Friday Flurry #1 - Travel, skin, and being a kid
On the very first Friday Flurry, I share what I've been reading, writing and thinking. Get book recommendations, thoughts to chew on and permission to stop putting unnecessary stuff on your head-skin.
Welcome to the first edition of Friday Flurry, my weekly round-up. This edition is going to all subscribers. In the future, these posts will only be available to paid subscribers. If you’re on the fence about joining the paid tier, this gives you an indication of what your Friday content will look like.
I expect this will shape into a predictable form over time. This week, it’s a long and disorganised pile of ‘hmmms’ after a few days of travel between Australia, NZ and the US has rotted my brain.
Books I read this week
I haven’t travelled with any hard-copy books for my US trip, partly due to my carry-on only life (read below) and partly because I’m off to Powells Books (the world’s largest independent bookstore!) today, so I retain the option of coming home with a book-only suitcase. 😅
Here’s two books I enjoyed this week.
The Soul of A Woman by Isabel Allende
This was a fast, lovely read; a memoir on how feminism has shown up across her long, successful life and career. There were many highlighted pages for me, but of particular reassurance for this stage in my life was this:
“I am grateful to that unhappy childhood because it provided ample material for my writing. I don't know how novelists with happy childhoods in normal homes manage”
There’s hope for me yet.
Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different By Chuck Palahniuk
I adored this book. Ostensibly a book on writing craft - which it whole-heartedly delivers on - it’s also part memoir, with incredible insight into the life of Fight Club’s author, with lessons galore. Written in his trade-mark irreverent l, minimalist style, I particularly enjoyed this quote:
“My guess is that people haven’t a clue how to get along. They need a structure, rules, and roles to play.”
I quoted this in the final sprint of the February 2023 Not An MBA cohort, as we reflected on what it takes to build belonging, and what people are yearning for.
Substacks I’m into
I’ve been soaking up the brilliance of newsletters here on Substack for awhile - starting with my dedication to Abortion Every Day and The Unpublishable.
Three new finds I’ve enjoyed this week are:
Everything is Horrible
Noah Berlatsky covers everything from politics and culture to movie reviews, fascism, music and the odd bit of poetry. I like it.
More to Hate
Kate Manne is the author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, a book I loved when it came out in 2017. Australian by birth, Kate is a philosophy professor at Cornell University and writes on patriarchy, diet culture, fatphobia, and relationships. Definitely worth a read.
The Hyphen
Emma Gannon is a London-based author and podcaster with a terrific perspective on portfolio careers, being ‘multi-hyphenate’ and decoupling ambition, success and fulfilment. She’s absolutely nailed the Substack model, and has been writing about emotional and creative burnout in a way that really speaks to me.
Things I’ve stopped doing
Wearing makeup
I’ve stopped wearing makeup a few times before, but this year I’ve completely lost my patience with it. There’s nothing wrong with my face, and if there was, it would still be the least interesting thing about me. I may still paint for an on-stage gig if the occasion called for it, but for now, I’m exhausted with the performance of beauty.
I’m currently travelling too much to bother with the palaver and luggage requirements of painting stuff onto my head skin. I have other things to worry about.
Doing skincare
When I first quit makeup, this time around, I got suckered into a different kind of beauty shtick. In a low moment over the summer break, a well-placed Instagram ad convinced me that the ultimate self-care would be spending hundreds of dollars on creams and serums to look after the ‘health’ of my skin.
I acquiesced, and had been dutifully performing this ritual, patting myself on the back for being so health-conscious, (not to mention dewy) until I read this piece by Jessica Defino and went on to read this book by James Hamblin.
Turns out, skincare is a load of capitalist shite and our skin, a living, critical, defense organ, does best when it has a proper microbiome that isn’t regularly destroyed by chemicals. So far, three weeks in, my skin is perfectly fine. Check back in 20 years to see if I regret this.
Side note: read this piece by Defino: “It’s Hot To Look Ill”. She is a weapon of a writer and an important voice pushing back against insane beauty ideals.
Things I’ve started doing
Travelling with carry-on only
Waiting at a baggage carousel sucks. Wheeling a suitcase around sucks.
In 2019, Cam and I went on a ‘no-stuff’ trip to the Philippines, and it permanently changed my perspective on luggage. For 2 weeks, we travelled with just the clothes we were wearing, a credit card, and a passport. I wore togs in place of underwear, and every time a t-shirt got too grubby, we bought a fresh one from an op-shop and kept moving.
The freedom, as we put our travel itinerary together on the fly, was astonishing, and dragging a suitcase around has felt like torture ever since.
In colder climates and for work trips, I can’t go no-stuff. But I can travel much lighter, without needing to check any luggage. I picked up this bag from Macpac for my US trip and packed my running shoes and gym gear, two pairs of pants, eight tshirts, a jersey, underwear, my laptop, many cables and chargers, and all writing gear into it quite comfortably - and it fits under an airplane seat! It’s not bulky at all.
Things I’m wondering about
With my recent shift to Substack, and the launch of a paid tier, I’m thinking about who gets paid, for what, and how - and contemplating the different ways we “pay” for information in consumer culture.
I posted a poll about content paywalls on LinkedIn, and wrote this response to one of the commenters:
Things I’ve written
Introducing: Current Fad - my very first Substack post!
