Normally I’m good at getting some sleep on long overnight flights. I’ve done a lot of them and have a routine that usually works. My last flight from Tokyo to Melbourne wasn’t like that. We hit turbulence several times during the night. Each bout came right as I was dozing off. It wasn’t bad turbulence. Nothing to complain about. Nothing truly scary. But enough for my body to switch gears and keep me awake. I landed on a Sunday. With no commitments, I could spend a day just napping, recovering, and relaxing. That afternoon I fell down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos. There was something sooth ..read more

After nearly three days of travel across the Pacific, via Melbourne, Tokyo, and Seattle, I arrived in Washington DC on a cold and icy December night. It was a few days before Christmas, and for the first time my daughter was going to host the family Christmas dinner. I only ever hosted Christmas dinner for my parents twice. I remember how special an honour it was the first time. I was full of hope this experience would be a great one for my daughter and wanted to be fully present for her. After checking in to the hotel and dropping off my bags, I made my way to her apartment through the wintr ..read more

During my years in India I lived in a farmhouse on three tree-lined acres. One of the stipulations of the lease was that I had to employ, at my own expense, the three gardeners who maintained the property. Every morning they would tend the gardens, mow lawns, and rake fallen leaves. This produced a lot of garden waste. So every week they set alight a huge, aggressively smoky bonfire. That was pretty hard to live with. We’d have to retreat inside with closed windows every time it was lit. After some weeks of this I had a chat with them. Could they compost the waste instead of burning it? They ..read more

We all know the awkward moment, at the start of a class, meeting, workshop, or some other kind of group event, when we’re asked to go around the room, or along a row of boxes on a screen, and introduce ourselves. It feels forced, uncomfortable, and odd. We grit our teeth, accept our fate, and muscle through, improvising just enough words to sound like we’ve treated the exercise with respect, but not so much as to seem like we’re enjoying the limelight. But what if this embarrassing and fraught experience was actually something useful? What if it was a gift that could advance your creative car ..read more

My family circumnavigated the Pacific when we immigrated from Chile to Australia. Aboard a series of Cathay Pacific planes we went from Santiago to Lima, Mexico City, Vancouver, Honolulu and Nandi, before arriving in Sydney. Long-haul travel was like that in those days. Many flights. Multiple layovers. Little convenience. Upon arriving in Australia, our pilots were not familiar with the layout of Sydney’s Kingsford Smith airport. When instructed to take the first exit off the runway, they instead turned around and proceeded back down the runway, looking for a different exit. There was a TAA f ..read more

My daughter recently asked me a question about budgeting. I was a little hesitant to offer advice. Someone with as many vinyl albums or guitar effects pedals as I have probably shouldn’t pontificate about saving money anyway. But as I gathered my thoughts and started to explain the difference between essential and discretionary spending, I recalled an old piece of advice. It suggested that your budget should be split 50:30:20. Fifty percent goes to your core needs, like rent, bills, and food; 30% goes to your wants, like entertainment and shopping; and 20% goes to savings. When your income is ..read more

I’ve taken breaks from social media before. In fact, when social media seemed a whole lot less problematic than it does now I used to take them regularly. Then, when it became more combative, the breaks became increasingly remedial; a time to heal. Right now the problem isn’t that I need a break from social media. I’m not exhausted or exacerbated. There’s plenty wrong with Twitter, for example, but it isn’t directly making my life miserable. Rather, the problem is I’m just not sure why I’m using social media any more. I hear versions of this problem from other creatives as well. It’s usually ..read more

As a college student, I took a course in the Psalms and Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament. The professor bore a passing resemblance to Mr Burns from the Simpsons. In reality, he was kinder and more sincere. As long as you did all the course work. Email and the web were a thing back then. But this college was still resisting technology’s advance. Every week, before this class, we would get a stack of photocopied readings topped with a green sheet of instructions. “The green sheet will save your life,” the professor would say. As long as you’d read the green sheet first, he was always cord ..read more

Creative work of any kind can be hard; at times, lonely. Finding a community of fellow creatives can help you feel understood, give you encouragement and support, and create opportunities to collaborate with or learn from others. A community can help you hone your craft and overcome frustrations, rejections, failures, and disappointments. And there’s another feature of being part of a community that shouldn’t be ignored. A community can help you learn to talk about your work. Finding Freedom In Creative Community There’s always the potential for embarrassment when people ask you about your la ..read more

Twitter is changing. It will no longer be about news and information, community, or folks sharing every aspect of their lives. But it will still be about what you had for lunch. How you paid for it. And how you felt about the experience. Twitter As An Everything App Because Twitter will likely become an everything app. Think of that as social media crossed with payments: your purchases, payment history, preferences, opinions and reviews, all encoded into your online identity. This kind of thing already exists in China. We’re soon going to see if it works everywhere else. Think of it this way ..read more