The recipe isn’t straightforward, but it works. — So you want to be a person. You know, just a functioning, confident, contented and driven, living-to-your-full-potential-not-wallowing-in-your-bedsheets-waiting-for-your-shit-to-stop-repeating kinda person. The simple stuff. It might feel impossible — and perhaps such a thing doesn’t quite exist. But if we take the spirit of the request, the truth is that the method…

There’s a dark side to creativity and you‘re only making it worse — Van Gogh chopped off his ear. It wasn’t an accident either — a clumsy slippage of his palette knife during a fun late-night painting romp. Nope. It was a hallucination-induced attack on himself, of which he couldn’t remember once regaining consciousness. It was a manifestation of an intense inner instability…

A pictographic guide to a rollercoaster of emotions — 🙂 “I’m fine! This is fine! I mean, this constant clawing sense of failure and that everyone secretly hates me and that I’m stuck in life and have been stuck in life for my whole life? All fine. Just smile. Say ‘good’ when people ask how you are. Keep taking…

A rant about semantics, legal mumbo, and cocktail umbrellas. — I had surgery recently. (I’m OK.) But in the lead-up, I called my private health insurer to check if my surgeon’s fees would be covered. “Yes,” the kind woman on the other side said, “you’re covered for that.” Fast forward a couple months and it turns out I was, like……

Rip up your Dream Dictionary and instead, focus on your feelings — It’s 3AM and I’m a miniature cow made of exposed bloody muscles, trying to evade an evil alien space god. I’ve rolled in lawn clippings that have clung to my sticky red musculature to form a grassy layer of camouflage. I’ve also befriended a Swiss-Family-Robinson-eque family who are trying to…

It involves Bon Jovi — “Goddamnit,” I curse as the bus drives off with my umbrella still a passenger. It was a good umbrella too. Navy blue. Japanese design. A canopy separate from the shaft that spun with the breeze. Invertible ribs for an easy reset in case the wind did get in. Reasonably priced…

Reflecting on my insomnia on a 3am stroll — There are no people on George Street in Sydney’s CBD. No line for cheesecake at Uncle Tetsu’s, but also no cheesecake. The traffic lights blip out their metallic song to an auditorium of cooly-lit buildings and birds. Even the trams have gone to sleep for the night. At times I…

The way to feel better is to not — Eat a whole Sara Lee cheesecake in a single sitting. Get fired. Get hired. Put too much pressure on yourself. Or not enough. Be diagnosed with a terrible lung disease. Drink excessively to mask a mortal fear, then go out the next night and drink even more. Long for something…

Seven lessons that make sense of the scrabble — I think I’m a Words With Friends addict. I blame my mum. Over the past eight years, my mum and I have played 566 games of this Scrabble-inspired mobile app together. For us, it’s an easy way to connect when we’re not physically with each other. In that time, I’ve…