Year: 2015

Louis C.K. on the pain of always being “the one who copes”

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Love Louis? I’d be surprised if you didn’t. He’s humanely and humanly funny. By which I mean, he plants the basics of life in front of us and does little more than tickle us with our own absurdity. And pain. And reality.

Here's how I cope... I head bush.
Here’s how I cope… I head bush.

I trawled through some interviews with him recently, to learn more about The Guy Himself. I discovered he was as raw and ugly and normal as I wanted him to be.

He shared his experience of a rough patch and his struggles with life in general (PS, make sure you consider the below quote in the context in which I flesh it out here):

“It never stopped getting worse. I remember thinking, This is too much for me to handle. I wanted to give up. I knew it was my right to. But then a few minutes would go by and I’d realize, I’m still here…

“There was no escape from it. And I’d be a little disappointed at not being truly suicidal. I hated being ‘all right.'” 

I have to be careful here. I’m not wanting to gloss over his – or anyone’s – experience with suicide.
I’d like to, if I can, focus on that last bit – that being “all right” was a hard experience in itself.

When I was in my twenties, I felt the same. I was struggling terribly with life and, yet, I kept on coping.

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The only (Ayurvedic) sleep advice you need to follow

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I’ve contemplated and researched every insomniac’s trick out there. (You can catch up on my personal experience with insomnia and my 14 insomnia solutions if you find yourself with an hour to kill at 3am sometime soon.)

The only (Ayurvedic) sleep advice you need to read - sarahwilson.com
Image via The Ivy House

Eventually you have to drill things down to The Thing That Works. Of course, there are always several factors. But mostly there’s a core one that feeds the rest, or takes care of the rest when you kick into Solution Finding Mode.

I mostly find Ayurveda is all about this: drilling down, going to the root. Wonderfully, during my stay at an Ayurvedic clinic in India last month, the doctors looking after me pretty much drilled down to this root trick:

Go to bed by 10pm.

Their Ayurvedic explanation goes like this…

Different times of day have different energetic forces aligned with the doshas. (I explain the dosha deal here.)

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An open letter to my friends: Your perfume is killing me!

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Dearest Loved Ones,

Your perfume is killing me. I mean it almost literally.

bfca460c69266d14078fb23482aaa149 e1440980156295 An open letter to my friends: Your perfume is killing me!
Image via Four Tears

It’s also affecting our friendship. I can’t hug you, and so you might have noticed my stepping back when we meet up.

I can’t risk dining with you in a confined space and so you might have noticed I’ve been suggesting we meet for a walk instead.

Actually, I probably haven’t always been so subtle. I’ve probably hurt your feelings a bit. This is because perfume, for me, is like a whack in the noggin; I strike out to protect myself.

I’m so, so, so sorry.

I’ve toyed with this a while: how to let you know that I just can’t cope when you wear fragrance (perfume,

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My number one wellness secret (not what you expect!)

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I won’t keep you in suspense. I’m not a clickbait-y type. The answer I always give when asked for the most effective trick for being well is… to learn to cook.

I Quit Sugar - One-Pan Sesame Chicken
Participants on the most recent round of the 8WP learnt to make this One-Pan Sesame Chicken dish

When you cook you get empowered and mindful. By necessity, you cut out processed food and all the guff Big Food foists upon us. And, of course, you cut out the majority of the added sugar in your diet.

The best way to learn to cook? Here, I’ll get sales-y. It’s to do the I Quit Sugar 8-Week Program.

“I was inspired by the recipes and enjoyed cooking new things and learning new recipes and techniques. I didn’t feel like I had time to cook everything on the plan.” – participant from the current round of the 8-Week Program.

“It is so much more than just a “diet” it sets you up with the tools to succeed without having to worry about weighing/measuring/ counting points or calories which just isn’t sustainable in the long term. As an accountant I have geekily also been watching the weekly grocery bill and believe that by switching to meal planning and shopping only according to the list I have been saving £20-30 a week! We have cut right down on food waste and the fridge is packed with healthy ingredients.” – Angela, participant from the current round of the 8-Week Program.

I Quit Sugar 8-Week-Program

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Excitedly seeking web designer!

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Hello. The look of this site is, well, tired. And I’m doing a call out to you all to see if you have ideas for a design overhaul.

Are you a clever web designer with ideas who’d like to come into the office and work with me on this project?

Photo by emmakateco.com
Photo by emmakateco.com

I always like to put these offers out to people in my community first (if you’re a regular reader of my blog you may have noticed this on various projects over the past five years).

