It’s just taken me about 14 days to write this blog post. It’s been open and chipped away at for two weeks. Every time I start, I stop. Or lose my trail of thought. Or you know, find something else to do. Doesn’t bode well for the rest of the year, considering I was thinking I should have ‘focus’ as my word for the year.
Like the rest of the world I kind of knew everything wouldn’t magically get better when the calendar flicked over to 2021, but damn weren’t we all HOPING it would. Speaking of calendars, if you need to save some cash you can reuse an old 2010 as the days and dates finally line up. Dig through those old desk drawers.
It’s easy to focus on what a shit-show 2020 was. Fires, floods, plague, COVID, isolation, loneliness, online uni group work. COVID has been awful. People are sick, dying and fighting over the last roll of toilet paper and can of spam. We’ve seen the worst in humanity and let’s face it ourselves. Face masks are not a good look on anyone. At the post office this morning (wearing a cap, sunnies and face mask) I got called “gentleman” as in “let the gentleman go first”. Note to self: I really need to pluck my 4 stubborn neck pube/chin hairs. COVID needs to go.
However, what if instead of focusing on the bad news and mental toughness that 2020 brought with it what if we look for the slight tiny pieces of good news and celebrate:
Trump won’t be President for the next 4 years.
People are starting to recognise the climate crisis, it’s getting some momentum. There has been a big acceleration in countries and businesses making climate commitments.
Africa is now free of polio.
More people turned to health, vegetable gardening, and prioritising family time.
People showed empathy, a sense of community.
We collectively S-L-O-W-E-D down a bit.
We explored our neighbourhoods and went on holidays in our own states.
Workers are getting the job done even at home. Business continued efficiently, productively and with higher engagement.
Personally, I reached my goal of a full half study load, if that makes sense – 4 subjects completed with distinction. I even managed to not lose my shit at group work online. Fun fact: I loathe group work. For one subject this year I was sitting on 92% (well into high distinction territory), but after a group assignment that got 55% I ended up just scraping into the bottom end of a distinction. I could write a whole post separately on it. My goals for this year are the same to complete 4 subjects, give myself a break, stop hating myself so much and try to focus.
Anyone who knows me, knows I love going off-grid. I love going a bit feral. More on that in another post.
Once again, I am writing this when I am supposed to be doing a uni assignment. If I can get it done in the next couple of evenings, then I get the weekend off. However, I did find this little gem of an “I Could Live Here” whilst I was doing some research for the assignment…
Which totally counts right?
I found this one on the NSW Planning Portal website, I won’t go into the detail of the assignment or the website but this house was on that website as an example of sustainability excellence in residential building.
It’s on 8 acres of bushland in the Blue Mountains – otherwise known as my happy place
I love its split-skillion-roof-pod-design
It is built of fireproof concrete that looks like timber and also protects against termites
It is not a huge house – I am not a fan of huge houses for the sake of huge houses. I like a house that is built to service current needs and not a series of ‘what if’s’. Like what if 8 of my “friends” want to come up for the long weekend? (Scroll down to see the solution to that)
Net-zero emissions
22 000L rainwater tank, heat recovery system, 6.8kW solar with battery backup, worm farm sewerage system, double glazing, in-slab heating, stringybark timber from the site used internally.
Hello new home it’s me…..Jess. Image Credit: Anderson Architecture
Perfectly cosy for those Blue Mountains misty afternoons. Image Credit: Anderson Architecture
Can you see the ‘hidden’ solution to all those pesky guests? Image Credit: Anderson Architecture
Not a bad spot for a morning cuppa. Image Credit: Anderson Architecture
No problem with Kangaroos watching me bathe. Image Credit: Anderson Architecture
Remember, a thousand years ago when I last wrote a blog post? I said that during my uni holidays, I wanted to hike, read and write. Well, one out of three ain’t bad. But 33% is not a pass in anyone’s language and whilst I did some decent hikes, I failed miserably on the other two.
It’s not completely my fault I’ve been covid-tose. Like being comatose but less hospitally and more home and just wanting to sleep for 2 days straight, and every afternoon and night. Boring I know. What is it about being at home all the time that just makes you exhausted? Don’t know. Have you had it too?
