Make friends with the mullet // Words on connection

The creative words bleed thin these days out of my fingertips, although they seem to be typing endlessly. Emails stand like vases for the flowers of my many work tasks, my days spent aligning text boxes in canva and filling in spreadsheets of guests attending events. I asked my friends for some words they'd like me to write about, or perhaps for them to read about no matter who the author - helping to set some focus in motion. Transition Connection Grief

Empathy

Faith

Solitude

Time

Chance

Expectations Horizon A honey pot of happy topics my friends, joyful and light and fun...*not* Although I will say, all the very best writing comes from the real guts of life; and the guts as we know are not clean and neat like our online lives would have others believe. Tonight I'm going to write about Connection, a prelude to a piece about Solitude. I feel that comfort in my solitude is only wholly available to me with the hands of connection cradling me. It's as though genuine human bonds are the push pins on my map, and I get to stray from there into lands of quiet solitude. Returning with new selves and new perspectives. Today I have an endearing story about the ways we can seek and hold new connections with others as adults - and how they can allow us to be our fullest selves. You ready? I have a glass of water next to me, but I'd advise something far more bubbly or alcoholic for yourself. ------ I live a life of leisure in many ways, she's getting her morning coffee, she's working from home, listening to playlists as long as the day. She's chatting to the same cheery barista each morning and having impromptu dinners with friends on week nights. The rest of my time is spent inventing recipes or re-arranging the furniture in my tiny house (and watching Bad Sisters endlessly). During these repeated ceremonies in my daily life, I often see the same strangers. They too are getting their morning coffees - then traipsing off to their jobs and big wonderful messy days beyond our glance. I had seen this particular stranger a few times, and honestly thought they were a tourist with their style being one not seen so often 'around these parts' (I can't believe I just said that).

One afternoon I was scrolling the minefield of relentless terror and teens doing tick-tock dances, weddings and wars when I saw a rather close-up and imposing photo of this persons entire beautiful head and face filling up the insta-box. It was a photo from a hair salon I go to, proud of their work designing this exquisite permed mullet. A face I felt like I needed to know more about. So I braved-up and sent her a message out of the blue, like a pimply teenager asking someone on a date to the bowling alley. And now a few months on, I live with her, her husband and their kids in one big house and we're writing a book about how to correctly perform good customer service. Kidding, we hang out. ------ Making friends as an adult is difficult, you're pretty set in your circle, you know who to go to for what - what they'll say and how they'll react. You have your Sunday afternoon people/person and your Friday night crew. I love my friends, I'm extremely lucky to have close friends who reciprocate ongoing contact and respect, love and memes. But when I moved back home, I told myself that I MUST meet new people that I haven't known since I was a child. Returning to a place where everyone knows who you dated at 16, that your mum may have possibly been on a date with your friends dad at one point and that you embarrassingly had your skirt blow up during an award ceremony isn't the vibe. I was determined. Much to my delight, two just, mmm!! (read that like you just took a bite of something delicious), BRILLIANT people I knew from past lives and their magnificent, sublime partners moved back at the very same time, and together we built new experiences and memories and wine fuelled dance nights at the town hall. We've folded people in to our pan like delicious cheese in an omelette. Cocooning them in the buttery warmth we create when we're all together. I certainly would not have half the vigour, strength or lust for 'more' I have today without that group of people holding my hand through the last year... My relationships with kindred spirits that live hours and oceans away exist almost solely on voice message exchanges; today I received a 23 minute monologue. A personalised podcast to get me into town and back. We all have those friendships don't we? I haven't spoken to these people on the phone for months, maybe a year - but our voice messages are like snapshots of the headspace and physical place we're residing in at that exact moment. Like photos captured in darkness filled with sound and energy. I fill in the gaps with my imagination about what fashion they're experimenting with or how their babies are growing and changing in ways I can't see. But they're just as real as the ones in person I can tell you that with unwavering confidence. Not the same, but just as real. And now I have a new friend. I feel the most 'me' with my new friend. Something I don't usually feel unless I'm home alone typing on my computer in my pyjamas eating a frosty fruit listening to Jill Scott. At 30, meeting someone in a formed state of being (whole yet incomplete) - where I know what I like and don't like, how I want to feel and how I definitely don't. Knowing the ways I want to be loved and the ways I'm willing to love back; they make new connections pretty special. She's an absolute keeper that I plan on rolling along with for a very very long time. Lovable in all her uniquely mesmerising, chaotic, majestic, exposed ways... I think that the strength of the connection actually has more to do with me thinking that I'm also a keeper now too. Something new to this human making it up as she goes along. I encourage you to ask the barista you see every day and talk to, to have a bevy with you on their day off (like I am tomorrow!), or to ask the person you do pilates with every Saturday morning if they'd like to grab breakfast after class. You never know what could come of making friends with 'your' mullet :) Can't wait to hear all about it, M.

Daily Ceremony is grateful to live and work on Yuin land that holds the stories of the Dreamtime. We pay our respects and honour the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders past, present & emerging and acknowledge the stories, traditions and living cultures of our First Nations People

Ceremony [ ser-uh-moh-nee ] A unified ritualistic event with a purpose, usually consisting of a number of artistic components, performed on a special occasion. Aka, life.