Living The Width Of Life, Not Just The Length Of It

The past few months have been a bit of a blur.

They’ve gone so fast, it almost feels as though only a week or two have passed, but in the very same breath, looking back over them seems like an eternity.

They’ve been filled with wonderful moments, challenging moments, laughs, successes, disappointments and moments of hair-pulling frustration.

They’ve been busy. Jam-packed. Running from appointment to meeting to event and from thought to idea to phone call. Running a business, or two or three, and a household, and experiencing all the beautiful intricacies of every day life.

And I’m a little bit over it.

Not any of the actual things I’ve been doing, but the way I go about doing them.

I’m over rushing. Constantly having to switch my brain from task to task. And I’m over the same old, the exact same thing repackaged as new and interesting.

This morning, I sat back and looked at a list I made about what I wanted for/from 2012 and I realised that one of the things on there is the very reason my life has been manic:

Take advantage of every good offer that comes my way.

I’ve decided to take that back. I’m erasing it from my list.

This pursuit, this chase, this fear of losing an opportunity or missing out on something; it’s not for me.

I get a lot of good offers, for lots of good things – but 89.7% of them do not fulfill me in the way a meaningful conversation does, or producing some really good work does.

And, truth be told, the best offers are those that come from meaningful conversations and producing really good work.

I don’t intend to come across as spoilt or immodest here, but every single brilliant opportunity I’ve ever had in my life – from personal to career – have either come directly to me, without a chase, or have come in moments of being totally content and relaxed.

I’ll still accept good offers – but I’m going to be far more picky and choosy about them.

I don’t want my diary to be so full; in fact, I want to see blank boxes, just begging for something spontaneous or self-indulgent to fill them. Maybe, even, more time to do the things I love; reading, writing and taking photographs, like I had planned at the start of this year.

This morning I decided that from now on I’m going to be very picky. Fortunately, I can be. I love what I do so much, that I find it difficult not doing it. Instead of chasing things that I’m only semi-interested in, I’m going to suffocate myself with those I’m madly in love with.

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Sincere Forms of Flattery

I’m very excited to announce that O&S Publishing will be launching its first e-book this year.

It was the idea that started it all. An anthology that drew together a cluster of top notch young writers and asked them to write a short story in the style of their most beloved writer. Accompanying the story would be an essay on why their chosen writer is so important to them and how their own craft has been affected by this wordsmith. The anthology would be an homage to writers of the past and those who continue to enthrall today. A volume of love and appreciation.

Originally, we were going to print it, but when the idea for O&S Publishing took hold, we decided to make Sincere Forms of Flattery our first title, and try e-publishing. We would have complete editorial and aesthetic control and the book would be instantly and globally available.

SFOF brings together a handful of some of the most exciting voices we know, honouring some of the most terrific voices literature has ever known.

Get ready for a seriously good read.

Illustrated by French artist Amandine Thomas, O&S Publishing’s first e-book will be available for download in 2012.

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The Wandering Years…

Scouring through a second-hand bookshop in Adelaide over the summer, my fingers stopped when they reached a book covered and bound entirely in orange. I picked it up – The Wandering Years by Cecil Beaton.

It was the first time I’d heard of his name (or was it? It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place a face, or a career). I opened the book up to discover it was a lifetime worth of diary entries from a man who appeared to have had quite the full one. So I bought it, based on the few lines I had read within it.

I haven’t read The Wandering Years yet, but I know I am going to love it.

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Be Afraid – But Do It Anyway

Last week, I was being interviewed by a lovely and clever University student, and we got chatting about fear.

And it got me thinking about a common misconception bandied about confident people – it’s assumed they don’t feel fear.

I don’t think that’s true.

Everyone is afraid, at some point or about some thing. Everyone gets scared. Everyone gets nervous. Anxious. Worried. Stressed.

It’s how we react to that fear that matters. It’s how we push through it that’s important.

When I’m afraid of something – big or small – I run to it.

I refuse to let fear hold me back from doing anything in life.

I know that if you let fear control you, then it will. It will grip you. Choke you. And consume you.

