Head and Heart

Head & Heart #37: Don’t pee on the gift

April 13, 2019 By Clare Leave a Comment

One of my favourite pieces of advice from Jancee Dunn’s How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids is “don’t pee on the gift”. It means don’t tell your spouse you’re OK with something he or she wants to do (a weekend getaway, an hours-long bike ride, an afternoon nap) and then fume about it after the fact.

Our dog has just had surgery and has been pretty sick with an infection. However, the (very shiny) silver lining is that I get a weekend at home to look after her, while J takes the kids on our planned family trip to visit his parents. This is possibly one of the greatest gifts J has ever given me and just the anticipation of a forthcoming weekend alone brings me so much joy. I am very conscious that J’s weekend (involving 7 hours of driving with a 5 and almost 2-year-old) might not be quite so joyful, but I’ve told him (repeatedly) that he can’t pee on the gift!

Other things that have brought value/joy to my life lately….

Chat 10 Looks 3

I was in a bit of a blergh mood during a morning commute to work this week. Chat 10 always makes me smile and the latest episode was no exception.

This Jamie Oliver salsa recipe

It was J’s birthday last week and I made these chicken fajitas for his birthday dinner. The salsa is especially delicious (note: I used some chipotle sauce as a substitute for the dried smoked chipotle) and it made me appreciate the value of a great sauce/dressing/condiment to transform an ordinary meal into something super tasty. On a related note, I’ve just started having Dijon mustard on my toasted sandwiches and have added this to the long list of things I wonder why I didn’t discover sooner!

iOS Shortcuts

I’ve recently started experimenting with the Shortcuts app on my iPhone after listening to this episode of the Day One podcast (Day One is my journaling app of choice) and subsequently a few episodes of Automators. Much of the technical detail goes over my head but it’s still been fun to engage my brain in a new and geeky way and come up with interesting ways to quickly/efficiently handle some of the things I do with my phone – like journal entries, starting new timers in Toggl (for time tracking), and one I set up recently where Siri will tell me what time I’m expected to arrive home.

The ‘Week in Review’

I wrote about this in my what worked in 2018 post, and last week my dear friend Emily and I sent our 52nd weekly reflective update. This practice continues to be so important to me and I’m so pleased/proud that we’ve been able to keep it up for a year (I doubt I would have been able to without the accountability to Em). Last time I posted about the WIR, lots of people asked for the questions and I do intend to do a separate post at some stage. But in the meantime, these are the questions we’re currently using (they’ve iterated a little over time). Credit and much thanks is owed to Amanda for introducing me to her similar practice and sharing her questions.

Bluey

As most Australian parents of preschoolers would know, new episodes of Bluey are out. J and I think Bandit and Chilli (Bluey’s dad and mum) are pretty great parenting role models!

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Head & Heart #36

March 30, 2019 By Clare 1 Comment

These Head & Heart posts, like many things, get harder to write the longer I put off writing them. I’ve found that there is a small window between feeling like I have enough to say and having too much – when I struggle to know where to start and to end, what to leave out and what to include. But inspired by the ‘good list’ episodes on Tsh Oxenrider’s The Simple Show, I’ve decided to simply share 3–5 things that are adding value to my life right now.

Getting up early to exercise and meditate

For the past six weeks or so I’ve been getting up around 5.15am and going for a 1/2 hour walk or jog with the dog, followed (on most mornings) by a quick 3-minute meditation. Exercising and meditating have such a significant impact on my mental wellbeing and I’m definitely feeling happier, calmer and more positive. And I’ve been surprised how easily I’ve adjusted to the pre-dawn start – I suspect it would be even easier if I could consistently achieve an earlier bedtime (that’s another challenge!). I’ve been plodding my way through the C25K program again. I want to run a 10k this year and a 5k still feels a long way off – let alone 10! But I’m trusting the process and the program. As a facilitator and trainer (that occasionally has a tendency to want to have a lot of say over outcome!) this feels important to practice. I’ve also been using this Intervals app which is great!

Jar salads

Jar salads have been a game-changer. This roasted spiced chickpea & sweet potato salad with orange vinaigrette from Jar Salads: 52 happy, healthy lunches by Alexander Hart is our favourite. We got some glass jars from Target and I’ll make up 5 or 6 at a time.

Using Siri + Reminders to manage our grocery list

I got an Apple Watch for Christmas and one of my favourite and most used features is being able to ask Siri to add an item to our (shared) grocery list (in Reminders) at any time, wherever I am. I’ve also changed my Siri to the Australian male voice after reading this post (see tip #34).

Derek Sivers’ bike-riding story

As we, like many families, try to navigate the demands of kid drop-offs and getting to work, I’ve often found myself feeling rushed and rushing the kids (which never ends well!). So I’ve been thinking about this story from Derek Sivers a lot lately.

New podcast discoveries

After a bit of a run of audiobooks earlier in the year, I’m back in a podcast phase. I binged the entire series of The Drop Out, and two other recent discoveries that are on heavy rotation are David Tennant does a podcast with…, and Feel Better, Live More.

