midlife blogging – Musings from the cold

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

Far out, it’s Friday!

Posted on October 4, 2024 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.

What made me happy this week?
What was I most proud of this week?
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.

Seeing my photo on the cover made me very happy.
I am super proud that one of my images was chosen to be on the cover.
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.

Life, Mid-life blogger, Photography, Portraits, Writing

3 questions and an F word

Posted on September 6, 2024September 6, 2024 by Sharon

As regular readers know, I have an older sister. Not much older, just over a year, but older is older, right? Deb, my slightly older sister, is a blogger over at Deb’s World and the other day she wrote a post, which led me to writing one in the same format. It felt strange and strangely uncomfortable because it isn’t the kind of writing I generally do, but I did it anyway, because … well, because boundary pushing is sometimes a good thing to do.

So here I am, about to start writing another post copying another format she sometimes uses – the 3 questions and an F word of the title of this post.

The three questions are:

What’s made you happy (I’m not sure if that’s ever, or this week, but I’ll work that out as I write).
What’s made you sad (ditto)
What’s made a difference (again, I could go back to her post and check out what this is supposed to mean, or I could do what I’m going to do and that is make up my own mind about it. It’s my blog after all!)
The fourth thing is to find an F word that has some meaning to me (possibly mis-remembering this bit of the prompt … but, my blog and all that).

Deb has all the details on her most recent post: Friday Feels: 3 questions and an F word. Not sure what the Friday Feels bit is about, but it’s Friday, so I’ll go with that.

So, what’s made me happy?

Family. My eldest son came to stay and we drove a few hours to spend a few days with my mother and sister and it was fabulous to be together. We laughed, and we cried, and we watched my granddaughter’s footy grandfinal on the telly and heard her mother yelling from Tasmania. One of the best bits was getting my photography studio properly sorted and getting to try out the new lighting set up on my son (who did all the sorting).

In this shot we used the beauty dish as the lighting source.

And what’s made me sad?

Goodbyes. Not, I hasten to add, that I’ve had to say any permanent goodbyes of late, but there’s always a twinge of sadness when we have to say ‘see ya’.

What’s made a difference?

Wallpaper and paint. We bought a house just over a year ago and have been taking our time in working out how we want it to look. We had the loungeroom painted earlier in the year. Clouded Sky. That’s the name of the paint colour. A few months ago, we added some wallpaper to the family room, and yesterday we had the little sitting room painted. Bean Counter. That’s the name of the paint colour. It’s made such a difference!

An F-word

Face-mask. I had never used a face-mask before the weekend, but Deb said we needed a ‘glow up’ and so bought us both one to apply. It was slimy and cold and felt disgusting for the fifteen minutes it was on my face. I was distinctly uncomfortable and I think Deb was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t the relaxing experience she had imagined it would be.

After peeling the slimy wet thing from my face and gingerly rubbing the leftover gloop in with my fingertips, I have to admit that my face was glowing. It has continued to glow in the days since. So much so, that I’m considering doing it again sometime in the next 60 years.

So there you have it: 3 questions and an f-word. And no mention of my newly published book Enacting a pedagogy of kindness, available now from the Routledge site (as well as loads of other sites that sell good books). I did well not to mention that, didn’t I?

Learning, Life, Travel

An extraordinary experience

Posted on October 28, 2022 by Sharon

The day has finally arrived. I’m off to the castle. It’s a little bit exciting and a whole lot scary.

Tim asks ‘are you excited?’

‘I actually don’t know if I can do this’

‘Of course you can’, he said. ‘You’ve got this’.

I head downstairs for breakfast and try to identify other conference participants. WhatsApp is pinging away – people still arriving, COVID tests to organise, where is Starbucks at Berlin airport, who’s in the hotel restaurant for breakfast, anyone want to go for a walk before we catch the bus?

I don’t respond to any of them, even though I was having breakfast in the hotel restaurant at the time and then heading out for a walk before the long bus trip. I am full of anxiety.

One of the things that amazes me about being in Europe is that you can be on a bus driving through Germany and next minute you’re in Poland. No flashy signs, no big announcements … just a whole different country. There are bigger signs saying ‘Welcome to New South Wales’ than there are announcing ‘You’re now in Poland’. The language changed on the town names and that was the only indication I had that we weren’t in Germany anymore.

After a five hour bus ride we arrive at the castle.

This 13th century castle was all I imagined it to be

We arrived around 5pm, were shown to our (shared) rooms and told to meet in the Knights’ Hall in ten minutes. My roomies (Kim and Claudia) and I chose beds, found a space for our bags, checked out the (huge) bathroom and headed back downstairs.

Claus, one of the conference directors, addressed us and said some pretty important things:

‘I gotta go’ – if anything became too much, we just had to say those three words and leave the session. No explanations, no judgement, no feeling bad about leaving.
‘Love of missing out’ – it’s much more usual to talk about a fear of missing out (more commonly known as FOMO), but in this instance there was so much going on we couldn’t do it all. We were encouraged to be comfortable knowing we would miss some things.
‘It is now 6:14. In 9 minutes you will be back here wearing shoes suited for outside and something to keep you warm […] It is now 6:42, and we are precisely on time’. Things would happen at precisely the right time.

There were elements of ceremony and ritual built into each experience. On that first evening when we had something warm on and shoes suited to the outside, we went through the courtyard, past one of the spirits who told us to be silent, through another door that felt more like a portal, to stand silently in a semi-circle in the forest, just outside the castle walls. It was a powerful moment – standing silently with a group of stangers, listening to the beat of a drum, the darkness closing in around us.

Elements of ritual and ceremony on our first night

The power of shared moments, combined with ritual and ceremony, continued across the next four days.

This ‘conference’, on experience design – attended by folk singers, magicians, escape room designers, CEOs, marketers, immersive theatre directors, actors, artists, experience designers, economists, food scenographers, lawyers, visual artists, academics, composers – was unlike anything I’d been to before. This one walked the talk. We didn’t learn ‘about’ experience design – we ‘experienced’ experience design.

We had the castle complex to ourselves, which meant we could go anywhere – from the torture chamber to the tower – and were free to explore the passages behind any number of bookshelves in the dining room and the library. We wore black robes (much like academic gowns), were sorted into houses according to the colour of the ribbon on our lanyard (no sorting hat!) and had house captains who were our ‘go-to’ people. I was in the purple house; Divine and Katya were my house captains. Spirits slipped amongst us whispering clues to puzzles or reminded us that there was fire twirling in the courtyard later that evening, or an event happening in the tavern. A team of chefs, fermenters and foragers had spent a month in the castle before our arrival sourcing and creating ingredients for all our meals. No meat products and no alcohol were allowed. Photographers, videographers, and visual artists roamed the castle capturing the experience in a variety of ways. Teams of others laid down clues to puzzles, treasure maps, potions, wisdom cards to be collected, reminders to check in with others, reflective tasks to complete. It was immersive, challenging, at times confronting, and I loved every minute of it.

The library was designated as a silent place to eat – no eye contact, no talking. On the third night it was also designated cutlery free. Acelyna made it look so elegant but with what was on the menu that night (noodles) I wasn’t about to try it. Eating in the dining room, on the other hand, was social and over the four days was the place for many rich and diverse conversations.

Each morning I’d get up early, trying not to wake my roommates, grab my camera and wander around the castle. The mornings were cool and crisp and it was a lovely way to start the day. I often felt like I had the whole place to myself.