Carrying the spirit of Christmas throughout the whole year

I find Christmas a very strange time of the year. Its essence I love: a time to give, a time to be with family and friends, a time to share. Yet its reality often leaves a bad taste in my mouth and a heavy heart. I ask, "Why relegate it to only one time of the year? Why not share the essence of Christmas throughout the year?"

I love that I get to shop and buy presents for people I love, mostly for the many wondrous children in my life for whom the magic of Santa still exists. I hate that anyone should feel duty bound to give at this time of the year when they don't have the money, the time or the want. No one should be expected to give old Aunt Maude a cheap, unthoughtful gift just because it's the thing to do. Much better to visit and spend time with the old chook throughout the year. 

Oh, what a gift that is, the gift of time. 

I love that I get to see dear friends and family at this time of the year, to drink, to celebrate, to catch up and be merry. I hate that I have to try to fit it into a couple of weeks, when there are another 50 weeks of the year to get together, share and be with the people I love. 

Oh, what a gift that is, to spend time with the people I love and to extend a hand throughout the whole year, through the happy times and the sad.

I love that at this time of the year everyone begins to wind down and focus on other things in life besides work and the pursuit of the mighty dollar. I hate that for many that's a difficult thing to do. Some don't have homes to return to, while others return home only to find themselves sharing the Xmas turkey with strangers. Not to worry. A few cartons of beer, a couple of bottles of wine, the cricket on Boxing Day, that'll see 'em through until work begins again.

Oh, what a gift that is, to truly be able to switch off and catch up with the people I am close to in my life. To laugh, to cry, to open up my tender heart and drink in the love, not the wine. (Well, maybe just a few.) 

I love that at this time of the year I am gifted with an abundance of food and drink that I can share with my dearest friends and family. I hate that not everyone is able to share in this great abundance and that for some the overindulgence is simply a means to drop out, slouch on the couch and sleep. I can only hope that someone hits me over the head with a cricket bat and demands I get outside for a game of backyard cricket.

Oh, what a gift that is, for everyone the world over to be able to share in the abundance of life, every day of the year. For others to temper their overindulgence and recognise that it's love that fills an empty heart, not food, drink or drugs.

I love that at this time of the year I get to think about these things and to remind myself of what is truly important in my life. The trick now is to remember it throughout the year to come. 

Merry Christmas everyone. May you forever enjoy its true spirit. 

Goodbye 2008

It's a wonderful feeling to be winding down after one helluva year. As it draws to a close, with the promise of a new dawn fast approaching, I reflect on what I've learned this past year and I've gotta tell ya, it's certainly gonna put me in good stead for the year to come. 

The year rushed by in such a blur, I feel January was only yesterday, with its promises of an stimulating new job as a magazine editor. Come March and that new job had suddenly became very old, and in August I ran out of lube and decided not to buy another tube. My time spent bent over very quickly lost its allure. It was time to stand upright again and reclaim my dignity. Not that the work itself was an issue, I love creating magazines, but the people, the people, oh, my god, the people. 

That was the first thing I learnt this year: I have a very low tolerance for people in positions of authority who have no right to 'em. Corporate culture teems with such people: talentless, mediocre morons, with chips on their shoulders as big as the iceberg that sunk the Titanic. So talentless and insecure, they never actually do any work, too busy are they trying to project their own mediocrity onto the more talented, intelligent and hardworking people around 'em. Good luck to 'em...or, more appropriately, goodbye to 'em. Their world is not for me.

Yet, in March, while still bent over, I lost my perspective, and on my birthday, I fell prey to the sly machinations of a fuzzy faced fiend who stank of stale tobacco and cheap beer. "Can you tell me if that breakfast cereal on the top shelf has sugar in it," he asked me. Poor thing, I thought, he can't read. But, as I reached up, he reached around and slyly lifted my wallet from my bag. "Nope, no sugar," I said. "Thanks," he said, and took the cereal, which he promptly paid for, along with a stash of tobacco, I can only suspect, with my credit card. 

And there I'd learned something else: never pity anyone, ever, and be highly suspicious if someone who reeks of stale tobacco and cheap beer wants to buy a breakfast cereal with no sugar in it.

I comforted myself with the thought – it was my birthday after all and I had a dinner booked at Sydney Opera House's Bennelong Restaurant still to celebrate – that perhaps I'd paid off some of my karmic debt. Throughout my life there was one incident that I thought about often with regret and remorse: when I was 15, a friend of mine dared me to steal a black bag that sat atop a pram in the old and rundown Carrington Hotel in Katoomba, which we spent many bored teenage moments in, running amuck. And I did. The haul wasn't much: $10, which we straightaway spent on hamburgers. But the guilt was palpable and I couldn't help feel that I had somehow redeemed myself when my wallet was stolen on my birthday. 

