Sarah Wilson

i love: whimsy

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Right now, I’m noticing little moments of whimsy. Pockets of of creativity that explore ideas capriciously. Whimsical people are a little bit quirky, a little bit nerdy, often loners.  They were the kid who’d delicately pull apart a daisy. Or watch a worm for a full 45 minutes in a puddle. Now they create music … Read more

straight from the school of Getting Real…

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“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
– Leo Tolstoy

Change yourself and everything else around you changes, slowly. It’s a knock-on effect.  And in time the world changes. It’s slow, but it does happen. Which is more than most of us can say for our best intentions to go out there and create something grand and exciting that will fix depression, or youth suicide, or breast cancer.

Bring it in close to home, rather than working outwards, and you get results. Gently. Effectively.

My spiritual counselor friend Sky once told me to “be my message”. I’d been rabbiting on about how I wanted to show, and to tell, people how to do things better. 

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sunday life: try a “think week”

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This week I had myself a “think week”.

I read in the Wall Street Journal that every six months Microsoft’s Bill Gates extracts himself from his chino-wearing Silicon Valley brethren and heads to a wee cabin on a hill for a “think week”. He removes all distractions and armed with (I’m imagining) a bunch of Enya downloads, some butchers’ paper and coloured textas, nuts out ideas and new directions. I can see it now. Scrawled in big letters and taped to the wall next to the mounted moose head, “Portals? Doorways? Euraka!!! Windows!”.

Yes, yes, I think I need a think week!

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life is hard. life is precious.

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Warning: this is just the trailer…but prepare to cry big connecting-with-humanity tears. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5FYahzVU44[/youtube] Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire (this is actually the full title) hits screens in a month or two. But a water-cooler-ready overview in the mean time: * Oprah’s backed it * the plot follows the truly tragic life of … Read more

high school politicking 2.0. (shudder).

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Marketing supremo Seth Godin wrote today: “Any sufficiently overheated industry will eventually resemble high school…filled with insecurity, social climbing, backbiting, false friends, faux achievements, high drama and not much content. Much of this insecurity comes from a market that doesn’t make good judgments, that doesn’t understand how to reliably choose between alternatives. So it turns into a popularity contest.”

As Tom Hanks reportedly said, “Hollywood is like high school, but with money.” The internet, Godin says, is like high school but with a modem. And twitter… is high school but only 140 characters at a time.

As with high school, you ultimately win out when you keep your distance from irrelevant people. And do your own thing.

I was bullied mercilessly in high school. The “clique” found me weird (lived in country, big family, quite liked studing). I found them weird.

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good thing to do #1: stare at yourself as a kid

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I found this photo recently. I’ve just finished making my Dad a coffee-table photo book about his life for his 60th birthday (actually it’s mostly about his six kids because that’s what he took pictures of for most of his life) using Blurb.com. Which is another story. For another day. Anyway, I found this picture … Read more

sunday life: “it’s meant to be”

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This week I contemplate whether it’s all “meant to be”.

Have you noticed everyone is saying this a lot lately?

The sales assistant at Domayne tells me the mattress protector I’m after is the last in stock. “It’s meant to be,” she says, giving me a knowing smile. The only available seats at the Cineplex are for Ugly Truth. Not an ideal conflation of events, but I run into a peer who later sets me up with a sweet speakers gig in the row behind me: “It was meant to be”. Someone’s eaten the last Mint Slice: “It’s not meant to be”, yells Dad from the lounge during a recent visit.

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golf. it’s good. in a lemon plaid kinda way

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Right now I’m on a hobbies rampage. It started when I declared that I like men with hobbies. I had a cup of tea with a guy the other day who just started painting and I was immediately attracted.

A hobby denotes an ability to shut off from what “you’re meant to be doing” and to suspend for a bit doing something out of curiosity. There’s no pat-on-the-back-able purpose to it. It’s just about being with yourself and seeing what comes up. People who take the time and effort to open themselves up to this exploration are wonderful people to be around.

I realised I haven’t had a hobby for a while. Mountain biking was it for years. My adventures up and down hills were a great space for me to explore what made me “me”. Oh, the places I went (I’ve ridden around NZ, Tasmania, Brisbane to Cairns, California, Spain, Vietnam…all on the same saddle; the most reliable, stable thing I’ve probably ever put between my legs…).

24-hour moutainbike race, Canberra
I’m the one in pink. Lap 3 of 24-hour race, Canberra.

But to golf. I had my first lesson today. I think it could be a good hobby.

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good thing noticed #1: flowers with your books

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On Saturday mornings in Ariel bookshop, Oxford St, Sydney, you can buy a little posie of flowers for 3 bucks.  I love this. They wrap them in brown paper for you. It clearly isn’t a profit-making exercise! But the good-will, well, it got me wanting to spread it. The kooky girl behind the counter who … Read more