It’s August. The month of my birth and in my neck of the wood, the pits of winter. It’s always darkest before dawn and it’s always coldest right before the springing up of spring.
It doesn’t snow much in Australia, the great Mt Kosciuszko is a mere 2228m, that’s about a quarter of Everest. Apparently if you want to go to Everest, you don’t even list Mt Kosi as an achievement. Too embarrassing. We get some snow. In the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, there is normally one ‘dump’ of a few centimetres every year. “People” lose their minds over it. “People” may be me.
It’s forecast to snow this week in the Blue Mountains – Thursday, Friday and Saturday down to 600m. Woodford is 609m, that’s only halfway up. I really want to go up there, but when there is a good chunk of snow they normally close the roads because we don’t know how to drive on ice. Fair enough. I don’t want my car wrecked. I may get the train instead.
2 weeks ago, I happened to be up in the mountains, hoping it would be cold enough to snow. I took a day off from studying and just being covidtose at home and did all my favourite things. Leura shops, breakfast somewhere nice, the Cultural Centre and Art Gallery. Bookshops. God, I love a bookshop. When I drove out of the carpark at Katoomba, I noticed sleet on the windscreen. Wet like rain, but with heavy ice crystals. I wondered if I got just a little bit higher, whether it would be snowing.
At Blackheath, it was still sleeting. Disappointed it was not snowing, but happy that at 4pm the bookshop was still open, I stopped the car and went in. Just me and the bookshop salesperson, as I wandered the aisles looking at everything from “What is Your Enneagram Personality” to “Cabin Porn” to “Sex Robots and Vegan Meat”, the salesperson came over to me and said “Look”, I turned around and it was SNOWING.
So I did what all sane normal people would do and stay in the bookshop where it was warm go outside, drive around on the newly icy roads taking photos and videos and playing with snow, and making soily snowballs and throwing them at trees.
How good is snow? It makes everything so beautiful, so clean, so fresh and new. Like a new start. Almost.
This time it was just a smattering of snow. Isn’t smattering a good word. Hopefully just a little preview of what’s to come this weekend. But geez it was fun.
I had a completely different post written and ready to go, but I’m not ready to share it yet. It’s very personal and brings up a lot of things in my soul that make it hard to press the little ‘publish now button’.
Personally, I am loving the relaxation that working from home brings, the peace and quiet. It’s nice not to have to sit in peak hour traffic, to take a breather. I went for a walk on the weekend and the air was so clear. Nature is bouncing back. We don’t need to stop everyone driving for very long for equilibrium to start again. It’s amazing.
I am worried about the environment, the Government is spending Billion$ on COVID-19 and it’s social impact, which means for the next generation we will be paying this money off, in turn there will be less money for environmental. From the summer bushfires alone, it will take many generations for wildlife populations to recover, if they recover at all.
While we have all been focussed on COVID-19 and death tolls and cruise ships, there is other news going on. What has happened while the world wasn’t looking?
Antarctica had its highest temperature on record at 20.7ºC. More.
The Great Barrier Reef had another coral bleaching event. Thanks to the highest monthly sea-surface temperatures recorded. Severe bleaching has now affected all 3 major regions of the reef. More.
The NSW Government approved coal mining directly underneath the Woronora reservoir – one of Sydney’s drinking water reservoirs. More.
In NSW, prime Koala inhabited forest is being destroyed. Whilst much of the koala’s habitat was destroyed in the NSW bushfires, some of what wasn’t destroyed is now being logged. More.
What about those bushfires? Well, the “Independent Royal Commission” *cough *cough has been instructed to focus reactively on solutions to mitigate the future effects of climate change not proactively on how to slow, stop or reverse climate change. More.
Traditional landowners have been banned from the Adani Carmichael site. More.
Tasmania has been clear-felling old-growth forests. More.
In the USA, Trump has reduced targets for lowering vehicle emissions from 5% per year to only 1.5%. This will add 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, the equivalent of 17 additional coal-fired power plants. More info.
Australian governments listened to medical experts on COVID-19. My hope is that now they will listen to climate scientists and experts in the same way.
