Groups matter

One of the first things I did when I moved to Canberra was joining a writing group. I’d been writing for almost ten years, and I’d never had a peer group to read my work aloud to and hear feedback from. I didn’t even think I needed a support group until I had one.

Not only did they coerce me to share some of my work, but they were also accommodating and friendly in their suggestions. For the first time, I felt as if people read my work, not just to tell me they’ve read it, but to actually help me improve it.

It felt amazing. We bonded, sent over our short stories and poems to see what others thought of them, and even met up outside our allocated meeting times to write together.

Within myself, triumph blossomed. From being the written counterpart of a bathroom singer, I went on to become a voice they thought was worthy of their time.

Not long after I joined the group, we all went on a retreat. Thirteen in all, to an ancient manor set in the heart of small Victorian town Goulburn. It was a two-day getaway in the dead of winter. Beautiful Goulburn is perched a little north of Canberra and a little more south of Sydney.

With my minimalist backpack and a well-equipped laptop in my friend’s car, we drove up to this strange town I’d never heard of, to spend the weekend in a stranger’s house with a few people who were strangers until a couple of months ago.

I couldn’t have been more excited. I was looking forward for two days of writing, sharing, and revising.

What I didn’t anticipate, however, was that a roaring fireplace, wine and whiskey, and impeccable homemade food on a Friday night don’t always add up to a night of relentless writing. The frost hugging our windows didn’t help much either.

None of us wrote anything that night.

We drank and talked. Someone told about his experiences with ghosts. Many of us laughed.

Except—unlike drunk college students, waking up with guilt stretching over their faces, the next day we woke up full of fervour for the art of writing—and a little light headed, of course.

We spent the day in silent rumination, writing. Some continued perfecting works-in-progress, while some others picked their brains, chipping away at creating new ones.

That night, we shared, laughed, drank, and danced again. As the weekend wound, and the sun shone on our faces on Sunday morning, we packed up our recyclable bottles and editable writing and drove back home to Canberra.

Looking back now—a month away from our next retreat—I realise that weekend wasn’t about drinking. It wasn’t about escaping from family and responsibilities. It wasn’t even all about writing.

That retreat was about presence. It was about sharing our personal selves with others like us, telling family stories, ranting, and reassuring each other. It was about sitting by someone as they struggled to get words onto their screen, silently motivating, never judging, and being there when they needed to talk to about the best way to end a murder mystery.

Everyone needs a group like that they can run away with.

Joy, unexpected

“Happy Wednesday!”

She called out to me, clicking her mobile phone off. We passed each other outside the shopping mall—I was going in, and she out. Her leggings, shirt, braid, and hat mostly comprised of pink—which often is an immediate turnoff for me. However, that bubblegum look did catch my eye, and she caught my eye for a quick second, enough to smile widely and wish me a great day.

Instinctively, my face broke into a wide smile, and I responded with an enthusiastic “You too!”

This was new to me. And as I turned back to face my path, the smile on my face was fixed, ecstatic for no good reason. Perhaps she sensed it, for “Pass it on!” she waved after me.

“I will!” I meant to say, but it came out as “Thanks!” instead.

Regardless of what I said, for the next few moments I felt elated, as if I’d won a competition and nothing could bring me down. All of a sudden, I wanted to yell at the couple and their two children walking ahead to have a great day. I didn’t, though, because a lot of folks I’ve seen in my neighbourhood aren’t too receptive to strangers addressing them.

That said, my good mood continued throughout the day. I remembered that woman and her flip phone, and imagined her wheeling her travelling bag down the street, cheering up many other people’s lives.

It was a small gesture, negligible some might say—a smile and a greeting. But it made such a difference to me. And it made me think.

It costs us nothing to be friendly, and yet so many of us walk the streets with impassive expressions, eyes cast down, afraid to look at the person walking past us. We meet new people and mechanically say “hello” and “how are you,” not even looking at them. As they speak, we nod but don’t listen. We converse and co-exist without knowing or understanding the other person.

