I am coming to terms with the complexity and intensity of my character, the resentment that arrives when you realise the ways your parents have inevitably failed you (no matter how wonderful they are), and the extent of my privilege in the world. I am always writing, always reading, and always seeking to understand myself better so that I can make a more informed contribution to the world. This year, I hope to learn how to rest, and how to delight in the uncertainty of other humans.
Read MoreFor 15 days Rhianna and I battled hordes of mosquitoes, stamped our feet in our tents to fend off howling dingos, and navigated ex-boyfriends who happened to be on the trail at the same time. We clambered across ridgelines at first and last light, navigated through hip-high grass and hip-high river crossings, and crawled up and over impossibly high boulders with 18kg packs on our backs when the 30+ degree days had us dripping with sweat.
Read MoreIn 2020, I read 42 books. 10,991 pages. Here is my year, in review, according to the books I read.
Read MoreDo beauty therapists have nice skin because they Do The Work, or are they beauty therapists because they've always had nice skin, and recognise the social currency in it?
Read MoreThere is a whirr of panic, a current of fear; the images flashing on screens from Italy, they come with a dark, invasive energy. A force.
Read MoreI do this every year. I write about the books that I read and the places I read them. I did it in 2018. I did it in 2017 and 2015 (ah, so young). It’s interesting to track my habits, from the kinds of books I gravitate towards when I’m sad or lonely, to the amount I read (or don’t read) when someone or something new enters my life.
Read MoreAt 18, I enter the clubs. I am repeatedly groped at the bar, in the queue, on the dance floor. Men slide up against me to get past in a busy room, close enough to feel the bulge in their pants and their breath down my neck. “Give me a smile, won’t ya honey?”.
Read MoreThe outback was post-apocalyptic, dotted with abandoned trailers, rotting animal carcasses, fluffy gorilla slippers, golf balls and anal beads. It was sandy and unapologetically barren. And yet, here I was on a bicycle, hauling a heavy trailer across the middle of the continent with a stranger I’d met on Instagram a week prior. Boy, was I was hating it.
Read MoreI sink into a bath overlooking the River Derwent with a bottle of red and my hardbound, Bible-like copy of David Walsh’s autobiography, A Bone of Fact. Little do I know, I’ll be passing the man himself my sea urchin and hartshorn sheep whey vodka martini at dinner later that evening and I’ll watch him drink it in one gulp.
Read More73% of women have had casual sex even when they didn’t want to. In fact, these women say that on average, 72% of their casual sexual experiences were not truly wanted.
Read MoreWhen I moved into the house on Bourke Street, one of the bedrooms had a glad-wrapped window. The outdoor toilet was without a toilet seat. The shower door was stuck on its hinges.
Read MoreThis letter was posted on December 7, 2018 to two NSW Police offices. I received confirmation of their arrival on December 12 and December 13 of 2018. I heard from the Commissioner on December 21 and have a meeting with him mid-way through January.
Read MoreIt’s been a year since I decided to work for myself. I quit my previous job in an erratic act of self defiance, romanticising the millionaire sob story to live my own dreams against a backdrop of improbable success. With $1000 to my name, not a single client, $4000 of debt and my only mode of transport (a 2001 SR250 motorbike) without brakes, I was well and truly in the deep end of the pool.
Read MoreOn the weekends, you sit in the back seat cradling your bucket and spade. Mum’s already swiped zinc all over your nose and your rashy seems tight around the arms. Mum just looks over and says “you’re getting so big now!” but doesn’t let you take it off. Dad smokes a ciggy from the driver’s seat.
Read MoreI picked up Polish and Nigerian hitchhikers, hiked in Switzerland and built a fire beside hidden army shacks in the mountains, making bread and cooking sausages and melting chocolate in the middle of bananas over hot coals.
Read MoreNow alone, with my podcasts and playlists, I drove across Spain and up the east coast, sleeping in the car on the side of the highway while a thunderstorm commandeered the sky. I had to pull off because I couldn’t see the road anymore- the rain was so heavy, the lightning like a strobe light.
Read MoreI’ve been climbing mountains and getting naked at the summit under thunder-fuelled skies. Driving up and over and round the mountains in the south of France, a hand on my knee. Eating fresh blueberries and chocolate biscuits in the rain. Scrunching snow beneath my hiking boots.
Read MoreThe man whose name we don’t know tells us he’s been in Sri Lanka only a week or so and that it is here he tasted the ocean on his lips for the first time. I could sense the shock from Craig, an avid surfer, beside me.
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