The best days of my life have been the ones where I’ve been the most scared. The best results I’ve ever gotten, the best I’ve ever achieved, have come from moments when my stomach has been tied in knots.

Fear is terrifying.

It can literally stop you in your tracks.

It’s also a great motivator. And face fear once, and you’ll be likely to face it again.

I’ve felt fear. It’s nearly made my knees buckle under the weight of it. Quite literally, one time.

But it’s also challenged me. Pushed me further than I thought I could go.

And it’s because I felt it. Sat with it. Heard it. And then used it. Against itself.

I get scared. I feel the fear. And then I do whatever is so scary and frightening anyway.

The richest moments of your life might just be clouded in fear.

Embrace it.

Discover them.

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Why Is It So Hard To Believe That Social Media Can Spread Positivity?

First published at White Echo, on March 8th, 2012. 

The Internet, and social media, can often take quite the beating.

Every few days, traditional media outlets – TV, radio and newspapers – are full of reasons, opinions and case studies as to why social media is a scourge. I’m not being dramatic either – every couple of days, guaranteed, something negative is bandied about relating to social media.

Let’s be clear; there are complex issues associated with the Internet and social media.

What’s frustrating, however, is that not often enough are the benefits and the good associated with social media given attention. Not often enough are the majority of social media users – responsible, positive, active people – given the respect they deserve.

To continue reading, click here. 

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Why I Started The Melbourne Writers’ Club…

First published at O&S Publishing on February 27th, 2012.

Last January, I was sitting on the couch, laptop resting upon my knees, searching for some sort of writers’ group – a collection of people in Melbourne, my hometown, that shared a love of writing and words, and caught up every now and again to talk about that very love.

I wanted to find such a group because I love chatting with likeminded people; I like sharing stories and ideas, and I find inspiration in people – their insights and experiences, their journeys and choices.

My search, however, wasn’t terribly successful.

To continue reading, please click here. 

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South Australia, Sieger Style: Introduction

First published in Onya Magazine, on February 23rd, 2012.

A week before Christmas last year, my husband Kaz and I spontaneously decided that we would road trip to South Australia, just after New Years.

The conversation, that took place whilst we he was driving and I was in the passenger seat, fiddling on my iPhone, went something like this:

Kaz: I really want to go away somewhere these holidays.

Me: Ok. Where?

Kaz: I don’t know, somewhere near the beach.

Me: How about the holiday house?

Kaz: Nooooooo. I want to go somewhere different.

Me: Different, different, diff…what about Adelaide?

Kaz: Hmm. Why Adelaide?

Me: Because I’ve never been anywhere in South Australia.

Kaz: I haven’t been since I was a kid…

Me: We could drive there!

Kaz: Yes! Where would we stay?

Me: Near the beach!

Kaz: Which beach? What would we do?

Me: I’m sure there’s an app for all this!

Three days later, we’d booked a unit by the beach in Glenelg for a week.

Two and a half weeks later, at 4.30am, with 87 espressos pulsing through our blood streams, we jumped into our car and hit the road, ready for the long journey ahead.

On the road, somewhere in South Australia…

What I discovered during that week in South Australia – a week spent by beautiful beaches, visiting the Barossa Valley, the Adelaide Hills, the cities of Adelaide and Port Adelaide, and lots of tiny towns in-between – was that half of what I’ve ever heard about it (boring, dull, a place with nothing to do) was utter rubbish.

I learnt that South Australia is home to some of the best food and wine in the country, if not the world. That it’s actually far more switched on, in many areas, than my home state of Victoria, or other states I have visited in Australia. I learnt that the people of Adelaide are lovely. That they’re not afraid to support their local industries and businesses, in fact, they do so proudly. I learnt that Adelaide isn’t at all that different from Melbourne and that its wide and diverse program of events, and its focus on arts and culture, in fact rivals it.

And I learnt that if I had to or chose to live anywhere else in Australia, I’d probably pick it.

Join me over the next five weeks as I deliver a day-by-day (weekly column-by-column, for you) breakdown of my time in South Australia – the things I did, ate, saw, enjoyed, experienced, as well as all the things I learnt – Sieger style.

