Showing Up.

It's 7:40pm on a Sunday night and I'm sitting in my bed with a glazed doughnut amount of moisturiser on my face. I usually don't open my laptop on the weekends because when I open the screen it's a carefully orchestrated cacophony of tabs screaming at me with all the tasks I have to start on Monday. I even woke up at 3am this morning thinking about a process at work and how I've almost certainly been doing it incorrectly for the last 16 months. I really wanted to write this week so open it I did! I started writing blogs in 2011, for the Snowy Mountain's of Music Festival (my boss and I reminded a lot of people that the word 'of' was intentional in that title). I was 18 years old and a girl I went to high school with suggested I apply for a blogger internship role with the PR & Marketing manager. She was a brilliant woman and I ended up working with her for some time. The day of the interview I met her at a local cafe, I was freckly and scrawny, with a love for vintage everything and a complete absence of any self value. I believed I was without talent, that it had skipped me entirely and that whoever made humans had sprinkled something else in the mixture- maybe I was the world's best jouster but would never get to find out. I essentially didn't think I was right for the job and I very confidently and with brazen conviction told her someone could definitely do it better; she should choose someone else. She said, 'I am going to choose you, but you have to promise never to say that again in a job interview.' So off I went to her house for 3 hours a week, and I started to learn. I drafted Media Releases, began my tuition in the fine art of the cold call and tried my best to weave words together that seemed fun and fresh. For the blog I chose black and white photos of people skiing in the 60's and thoroughly enjoyed putting my words out into the world (although thankfully, they were heavily edited by the genius head of the operation). I loved that job, I felt so important. When we got to the festival we went from gig to gig, following the artists, writing about them, posting photos with zippy tag lines and doing mini interviews. I wore unbelievably inappropriate clothing for a ski hill, I recall a cotton sleeveless jumpsuit from Just Jeans and some sort of wafer thin ballet wrap from my mums closet. Thankfully I had my trusty beanie with crochet roses on it and some gumboots. What a sight. The months following the festival I continued to learn about the precise and imperative skill of an email subject line and how NOT to use CC instead of BCC. Here I am, 10 years on, sitting at my Mac as I did in her home office, writing blogs. Last week I was saying something to my friend about how it feels to be living alone and I said 'ahh well, I'll just write about it' and she said 'yup, gotta put it in a blog'. Typically I would have taken that personally (even though she didn't mean it like that). I would have got defensive and thought to myself, 'Maybe I do overshare. Maybe no one wants to read this' But that day, and in the days since, I have still written despite those quite frankly rude and unwelcome thoughts, ain't no body got time for that. I love writing, I like the way it keeps my hands busy when I'd much rather be irritating the imperceptible bumps on my chin so that they turn into crevasses, or eating copious amounts of almonds or chocolate or corn chips. I love that my friends call me after reading a blog to talk about the subject matter or that once- when I wrote on an instagram post 'wear something blue today' three people showed up at mums shoe shop in our home town saying 'I'm wearing something blue because your daughter said!'. Hilarious. However this week, it's a necessity. I feel I'm wading in the shallows of overwhelm, and I'm refusing to let the water rise. *Here is where I just listed all the hard things that are happening, which was not a short list my friends...then deleted them all. Maybe this would be a good place for you to list some of your hard things on a piece of paper...*I'll wait.

... In the practice of writing all the (some brilliant, some bullshit) things I have to do/be/aspire for/try, I also wrote a 'hope list' (which I know sounds like a list named after a young girl from Tennessee) but it's essentially a compilation of things I can try to do. My friend, who I will call 'Lucky' told me an interesting perspective the other day- we won't get so deep as to use the word 'fact' now will we! (Please excuse my gendered language in this next part, it's a very general comment and doesn't take into account the broad spectrum of the beautiful rainbow that is gender identity). Typically, women, when offered opportunities that they perceive to be beyond their current ability or skillset, will think of all the things they need to learn, the reasons they aren't capable, alongside all the areas that require improvement; before they can fully step up and take on an opportunity. Where by men typically will say yes straight away, diving in (however nervous) with an 'I'll make it work! I'll learn as I go' attitude. The experience of being the female in that example was so true for me all those years ago. I sat there with my chai and thought of all the reasons I wasn't up for the gig. There was surely someone else who could write better, be snappier, funnier. Someone who knew bigger words, who was more professional looking, who wasn't going to wear a COTTON JUMPSUIT AND RED GUMBOOTS to the snow..... I just wish I could tell my 18 year old self 'Say yes, say, 'Thank you, I'd love the opportunity and I can't wait to learn alongside you and contribute to the project.' I need to take my own advise this week, my Dr in leiu of (yet another) Mental Health plan, has tasked me with actually attempting to meet a person that I don't know. She wants me to join a 'group' if you can believe it, to which I said I was allergic. She suggested a yoga class, a dance session, going to the gym (lol) or finding some sort of organisation that shares similar interests. I'm the one who decided to move to a house alone for the first time in my life, and then layered that with being in a city I've never been to, in a state where I know 3 people, in an apartment building where apparently no actual people live only the ghosts of them (evidence by the occasional dirt particle on the carpet). I didn't realise I was lonely. I've walked down every street, been to galleries and botanic gardens, cafes, landmarks, beaches, bars, shops. I've taken photos, written 3-5 pages a day. I've cooked meals, done laundry, danced around the house. I've been working 40 hours a week, tending to the houseplants and reading the book of my favourite movie. I'm busy. I thought busy was enough, the antidote. Loneliness can't hit a moving target. (Mayim Bialik said this about emotions) Now, I have to be very very clear I don't feel sad about this, I don't feel an iota of self pity or regret about coming here, I love it and I will always be grateful I had this three months to explore a new place. I'm just saying, I didn't realise how much the community I had built in Melbourne influenced the makeup of my sense of wholeness. People don't exist as island's where by they are entirely self sufficient, and if they do, it's typically because they have chosen to push the visiting boats off the shore and put up a big wall. But your friends and your community don't have to 'give' you anything, not gifts or money or jokes or compliments or advice. Just having other people choosing to allocate some of their precious time to spend with you, is inconceivably valuable to the human experience and as Joni says (conveniently I'm writing this on the 50th anniversary week of her album Blue) 'Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got til it's gone'. So Ceremony readers, a plan for us. We're going to try. You are a damn fine island with delicious fruits and gorgeous sunsets and silky white sand already, but this week, we're going to dust off our self doubt and throw on a new sense of 'perhaps'. Because I have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps you are exactly the one for the job, whatever that 'job' might be. Love, M.

Daily Ceremony acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land we work on, and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.