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Head & Heart #35

August 7, 2018 By Clare Leave a Comment

Often I catch myself in ‘when/then’ self-talk, particularly in relation to parenting – ‘when my kids sleep through the night then I’ll be able to get up early and go running’, ‘when we don’t have to pay for daycare anymore we’ll be able to consider upgrading the house/take a holiday’, ‘when the kids are older I’ll have more flexibility to travel with my work’, ‘when I don’t have to spend my evenings cleaning up vomit I’ll be able to write more blog posts’ (that was last night)…. It’s like life with little children, although very much planned and wanted, is some kind of temporary detour from the life I could or should be living. Lately, I’ve been trying to remind myself that this isn’t a detour, this is my life, and to lean into the experience rather than looking for what might be on the other side. So when I read this piece from Omid Safi this week his wise words resonated strongly – “Your life will not start down the road. This is life. Be here now. Have your heart where your feet are.” I love this so much and have added it to my collection of #stickywisdom (I’m trying to figure out the best way to collate and share my #stickywisdom, so I’m experimenting with a new dedicated Instagram account – sticky.wisdom).

E has decided she wants to be a geologist when she grows up (I think she’s keen on the idea of finding a heap of gold!). Despite doing at least a semester of university-level geology, I can’t remember even the basic info about the different rock types so we found some YouTube videos. Thank goodness for YouTube! But it was a moment when I kind of missed having a World Book encyclopedia on the shelf.

Apparently, the best way to learn anything is to teach it to a child, so instead of completely outsourcing responsibility for satisfying my children’s curiosity to YouTube, I’m going to view fielding questions as a highly effective way to enhance my own understanding of a subject. And it’s also got me thinking about how I can integrate the Feynman technique into the workshops I facilitate.

Mars is visible at the moment (as is Saturn). I only learned this from overhearing an episode of the Imagine This podcast that E was listening to. I’m rarely outside in the evening (especially in winter), but we’ve downloaded the super cool Night Sky app on our phones and have enjoyed rugging up and doing some planet spotting. If you’re in Canberra and have little kids you may be keen to check out this star gazing playgroup session that our babysitter Sami is running at the end of the month.

Last weekend we had an unexpected visitor – ‘Patch’ the bear from E’s pre-school. Basically the kids take turns taking Patch home for the weekend, and you’re meant to involve Patch in your weekend activities, and add some photos/text to a journal for your child to share with the class on Monday morning. Of course this means that someone has to remember to pack Patch for any weekend outing, and then photograph Patch, and print the photos and arrange them with text descriptions in the journal.

Whenever we have one of these visitors I’m reminded of Annabel Crabb’s ‘The Wife Drought’ where she shares a similar story about ‘Chiquita the kangaroo’ to illustrate the type of work involved in managing a home/family – work that’s not paid (and often barely recognised) but that you feel emotionally obligated to fulfil (and super guilty if you stuff up). And it’s work that’s most often undertaken by ‘wives’.

Given my life stage it’s hardly surprising that my virtual feeds and in-person conversations are full of discussions and commentary that include many stories like those about ‘Patch/Chiquita’ including this piece – I decided to drop my family’s mental load for a week.

The ‘list’ also came up in this episode of Dear Sugars on emotional labour which was quite good. But, I feel like in this episode, and in many articles, there is a conflation and confusion of the terms emotional labour, invisible work, domestic labour, mental load etc. I wasn’t really aware of this until I read Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor. This episode of WorkLife on faking your emotions at work also helps to explain what emotional labor looks like in a work setting. Regardless, I do want an ‘I am the List’ t-shirt.

I’ve been listening to a lot of the 5 Things podcast. The premise is quite simple but a unique take on the traditional interview – guests bring in 5 physical things that they treasure or that are resonant in some way, and share the story of their life through these objects. The guests don’t appear to be particularly famous (Manoush Zomorodi was the only name in the guest list I recognised), but it’s so fascinating to hear about different stories/lives and I love how physical objects can be used to elicit such deep, meaningful, personal conversation and connection. Of course, it’s got me thinking about what my five things would be too.

A new recipe that’s getting a lot of use in our house – ‘boost your basic’ double choc chip cookies from One Handed Cooks. Yes, they are choc-chip cookies so they’re not really a healthy snack, but I prefer these to the usual ones that are heavy on the butter and sugar. I’ve probably already shared it before but their carrot cookies (with no refined sugar, eggs, nuts or dairy) are a lunch-box staple at our place.

Head & Heart is an occasional update about the things that have engaged my head or heart recently – things I’ve been pondering, articles I’ve read, podcasts I’ve listened to etc. If you’d like to receive the updates via email, you can sign up here.