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The Wheeler Centre Gala

Taking the lead from George Bernard Shaw, who claimed ‘It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society; it is belief’, The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne opened the 2012 year of programming by dedicating their annual tradition to the thorniest and most topical of themes: belief.

I was there, and wrote about the evening for O&S Publishing.

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O&S Publishing

Last Wednesday, I launched a new venture with my dear friend Olivia Hambrett, our love project – O&S Publishing.

O&S Publishing is a hub for literary events around the world, industry news, expert advice, interviews and quality e-books. It was born out of a shared love for words, the online and digital arena and good, quality, engaging reads.

It started, of course, with an idea. Quite a humble one, really. We wanted to gather together a handful of top notch writers and have them write a short story in the style of one of their key literary influences. The idea being to publish an anthology that was as much a homage to previous and enduring greatness as a display of undervalued talent. We duly gathered the writers, they duly wrote their stories and then something happened. A bigger idea took seed.

What if we didn’t stop at just one anthology? What if this anthology was just the beginning, the launch of something ongoing, innovative and nurturing? So we asked ourselves, over a flurry of across-the-seas emails – what can we do in order to be able to continually publish collections and titles? Create a publishing platform, naturally. And make it elecontric – everyone has an iSomething or a Kindle or a laptop. Publishing electronically would give us full control over each title – and would make the reach of each title so much further – e-books that can be accessed from India to Italy, Australia to America.

Fantastic. Wonderful. Perfect. Let’s do it.

But what if, we asked ourselves, what if that platform could also act as a hub for writers and readers alike? A place where one can not only buy brilliant, quality titles from original voices, but also read author interviews, industry news and expert advice. Where hungry readers could follow writing and publishing journeys? What if our publishing platform could act as a warm, cosy, inviting bookshop and provide the communal, shared atmosphere of a cafe? What if, what if.

So we did it. Or, perhaps better put, we are in the process of doing it. We aim to build an e-library of quality literature from writers we believe in. Alongside publishing these titles – at a rate that reflects time, effort and quality, so not a particularly speedy one – we will feature interviews with writers, tips and advice, literary happenings around the globe and a blog that tracks each title’s progress.

We hope you are along for the ride.

Please stop by, give us a like or a follow, and let us know what you think. 

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If You’re Unhappy And You Know It…

I realised something yesterday, something I hadn’t connected other dots to yet, a thought I hadn’t pondered;

Every single unhappy person I know never does anything for anyone.

They might think they do. They might believe they do. But they don’t.

Some people believe they are a good friend, simply because they do the basic 101 friends are supposed to. Some people think they’re wonderful because they’re commendable citizens who do the ‘right’ thing.

But doing something for someone else isn’t found in the automatic niceties of everyday life; it’s about really doing something, something of worth and value, something that might seem small but means so much more.

Selfish people are miserable. People that only think of themselves are sullen.

Doing things for others provides you with perspective, pride, delight and purpose.

I do a lot of things for other people – I co-run an organisation, Camp Awakenings, that holds camps for Year 9 students in Melbourne and I spend hours, days, months, planning and arranging and organising and chatting and meeting and getting in my car to deliver presentations and source funding, all so me, and my team, can make an impact on the lives of the young people we meet, all so they can walk away from three amazing days with more positivity and hope and happiness and direction than what they began with.

I’d be lying if I said I got nothing out of it.

I walk away from every camp grateful, for the life I have. I leave each camp with hope. I finish each camp with a much bigger, lighter and joyful heart than what I started with. And I leave a smarter person – because, most of the time, those kids teach me more than I think I teach them.

That’s a big thing I do. Not the only thing, but a big thing.

But not everyone needs to run a camp, or feed soup to the homeless, or mindlessly donate $30 a month to (insert charity here).

It’s often the smaller things can make a bigger impact on someone’s life.

Some of the greatest joy there is to be had in life comes from doing things where you stand to gain absolutely nothing, where you’re likely to be left exhausted, out of pocket, and unacknowledged.

And that’s why the very people that need to do that most, will be the very people least likely.

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