Life After Work

Life without a job is great - apart from the lack of income of course. I didn't realise how much my job had been stressing me out. I'm in the sweet spot now - feeling more energised whilst living off my savings and a generous tax return. I suppose I'll start feeling stressed again when the money starts to run out. But for now, it's a luxury to have my time and mind free of work related dramas. There are plenty of other dramas going on in the world to occupy me anyway.

I finally got the edits done and emailed my article back to the publisher of the C. G. Jung Institute's journal. This is what I saw when I opened the document after the publisher's edits. Eeek! How could I have got so many things wrong? It was a bit overwhelming until I realised that most were commas, hyphens and formatting. I stuck to my guns stylistically. I found it a bit annoying having to think about that to be honest. On a couple of occasions I heard myself saying: 'NO! I said it like that on purpose!' I'm sure this is normal for anyone who hasn't worked much with an editor. To be fair there weren't too many suggested stylistic changes. 

It took a lot longer than I expected to track down several academic references because web links were no longer valid. I enjoy that kind of sleuthing. It was really uncanny that one in particular led back to a book I had in my prison art library. I really struggled to find the reference for this quote by Aboriginal elder, Wandjuk Marika:

I am not painting just for my pleasure; there is the meaning, knowledge and power. This is the earthly painting for the creation and for the land story. The land is not empty, the land is full of knowledge, full of story, full of goodness, full of energy, full of power. Earth is our mother, the land is not empty. There is the story I am telling you – special, sacred, important. (Marika, 1995, p. 125)

When I finally tracked it down after following a couple of different sources - this is the image I saw and I realised where I had seen this book. It had been right under my nose all along but ironically when I realised I needed it, I no longer had access. Thank God for Google Books is all I can say, because that's where I eventually found the quote and the page number. 

The other uncanny thing that happened re my job was that my work watch stopped - just like that! I only ever wore a watch to work so I knew what the time was in the art room. We used to have clocks but got sick of replacing the batteries because the guys would take them for their TV remotes.

Another interesting development - I am involved in a community dance project that spans a couple of years and will eventually travel across the state from west to east. Too much to say now so I will do a post about it at some stage. I'm still not sure what I am contributing but it's something to do with 'storyboarding' the narrative.

I'm still enjoying my eBike and just spent my Xmas money from my Mum on some funky panniers for it so I can ride the 5km into town on the old rail tracks and go shopping, or 15km to the beach and take my swimming gear. The bike was a big investment for me but it has already been worth it.

Apart from that - I'm growing lettuces, cucumbers and tomatoes, and landscaping the soak to create a small island so the ducks have somewhere to nest away from the foxes if we get another wet winter and it fills up. Waiting for my booster shot - which is kind of frustrating. We have been vaccinated for months but our state has been a fortress so we have't been exposed to COVID. It means it was a waste of time being vaccinated and now I need a booster. This virus is still raging around the globe and I just don't know where it will end. It does seem to be a good antidote to rampant capitalism though, and that's the best thing I can say about it.