Month: October 2024

Posted in Life, Mid-life blogger, Photography, Writing

Feeling Friday

Posted on by Sharon

Yes folks, it’s time for another Friday post. I feel that the Fridays are rushing by so quickly that it’ll be Christmas before I’m ready. Again. Is anyone ever ready for Christmas? There’s a tangential path I do not want to go down, so let’s head to our regular three Friday questions and an F-word.

Facadism.

Yep, that’s my F-word for this week. Read on to find out what it means, or look it up in a dictionary to avoid the scrolling if you choose. If you do look it up in the dictionary, however, you won’t get to hear/read what it means to me.

The three regular questions that I respond to each Friday (since September 6 – yes, it’s been that long) are:

  1. What made me happy this week?
  2. What did I enjoy on social media this week?
  3. What did I work on this week?

I’m going to do my best to keep it brief today. Let’s see how I go with that!

  1. What made me happy this week?
    Warm days. We had some days through the week where the temperature was around 25C. It was blissful. I wore sandals to work! I know. And my feet weren’t even cold. I can feel pool weather coming on. Yay!

  2. What did I enjoy on social media this week?
    I have come across Dustin Poynter on Instagram. He’s ‘the flag guy’. He finds others’ reels where they’ve been behaving poorly or well and runs across a field with either a red flag or a green one. It’s interesting to get an insight into the way (mostly) men treat their partners and there’s some really lovely green flag moments (and some quite horrifying red flag ones). If only we could all be green flag people.

    3. What did I work on this week?
    I’ve been co-writing a literature review on co-design in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child and maternal healthcare with my boss, Kerry, this week. It’s led to some really interesting conversations which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. I have also enjoyed the process of re-structuring (I think just about every paragraph was the first one at one point), re-writing, reviewing, and editing. I even, weirdly, enjoyed putting the glossary in alphabetical order (thanks for the help Alison and Tim), and adding the full-stops and commas to all the right places in the reference list. It was very satisfying work!

Now to my F-word for the week: facadism.

I hadn’t heard of it either till I read something online. Okay, you got me. It was a list of words starting with F, but there are some very interesting F-words to be found! Many more than my limited vocabularly allows for.

The reason I chose facadism, which means the principle or practice of preserving the fronts of buildings that have elegant architectural designs (source: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/facadism) is because Tim is doing a photography project on motels and hotels in regional Victoria.

We went for a long drive on Sunday and came across some interesting towns we’d never heard of, and in those interesting towns were interesting buildings. Tim took some really lovely photos of them.

None of them suffered from facadism. These were original old buildings with no new building growing behind their original facades. Wouldn’t it look awful if this had a highrise building protuding from the roof?

Two-storey hotel with wrought iron around the top balcony.
The Botanical Hotel in St Arnaud. Built in 1905.

My photo makes it look like it’s on a bit of a lean, but I can assure you, it’s properly upright.

So there you have it, a new word (for me at least) and an invigorated desire to visit more regional towns we previously hadn’t heard of to take more photos of buildings that do not suffer from facadism.

See you next week.

Posted in Family, Life, Mid-life blogger, Writing

Friday’s 3 questions and an F word

Posted on by Sharon

I’m excited!

Oh hang on. I need to do my three questions and my F-word. We’ll get to my excitement in a sec.

The three regular questions I respond to each Friday are:

  1. What am I proud of this week?
  2. What am I excited about?
  3. Where are the flowers?

My F-word is favourite.

  1. What am I proud of this week? I went shopping. In a shop. Not only that, the shop was in a shopping centre. There were lots of shops and heaps more people. And I spent well over an hour there and bought things, of the clothes variety. Now, that might not seem like a big deal for many people and not a source of pride, but for me, it was. Some time ago, can’t say exactly when, but in the last few years, I’d developed a level of anxiety that meant being in shops caused unpleasant physical and emotional distress. I can’t say why it caused this distress – something about feeling trapped is as close as I can get to it – but it was real, if invisible to others. I can go to cafes, and I can work in an office, but there is something about a supermarket, a department store, IKEA, a clothes shop, that causes me to feel severely uncomfortable. That caused me to feel severely uncomfortable (although just writing about it now is doing terrible things to my insides).

    Telling myself to put my big girl pants on hadn’t helped – there is no shaming yourself out of anxiety – instead, I had psyched myself up in the days preceding the shopping trip (I didn’t tell Tim in case I couldn’t go through with it), and told myself there was nothing to fear, that I wasn’t going to be trapped, and that no one was going to hurt me. I practised a week before by going to the supermarket and despite having some wobbles I managed to do my first proper grocery shop in a very long time.

    So with my mantra ringing in my ears – no one is going to hurt you, there is nothing to fear, you won’t get trapped – I went shopping. Apparently, I still balled my hands into fists when I entered a shop, but enter it I did. I didn’t raise my balled fists in a defensive gesture when people came towards me as had become my unconscious habit, and so looked less like someone about to hurt others, and no one hurt me.

    If you’ve ever had anxiety, you’ll know it really is something to be proud of.

  2. What am I excited about? Chase is coming to visit this afternoon!! For those who aren’t in the know, Chase is my youngest son (second youngest child). He lives in Queensland and we don’t get to see him very often. Well, to be more correct, he lived in Queensland, until this week. He’s now moved to Victoria, and he’s coming to visit. What his move means is that once he’s found a house, the rest of his family will be moving down too, and that means, for the first time in 10 years I’ll have one of my children and two of my grandchildren living in the same state as me. It’s very exciting. I’d made up the guest room bed before breakfast, done a shopping list, and am psyching myself up so that later this morning I’ll be able to go to the supermarket to buy things to cook a meal for my boy. Awww!!

