Yesterday I had a very delightful and deeply energising experience.

I was interviewed by my dear friend Amanda Henderson, the founder of the creative powerhouse Gloss Creative. I first met Amanda over a decade ago, on a writing gig, about her and her Glossarium - and we hit it off immediately. She is the closest thing I have to a personal motivator and muse, and has been so supportive in my meandering personal creative journey. She is a Good Egg.

The interview was for her podcast series on creativity, The Creative Trust, which is in its second season. Find it on Spotify (naughty) or the Apple Podcast app, or anywhere you source your ear candy of the pods.

As is our wont, we had a rambling, lovely fireside chat, in the best tradition of nattering away and getting to the nub of things. We talked writing, designing buildings, what it means to be lightly qualified and/or unregistered in a sea of Serious Professionals, childhood, playing with Lego and many other things.

Episode will be up late February. Feel the love!

In the meantime, visit The Glossarium on Insta

Decision taken!

I went around the block, and drew quite a few people into my musings, which I tend to do (personal failing) but I like to think out loud and canvass opinions. I have reached a decision: in the second half of 2022, I am renovating my apartment. Not a minor kitchen tidy up, but a full 500-pound gorilla of a renovation. All finishes on all surfaces, new kitchen, new bathroom, and joinery everywhere. It feels great to make the decision to put down roots, and invest for the long haul: therefore, I will continue to have two car spaces (not important for anyone but me - but it means I can either keep the midlife-crisis convertible or get rid of it and have a visitor space); AND I will continue to live with my million dollar view.

This view is not quite as expansive as the one shown above, but it is pretty good. It is great to have a personal capital works project in the pipeline, one that I will live with for many years to come.

In the next 12 months I will be recording the skies over docklands, and the horizon and the light on the buildings, with regularity, as a last hurrah. This is because I am most likely moving away from my million dollar view in early 2023.

My Docklands tenure has been wonderful, it’s an under-rated place, I love seeing the sky and the view every moment of every day. However, it is time to move into more commodious accommodation that is easier for my 81 year old mother to get to and share with me when she visits. The two bedroom apartment I am in won’t cut it, when you are 80 it is a bit too hard to share a bedroom with a study, and climb in and out of a temporary sofa bed.

I will miss the view, but on the plus side my new apartment should fit all of my books, including the ones I have out now (stacked on walls, floor, chairs) PLUS the 30 boxes of books I have in storage. I haven’t seen those one for more than seven years. I miss them.

So I will have two bedrooms, a dedicated study, and a living and dining area slightly bigger than what I have at the moment. What I won’t have is a monumental view of the horizon. This is OK: when I lived on Collins Street in the CBD, I happily made do with a small strip of sky and cloud. I will see more sky in the new apartment than that, so I believe I will cope.

So get ready for twelve more months of enthusiastic record-keeping as I do my final year of documentation of the view and the sky that I have loved so dearly.

One day later: Lightning brewing in the western sky