After March, the year rolled on at a relatively steady pace, though my lube didn't seem to be working as it should. The stress of walking around bent over started to contaminate the rest of my life, and I became short tempered and unreasonable. Only after I decided to chuck the lube out and stand upright again, did things start to fall back into place, culminating in the sweetest moment of 2008, when, on a hot spring day in September, I met up with my dad and we took a long stroll through Glebe to Jubilee Park in Annandale, after a seven year estrangement.

It was in Glebe that I lived with my dad and my mum when I first came into the world. We lived in a small flat with a large balcony that overlooked Blackwattle Bay. My dad pointed out the flat to me and later sent me a photo of it. I went home that night after our stroll, my heart so light, it felt as though doves had flown in to roost. The gentle flutter of their wings lulled me into exquisite sleep. If only I was Sleeping Beauty and could slumber for 100 years. If only I could bottle that feeling, I'd be a millionaire.  

And there I learned something else in 2008: that love can take you on the most incredible and unexpected twists and turns. Even estrangement, which seems to be the antithesis of love, can in fact be a stepping stone on love's journey to deeper understanding and respect. 

So, with the stress of an unsuitable job behind me and a new and brilliant chapter in my relationship with my father before me, I met the remainder of 2008 with a newfound strength, which saw me through my four-year-old son's long convalescence, when he toughed it out, fought and won the fight against the Pilgrim Flu, pneumonia and glandular fever. It saw me through the death of my dear grandma, whose end I rejoiced as now, I hoped, she could find peace after seven long years of tormented thoughts. It saw me through the choice I had to make to leave my job... the money was great, but my happiness was much more important.  

Ultimately, it reawakened in me the recognition of one of my highest values, which is to never take love for granted. For me, there is nothing better in life than to love and let yourself be loved and that includes, most importantly, loving yourself. It's with this warmth and softness in my heart that I head into the uncertainty of 2009. What more could I ask for? 

My beautiful Sydney

There's nothing like camping in the great outdoors: the fresh air, the fauna, the flora, the 20 million mozzie bites on your body that you spend half the night scratching.

I often hear country people say that they can't wait to get out of the city and back to the country when they come for a visit. I know what they mean. I spent a lot of time around Byron Bay in far northern NSW in my early 30s and whenever I ventured back to the big smoke I would get heart palpitations, sweaty palms and a nervous twitch in my right eye. Okay, the twitch is a slight exaggeration, but you get my drift. The sudden rush of people, each busy with a place to be, and the high energy buzz would hit me like a bad trip, the initial rush so powerful, my body and mind would be thrown in disarray in an attempt to keep up with the intensity. 

Yet, once I've lingered for a while, the rhythm of the city becomes addictive. I grow accustomed to her groove and, like everyone else, become a busy blur as each moment calls for something to do, something to be done. 

Not that country people aren't also busy...the difference is, when I'm in the country and sit down to catch my breath, the sights and sounds of nature soothe me, embrace me in the moment. And the black blanket that wraps me up at night is a sweet, sweet treat. I'm a baby cradled in the arms of Mother Nature, an unborn baby safe and settled in her mother's womb. 

In the city, no matter how hard I try to block the world out at night, light from the street lamps always manages to splinter its way through the blinds, and I often lie awake and watch the cars' passing headlights wash over the walls. The city never sleeps and sometimes neither do I.

Yet, like my close family and friends, I still love her, despite her imperfections, of which there are a few. Take the night life, for example. The city may never sleep, but neither does she cater for older 30-somethings who like to have a good, fun, stimulating night out on the town. I can only think of one nightclub that isn't chocked to the rafters with Gen Yers. (The Tonic Bar in Kings Cross for your information, owned by Ken, an Irish man, with a lot of good sense and creative flair. Thanks, Ken!)

Not that there's anything wrong with the Gen Y haunts, it's just that I'm like the wrinkled up grape on a bunch of perfectly round plump ones. It'd be nice not to be the only one. Not that everyone has to be older either, it'd just be nice to have a few other people in the crowd who remember Bob Hawke, Atari and what Michael Jackson looked like before he became the freak.

And, hello, what's with the live music scene? Again, it caters mostly to a younger audience. In my home town, Bondi, there's nowhere to go if you want to see talented live musos, and if you do happen to come across a pub in Sydney that plays great live music, you have to deal with the drunken local yobbo at the bar, who yells out requests for Brown Eyed Girl every five minutes. 

Still, she is my beautiful Sydney, with her diamond harbour, clean, sandy beaches, moderate temperatures and outdoor livin'. She's like a nubile girl with an enticing allure that seduces you with her wonderment, until you wake up and realise that what you really want some days is a mature woman with a full bosom who knows how to enchant you with her body and her mind. She pops up every now and again, like the experienced concubine of yesteryear who knew how to tantalise all the senses. You just need to know where to look.