Sarah Wilson

sunday life: in which i go bush to write my book!

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This week I do creative work

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I’m not sure why, but I think I’m going to feel better for sharing the following with you. I’m writing a book. But here’s the thing. I was commissioned almost a year ago. It’s due next month. But, oh my, I’ve not written a word. At least not one fit enough for print.

Seriously, a whole year has passed as Henry David Thoreau once said (about life in general),

“frittered away by detail.”

That is, getting back to people, paying parking tickets and working through bottomless to-do lists. And that magical day when I “finally get on top of things” and can focus on creative outpouring keeps getting pushed back and back.

I think it’s a fact of modern life that no one gets anything done anymore. Anything of worthwhile, creative value.

Productivity expert Jason Fried spoke at TED.com recently about how work doesn’t happen at work now; it gets done on the train, on weekends and when we come in two hours early before the email avalanche descends. I was talking to my friend Kerry, a CEO of a charity organisation. “I need a long plane trip to come up soon,” she said. “So I can get my mid-term report finished.”

This is how we get our meaningful work done, because our “working days” are completely shredded up by interruptions and meetings and we never get the momentum and locked-out languid space required for creative stuff. But it’s the creative stuff we’re all crying out for, isn’t’ it!

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when you’re sick… “writing is a godsend”

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I thought I’d share this interview with you. As you know, I was sick for quite a while. Getting better now. But it’s been a struggle to do what nourishes me – being creative – during this time. At the same time, it’s what’s kept me going. It’s been the grist to my mill. This … Read more

Question: how do you dress for riding a bike?

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Today I’m going to answer a question I get asked a lot.

Tanya emailed me this:

“I don’t wanna have to cart my office clothes with me on my bike, nor is my body fit for the great outdoors in tight lycra! Help!”

I hear you Tanya. I ride in what I’m wearing for the day. No need to complicate life with changes of clothes…seriously. Here are some tricks I employ:

1. Embrace dressy shorts. I love these ones below from Sass and Bide. I buy them a size or two too big.

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2. Yes, you can wear heels. I do all the time. Just buy ones that support your foot in some way – eg boots or ones with straps over the arch of the foot and around the ankle. The heels below are from All Saints – they’re like a laced-up desert boot. When riding with heels you do need to be careful you don’t slip…but this extra psychological pressure actually makes for some nice hyper-aware and aligned riding. What about wedges? They don’t work, really. I’ll scoot down the road in them, but there’s no grip to be found. Save them for walking.

Here’s Lucy from Love at 1st Sight (Lucy builds single speeds in Bondi, if you’re interested) wearing booties:

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3. Short dresses with stockings in winter are great. A scarf you can tie to your bag is good too. I rode to this red carpet event in the city back in winter (much to the shock of publicists), wearing this:

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Boots are good. When riding in skirts or dresses, I just tuck the fabric under me and try to keep seated.  I think this is quite a clever way to deal with skirts:

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tuesday eats: the raw food diet and a podcast with crazy kid David Wolfe

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It’s a movement that hasn’t really struck here in Australia. I’m seeing signs. In LA and New York it’s huge.

*This blog post has been updated on February 5, 2016 and now reflects my current stance on eating raw foods.

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I’m talking raw. And it’s very much a movement. When I was in New York I checked out a few. My favourite whimsical person Gala Darling and I met for raw spanikopita made with almond feta at One Lucky Duck in Gramercy. Beyond good!!

Possibly it’s most colourful proponent is David Wolfe. I’ve heard David Wolfe speak a few times. He quite possibly has too much energy for this lifetime. Turns out I spoke to him this week about going raw.

Here’s the podcast. You’ll have to bear with me…it was my first time using Call Recorder on Skype and it’s full of typically  awkward Sarah-ish glitches. It goes for about 15 minutes:

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Now. Not everyone wants to go completely raw. I don’t. But there are a few things to know about eating MORE raw food that might pique your interest. The gist is a little somethin like this:

* There are two main sources of enzymes for digesting food and turning it into energy. They’re found inside the food itself, and in us.

* According to the raw foodies, food enzymes are destroyed when food is heated over about 116 degrees F or 46 degrees C. Which means we have to use our own enzymes to break down cooked food.

* BUT our bodies have a limited supply of enzymes. And when they deplete, we age faster. So the less we use (and get from food instead) the better.

Raw foodies ferment and soak grains and nuts to make them digestible. Or slow cook food at low temperatures. And cure meats with lemon and other acids (as in carpaccio)

Me, I personally like warm mushy foods… An argument can also be made about some vegetables requiring heating in order to make their vitamins and minerals available, such as starchy veg like potato. The valuable nutrients are contained in the starch and in order for out bodies to absorb them we need to cook the vegetable to make it easier for our body to break down.

I suggest having a combo of both raw and cooked veg so you get the best ban for your buck.

If you’re interested in learning more hear him talk during his Australian tour next in February and March. He’s talking on permaculture, doing workshops and sharing his raw chocolate recipes (I’ll share these in a bit).