Not everyone’s like this, I admit. However, I have come across a lot of such people. Enough to know that that’s what makes the lady in pink so special. She stood out from the masses—she was bold, and became an encounter I cherish.

It’s nice to be nice. It’s contagious.

Writing is living

I was attending a panel discussion about poetry when someone mentioned how research is a great way to accumulate ideas, facts, and anecdotes, and how during the process of writing a poem, you learn to strip out the unnecessary details and keep only what makes your piece worth reading.

That got me thinking. Planning for a story, a poem, or a novel is all about collecting random information in one place. It’s essential prep work. And only when you have that massive pile of overwhelming information can you condense it and identify key elements that add value to your work.

Unless we go through that rigorous cutting of the bulk in our work, the piece itself will sag under the weight of too much information. What we once deemed good becomes its downfall.

Life is like that too.

We all spend so much time and money acquiring things—books, furniture, clothes, jewellery, bags, shoes, and so much more that take up and over our lives. We don’t realise these things are baggages that can hold us back.

Just as in writing, the solution is to get rid of what we don’t need.

To live minimally, so we reduce our impact on our surroundings, and be aware of ourselves. Makes for a quick getaway too. To do all that, we need to get rid of the possessions we so lovingly accumulate. It isn’t easy, and to paraphrase Faulkner, it’s like killing your darlings. But if we want the result to be worthy at all, it has to be done.

Of daylight savings

A lot of my friends overseas whine at having to rewind their clocks twice a year. Living in a country where daylight savings wasn’t a thing, I tried my best to sympathise with them and nod along as they apologised for missing meetings, and ranted about how the change was disrupting their lives.

Now though, I live in a country that does have an official system of daylight savings. About three weeks ago, Canberra went from AEST to AEDT, which means we have now turned our clocks an hour late.

I couldn’t care less about it.

I understand that people working defined times in a day would be thrown off by the sudden shift. But it didn’t affect me in any way, except giving me an extra hour of sleep every morning.

Aside from that, I don’t understand why the rest of the world gets so upset when the clock turns. It’s a mild, temporary, adjustment that we get used to within a couple of weeks.

I don’t see purpose in physically delaying time. So why complain and make a big deal of it?

When I look through my bedroom window, at 6 pm, it’s bright, sunny, and warm. I’m amazed that I can spend another couple of hours wandering around the lake before it gets too dark to stay out without a flashlight. (It’s not hot yet, and I’m not looking forward to summer.)

My point is, we’re getting so much daylight in a day. When nature herself gives us more than we could ever ask for, we shouldn’t be worrying about petty things like human made clocks.

If we just stop trying to fit time into our constraints, perhaps we’d be happier and notice all the time that we do have in our hands.

It’s good to get lost

When I woke up this morning, I didn’t want to be around people. It just wasn’t a socialising day. Within minutes, I decided to get lost in the Australian National Botanical Gardens.

The first time I went there, I was a traveller. A high-energy trekker, equipped with a backpack full stuffed with a jacket, cap, water, and snacks. And I tried to cover the whole area in one day—because that’s what I do when visiting a new city. I crave to see everything, experience everything in one visit. As a result of that over ambition, I lost my way in the gardens, strayed from the main path every time I saw a flower or a streak of sunlight glinting through a puddle, and ended up missing a few parts of the garden.

This time, I knew better. I had a plan, a purpose. I chose a trail—the eucalyptus walk—and decided to stick to it.

Except, I got lost again. It took me longer than it should’ve, but I went around in circles before finding my way back on to the trail.

And you know what? It’s ok. It’s ok that I got distracted by plants, that I gravitated towards weird shaped-branches and odd-named bushes. It’s ok that I didn’t follow the trail exactly as it was mapped. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about seeing them all. It’s about appreciating what you did see.

And I saw a lot.