb.

This is what excites me about getting old: that I care enough to want it. I see a long and vibrant future, and I am there in every moment.