Gyms are weird - my creepy observations on the cultivation of manual labour bodies by knowledge workers
Data entry - a poem about creative work
WTF, Netflix? - A refreshed Substack edition of an article I wrote when Do Revenge topped the Netflix charts in NZ and I freaked out about child sexual abuse material being treated as entertainment.
Share your works in progress - Why you should share your stuff while you’re still making it, especially if it isn’t very good.
Things I’m writing
I’m in Portland, ahead of a week-long novel-writing intensive. Which means aside from writing this - and my regular schedule of Wednesday Wisdoms, of course - I’m focused on writing fiction..
Well, I’m supposed to be. What I’ve actually been doing is procrastinating in a very productive fashion, launching Substack, and a beta launch for a consulting course. Because apparently I’d rather do anything but the thing I most dream of? People, eh.
Things I’m worrying about
How children have minimal agency in their lives
- and how hard it must be to have to ask for everything.
Last week, I was on a long car trip from NSW to Brisbane with my partner and kids (17, 13, 8.) We’d been in the car a few hours, and still had a long way to go. It was late, and I wanted my youngest, Harriet, to try and sleep.
I handed her my AirPods and put a Calm sleep story on - (her favourite is Snowy Foxes, if you have kids that also like sleep stories) and when it was finished, she was still awake.
She asked for a switch to background noise. By then, I was driving, Cam was trying to nap in the passenger seat before it was his turn to drive again, and her brother Charlie was dozing next to her. Somewhat grumpily, I woke Cam to change the Calm settings.
Harriet had two choices, out of my downloads: rain, or forest noises. She chose the forest. Then, she dropped the AirPods, which meant waking Charlie to find them on the messy car floor (and plenty of Mum sighs as we got it sorted.)
I looked back about 10 minutes later, to see her looking out the window with tears in her eyes, looking frustrated and helpless.
Exasperated, I checked in. “What is it, Harriet?”
She blinked back tears and her voice choked with emotion. “It’s the wrong noise, Mum. I wanted forest noises, but it changed to rain.”
The app had glitched and clearly, she’d sensed the mood and decided not to be a further bother. She’s tired, she’s trying to sleep, the noise is wrong, but she’s just looking out the window, sucking it up.
My heart broke a little.
Cam changed the noise, peace was restored, and that probably should have been the end of it. But for the last week, I’ve seen her resigned, frustrated, tear-filled little face in my mind, over and over.
All I’ve been able to think about is how tough it is to be a little kid, and have no agency. If you have a Mum like me, you have to ask before you can do all kinds of stuff, and, if you get a no, just deal with it.
Harriet is creative. With a roll of sticky-tape, some pens, and paper, she stays entertained at the kitchen table for hours, coming up with brilliant inventions. For her birthday, I bought her Posca paint pens, wondering if I could justify the expense - and she has made stunning creations with them every day since.
She makes mind-blowing crafty things like flipbooks, and paper squishies too, often inspired by Youtube. Sometimes she films her process and then edits it together to a funny, clever video series.
Despite all that, every time she comes to ask me if she can have screen time - almost always under the guise of supporting her creative process - my default response is no. Sometimes she can convince me. Sometimes she can’t.
But when I flick through the gallery on the iPad, I am always struck with regret and shame for the times I hold her back. She’s a great kid, doing amazing things.
Making cool art and filming it. Watching videos that get her inspired and interested. And I’m out here with no idea what it’s like to be 8, bringing all my own stuff into the mix, keeping her from shaping her day, and life, how she wants.
So, I’m thinking a lot about that.
Musings that might convert to articles
Pets
Why do we own animals? What a bizarre thing for us to do. Humans appear to have an innate desire for animal companionship - watch any toddler near a puppy for proof of this. What’s that about? And why are some of us more prone than others?
Alcohol and air travel
Why are we drinking at 5am just because we’re flying on a plane, and how did alcohol wind up so inextricably linked to air travel in the first place? See this poll, and the many comments, on LinkedIn.
Influencer morality
I’ve recently become disenchanted with Clementine Ford, a writer and influencer I support, because of her decisions to promote a paid partnership with an injectables/ laser treatment company.
Many of her followers asked questions about this decision, and her defence basically amounted to… choice feminism.
This is way out of alignment with her overall message, and I’ve found myself disproportionately upset by it. What’s that about? Why am I holding a creator to such high standards. Is that fair?
Occupational hypocrisy
Are most people doing professional jobs working out our own inadequacies and failure points? Is ‘the builder’s house is never finished’ more true than not? I talked about some of my own hypocrisy here.
Productive procrastination
In a week where I’m supposed to be focusing on writing my first novel, I’ve launched a Substack, converted it to paid, created a beta cohort for Consultants of Choice, and written a stack of content. Why can’t I just do what I’m supposed to be doing?
Well, that sums up the very first edition of Friday Flurry! It was a flurry, alright. If you’ve made it to the end, well done. Also, that’s a pretty clear sign that you like this content - so why not sign up to paid? I love writing and sharing the inside of my brain with you, and I like it even more when I don’t do it for free. If you like my brain, and can afford to support it, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. You’ll get Wednesday Wisdom, Friday Flurry, and regular in-depth articles on the musings that make it through.
Wishing you the very best in your latest venture. Truly, you are quite amazing. Love your work.