This is the deal:

  • You’d be free to work 2-3 weeks some time in September.
  • You’d be paid.
  • You’d be working on site at my office in Surry Hills, Sydney.
  • You’d be customising a WordPress template, bringing in additional sprinkles of pizazz.
  • The redesign gist is to reflect the following vibe of my new direction: minimalist and pared back but still warm, elegant but not cold, simple but still fun, fresh and innovative but totally user-friendly.

The more formal requirements: 

  • Strong graphic design skills and demonstrated experience designing for websites and web builds.

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Buy my soup in a jar. Help the homeless (my new project!)

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I have recently hooked up with the The Inside Out Organic Soup Kitchen charity. A little while back I gave away artwork to raise money for one of their projects teaching disadvantaged young mums how to cook. Now, we’ve joined forces to provide you with some of my soup. As well as the homeless folk in my community.

Two Good Soup, Kung Flu-Fighting Chicken style!
Two Good Soup, Kung Flu-Fighting Chicken style!

Here’s how it works:

* You place an order for one of their organic Two Good Soup online (sadly, this service is only available to those in the Sydney metropolitan area).

* You choose from a range of different soups for each order. At the moment, one of those is my Kung Flu-Fighting Chicken Soup from my One-Pot Wonders Cookbook.

* Better still, you place an order for your work crew. Orders will be delivered to your door. And for each soup purchased, one goes to a person in need. Plus you’ll get a photo of where your soup delivery ends up and a shout out.

* You pay just $10 for a big jar of the stuff.

This simple act ALSO buys a soup for someone without a home or living in a domestic violence shelter. Yep, a two-for-one deal. 

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Too much attention, not distraction, is the issue

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Blimey, we’re all very focused on the Distraction Problem, aren’t we. Our electronic devices ruin dinner, corrupt young minds. Our frenetic toggling is reshaping our brains in disconcerting ways.

Found on frommers.com
Found on frommers.com

I don’t disagree with the concerns. An inability to sit soundly and in flow with ourselves and life (or a culture that drags us from this very human need) is at the core of much of contemporary ill. But what about this new theory of distraction explored in The New Yorker recently by way of a critique of Matthew Crawford’s new book “The World Beyond Your Head: Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction”?

The idea posited toward the end is that perhaps distraction is an antidote to the real issue: too much attention.

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Nietzsche on haste

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Nietzsche was known for a few utterances. And for being a prolific walker. (When he lived in Eze, France, he made a daily habit of scaling a steep 1,400-foot mountain to reach a medieval village perched above his home.) It’s in this context of walking he shared this:

“Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself”.

Image via Tumblr.com
Image via Tumblr.com

So said Fred in 1874.

His antidote was to walk. Walking, which is quite slow and roughly at the speed of considered thought, quashes haste. Which allows us to play with the inverse of Nietzsche’s observation. Walking reduces haste, which, in turn, brings you closer to yourself.

So said me, just now.

We really do know that we don’t want to flee from ourselves. We’d like to sit calmly with ourselves. The

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Another benefit of doing nothing for four weeks

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On my recent post in which I announced I was off on a break (to India) to try the art of doing nothing, reader Leonie shared the below quote in the comment section (thx Leonie!).

xxxx
Me on the beach as a kid…doing nothing…

“You will be civilized on the day you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.”

Essayist and scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb is responsible for the wisdom.

The civilized bit is the salient part for me.

Why civilized? I didn’t get it before I left. But after spending four weeks in “nothingness retreat” I fully appreciate the judicious use of the term.

You see, forced to sit with yourself, you have to flay and squirm and cry and rail…with no

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

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I think this says it all: I thought this confronting tale of life in a Mumbai slum in the early 2000s was fiction (such was the “unrealness” of it) until I got to the end and read the epilogue where the The New Yorker poverty correspondent Katherine Boo explains that every single detail is true. And that she spent four years living in the slums to get the full, graphic, stranger-than-fiction story.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Rebecca Boo
Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo

Background: Two friends had mentioned Boo’s book. Then I saw it in the library at the India clinic, shoved down the back. I have a three strikes rule. So I had to give it a crack. The upshot being that it’s now One of My Favourite Books Ever.

The gist: Boo follows a collection of slum characters as they navigate their daily human-ness in slummy filth, throwing up inevitable observations on capitalism, consumerism, corruption and character. The reader is forced to confront their own grubby lives. And their narrow take on poverty.

The best bits: The tale in itself is gripping (made more so by the fact it’s true), but the prose is what got me

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