  3. Where are the flowers? Last week I suggested that I might take some photos of flowers on the weekend and share them with you in this week’s post. I didn’t take any photos of flowers, but I did take another photo for my black glove series. Of a dragon fruit. It was gross. But photographically interesting.
Thanks as always to Tim for donning the black gloves

And my F-word? Favourite. Guess who’s my current favourite?

Hahahaha.

Trick question! Mothers don’t have favourites.

That’s it from me for another week. I’m off to the shops!

Posted in Life, Mid-life blogger, Photography, Writing

Friday already?

Posted on by Sharon

I work in a very progressive company that has a 4-day work week, and I usually have Fridays as my day off. Not this week though – I had a meeting on Wednesday and so took that as my day off instead. It meant I had to work today and I didn’t get a chance to write my usual 3 questions and an F-word Friday post this morning.

It’s 6:30pm, and as I’ve just finished work, I figured now is as good a time as any to respond to the usual three questions.

The three questions, which are generally the same every week are:

  1. What made me happy this week?
  2. What have I been working on this week?
  3. What caught my attention on social media this week?

My F-word for the week is ‘flowers’.

  1. What made me happy? I had the absolute delight of meeting with two people I’d never met before to talk about teaching and student engagement this week. I had quite forgotten how passionate I am about teaching and how excited I get when I have the opportunity to talk about it with others who are just as passionate. In my current line of work there’s very little call – well, none really – to talk about teaching and so when the opportunity arose to share some knowledge and insights with others, I jumped at it. In preparation for the meeting I found old hard drives full of files (some from well over a decade ago) to re-orient myself with the sorts of things I (and a small but brilliant team of colleagues) used to do around Orientation and Engagement. It brought back all kinds of happy memories!

    The conversation was fabulous and energising and while I don’t ever want to work in a university again, I can see the appeal of working to support others in their teaching endeavours.

  2. What have I been working on this week? Lots of editing and reviewing and formatting of policy documents. That probably doesn’t sound as interesting as it is, but I like editing much more than writing, so when someone else puts words on the page, I am more than happy to clean them up.

  3. What caught my attention on social media this week? Scrolling through Instagram can suck hours from a day, but I do enjoy it when I come across something that’s a little bit unqiue and makes me smile. One such ‘reel’ did just that this week – James McNicholas (@jmcnik on Instagram) does dramatic monologues of songs. It’s an interesting way of re-interpreting them and I reckon it takes a fair bit of skill. One of my favourites is his dramatic monologue of Blue (Eiffel 65) – mostly because I like his hat – but here he is doing MmmBop.
It took me way too many hours to re-find this!


My F-word? Flowers.

Now that Spring is well and truly upon us, I’m looking forward to finding some flowers to photograph. Maybe I’ll do that over the weekend and have something to show you next Friday.

Enjoy your weekend!

    Posted in Family, Life, Melbourne, Mid-life blogger, Photography

    Far out, it’s Friday!

    Posted on by Sharon

    Fridays seem to come around much more quickly since I’ve started blogging regularly.

    It’s time for another three questions and an F-word.

    This week’s F-word is fragility, but before I get to that, I’ll respond to the three regular questions.

    1. What made me happy this week?
    2. What was I most proud of this week?
    3. How did it feel to see a particular something in real life for the first time?

    I’m going to answer all three questions at the same time, because they all have the same answer.

    This. This is what made me happy this week. The publication of this book.

    It won’t come as any surprise to those who read this blog on a regular or semi-regular basis to know that I’ve been excited for some time to see this book in real life.

    Well, last night I got the opportunity to do just that. Last night, October 3, 2024, the book was launched by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. It was a packed house – standing room only – with loads of people eager to view and buy the book.

    In case you don’t know, the story of my (very minor) involvement goes like this:

    I was retired briefly in 2022 and part of 2023 and decided to join U3A (University of the Third Age). I joined two groups – a photography group with U3A Hawthorn, and a book club with U3A Deepdene. Both were interesting and educational and great for meeting new people and hearing new ideas and perspectives.

    The U3A Hawthorn group were invited by Richard Broome, president of the RHSV, to contribute images of Melbourne’s lanes to the society primarily for the purpose of creating a second edition of Weston Bates’s book published in 1994, titled Essential but unplanned: The story of Melbourne’s lanes. Sixteen members of the group eagerly scoured the city’s laneways looking for just the right angle and light and spark of interest. All up, we produced 3000 images.

    Of those 3000 images, one of mine was chosen to be on the front cover of the book.

    1. Seeing my photo on the cover made me very happy.
    2. I am super proud that one of my images was chosen to be on the cover.
    3. It feels great to be able to flick through the book, read about the fascinating history of Melbourne’s lanes, and see the fabulous images selected from the 3000 images that were contributed. The ones not used will be held by the RHSV in their collection to be used at any time someone is doing research on the city.

    It was a great project to be involved with. It was also really great to catch up with others from U3A Hawthorn’s photography group.

    And so to my F-word for the week: fragility

    While I’ve been feeling happy and proud, there’s also been an undercurrent of deep sadness in our household this week. When a family member is desperately ill, you’re reminded of the fragility of life.

    I’m not going to get deep and meaningful here or look for quotes on life’s fragility – but at the moment it’s looming large in my heart and that’s why it’s my F-word this week.