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good read: “the sound of a wild snail eating”

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I’ve just finished this sweet little book, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating.  It’s the memoir of a woman who gets sick and waits out her illness watching a little snail that a friend delivered to her in a flowerpot. She learns from the snail about slowness, although the snail moves faster than she does while she’s bedridden. Her understanding of the snail’s stillness over the course of 12 months mirrors her acceptance of her illness “standstillness”.

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“The velocity of the ill, however, is like that of the snail,” Emily Dickinson.

If you’ve ever been sick or held back from everything that’s defined you for some reason, I reckon you’ll get this sweet journey. Elisabeth Tova Bailey was struck down with a particularly virulent strain of flu while travelling and it developed into a much more serious illness – something akin to CFS – which left her debilitated for almost twenty years. It was in the worst period that a friend gave her the little woodland snail as a (pretty weird!) gift.

The book opened me up. And it was beautiful to appreciate that some things have an inevitable pace. Meaning can be found in not moving, in being quiet. And that nature can find us and teach us what we need to know.

Happily, I was able to contact Elisabeth, who shared with me some thoughts on her illness.

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sunday life: how my slouch is making me sad

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This week I fix my posture

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If you’ve done yoga you might know the frog pose. Ooooh, yes, the frog pose!  When people do the frog – on their stomach with their bent legs splayed out at each side, stretching at a right angle to the torso – they cry. I’ve been in classes where the whole room is weeping, all sweaty and snotty, hoping no one’s noticing. Not from pain, but from a deep, sad emotional release as the pelvis slowly opens.

This is because, as I learnt during this week’s journey to stand up straight, the pelvis is the body’s brain, and like our brain it stores a stack of emotion in its dark recesses. The frog, then, is The Notebook for the groin, the “Hallelujah” (Jeff Buckley’s moving version) for the hip-flexer. And the pelvis, my friends, is a joint in serious need of a good hug.

I don’t know about you, but everyone around me these days is in hip/back/neck pain, sees their osteo/physio/chiro more often than their own mother and is constantly “getting back into” pilates/yoga/Core Attack classes. Surely this isn’t right. Surely there’s a better way. As they say in the NatGeo docos, I decided to find out.

Me, I come from a long line of women with dowager’s humps and men with tilted gaits. Add to this a career behind a computer and a very fat brother (well, he was fat as a baby; I was eight when he was born – at a hefty 12 pounds – and I’d carry him on my hip; it’s thrown my spine out to the right) and I now resemble a Twistie. A stale, soggy one.

This week, the contorted pain of being a Twistie finally had me see Anna-Louise Bouvier author of The Feel Good Body (who developed the Physiocise technique for posture) and the bubbly mood expert on ABC’s recent Making Australia Happy series. She calls me a “floppy”. I have super flexible joints that I struggle to keep vertically aligned, which is affecting my energy levels.

But she also says the way I slouch is making me sad, it’s dragging me down.

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I quit sugar #3 (why sugar makes us fat)

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OK. So this is where it gets interesting and a little bit tricky. As in, good tricky.

Today I’m going to cover off two key issues. Yesterday I said I’m eating more (good) fat and protein as a way of getting me through this quit sugar business. This is in part cos fat and protein satiate. They fill me up. So I don’t crave sugar. Or anything else for that matter. Oooh, but they’re fattening, you say!? Actually, no. Sugar is. Let me explain.

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But first, know two things to kick off with:

sugar doesn’t fill you up. it makes you want to eat more and more (thus making you put on weight)

and

the real issue here is FRUCTOSE…

not sugar per se. Sugar is half fructose and half glucose. But it’s fructose that causes the issues.

fat doesn’t make us fat, sugar does

I’m going to dot-point this part because it is tough to follow. I’m going to leave out most of the fancy scientific language.  If you want to know more (and it’s really worth learning more)  can I highly recommend David Gillespie’s Sweet Poison?. It’s the full, glorified biological breakdown of the deal. But for now:

* every substance we ingest has a corresponding appetite hormone that tells our brain (the hypothalamus) that we’re full. It’s like a little detector/messengar. It finds the protein or the fat or the carb and goes, “Hello! Better tell the brain we have a visitor”. It is also able to tell the brain when we’ve had enough. The brain then issues the edict: “Time to shut down appetite”. You’ve probably noticed when you eat cheese or nuts it gets rid of hunger straight away. Yeah?

* every substance, that is, except for fructose. Fructose is a sugar found in fruit and honey and in table sugar (sugar contains 50% fructose, 50% glucose). When we eat fructose, it’s like our body doesn’t notice it. It goes undetected. And so we can eat and eat and eat it, but our bodies don’t feel full.

* people often say fructose is good because it doesn’t cause insulin spikes (as glucose does). This is actually a bad thing…for a host of reasons…but in part because insulin is an appetite control hormone.

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I quit sugar #2 (first step is to start eating more fat…yes!)

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I posted on Monday to say I’m quitting sugar. Well, it’s been three days. And I’m going great. Although you have to be so careful…I ordered a chai tea at a shoot on Tuesday and it came with honey already in it. So far, no withdrawals… because I’ve been upping my fat intake. I shall … Read more