Head & Heart #34

July 20, 2018 By Clare Leave a Comment

My big baby turned 5 a couple of weeks ago! Ella’s birthday is always a time of much reflection and this year I’ve found myself considering how becoming a mum, and Ella’s mum specifically, has changed the trajectory of my life. Her arrival felt like an asteroid had rammed into me and thrown me from my orbit leaving me lost and spinning out of control. But now, as we traverse further into this new identity and relationship I feel more confident that this path I’m now on is providing me with the lessons and opportunities I’m meant to have. In the lead up to her birthday I also found myself filled with enormous gratitude for all the wonderful people that have come into my life that I probably wouldn’t have connected with otherwise – my mother’s group, working at YWCA Canberra, the She Leads students and facilitators, Lead Mama Lead, my new colleagues at the APSC…

With each birthday it’s interesting to notice how parenting challenges shift from the basic needs around sleeping, eating etc, to deeper ones around raising a decent human being. This post on fitting in vs belonging was one worth reading and will be something I try to remember as Ella gets older and continues to navigate friendships and social structures.

I love love love this idea! If you’re expecting a baby, or know someone who is, why not skip the baby shower and throw a post-partum party instead?

Recent favourite podcast discoveries that I’d recommend include Self-Helpless (3 comedians discuss various self-help topics/books) and Briget Shulte’s Better Life Lab (on the art and science of living a full life). I’m also excited to see that Jamila Rizvi’s new podcast, Future Women, is launching next week. I also really enjoyed this episode of Hidden Brain – The Edge Effect – which includes some fantastic stories about diversity and creativity.

Some people in my network who are doing great things and that I think you should know about….

My friend Zoya Patel‘s debut book, No Country Woman, is coming out next month! I’m so excited to read this and share it. Zoya is one of the smartest, most insightful people I know and her writing about race, feminism and identity always makes me stop and think. She’s doing a number of events over the coming months – including a launch in Canberra on 19 August, and the Melbourne Writers Festival!
Julie Boulton has an excellent weekly newsletter, The Greening Of, about her journey towards more sustainable living. I always learn heaps and I love her honest, engaging, humourous writing style.
Lead Mama Lead founder, Summer Edwards, is running the next intake of the Overcoming Overwhelm course in September. This is an online course for mamas who are struggling with and/or feel like they’d like to get better at dealing with feelings of overwhelm, guilt and exhaustion in their life. It’s a supportive, gentle program (designed to fit in around the lives of busy women). I’m about 2/3 through the pilot program and it’s definitely led to some increased self-awareness around the priorities and values in my life and the habits and practices that help and hinder my wellbeing. (You can also get 25% off if you sign up before 1 August).
A couple of months ago, my friend and former colleague Stefan Kraus from RGB Collective took some wonderful portraits of us (and did incredibly well to capture the easily-distracted and not-always-compliant kids). Getting some more family photos on the wall was one of the things I really wanted to do this year, now I just have to get them printed and framed…. (I’m also thinking about getting one turned into a custom illustrated portrait from Able & Game)

My feet (and pregnant belly) – 3 July 2013

On the topic of photos, Ella uses an old iPhone to listen to podcasts and audiobooks. She’s recently discovered the camera function and has taken (quite enthusiastically) to documenting her life and creating movies! It’s been fun to look through the pictures and videos and get a glimpse of what the world looks like from her perspective. There are lots of selfies and posed pictures of toys and hundreds of walls and windows and floors and ceilings (some quite artistic, some not so much).

I particularly love this one – mainly because exactly 5 years and 12 days earlier I’d taken a very similar shot (in almost the identical spot) as I paced my lounge room in early labour about 10 hours before we met Ella.

The other big news to share since my last H&H update is that I’ve returned to (paid) work following my maternity break. I’m pleased to be facilitating some of the core skills and graduate development training programs at the Australian Public Service Commission, and I’m also doing some freelance facilitation, coaching and training. Helping individuals and groups to learn and change and to see themselves and the world a little differently has been a pretty consistent thread through my work for the past 8 or so years, but facilitation has been a somewhat peripheral part of the various jobs I’ve had. I feel so excited to be diving deeper into this work and to commit to building my own skills, knowledge, experience and practice – it feels like the work I’m meant to be doing. I have some availability for work for the remainder of the year, so if you need some support with running meetings, workshops or training, please get in touch. All the details are over on the Sticky Note Consulting site.

Finally, I’m going to trial sending out Head & Heart updates as a newsletter which may make them easier to follow (for the handful of dear friends that actually read them)! If you’d like to sign up, you can do so here. I’ll keep posting them to the blog too!

Head & Heart #33

February 15, 2018 By Clare Leave a Comment

Parenting milestone achieved – surviving our first family bout of gastro!

Last week, in addition to my daughter starting pre-school, we achieved another family milestone – our first bout of gastro through the household – and the experience got me thinking about change.

When you’re in the throws of a gastro bug often all you can do is wait. Although you feel absolutely horrible, there’s some comfort in knowing that things will change and in 24-48 hours you’ll almost certainly feel much much better. All you have to do is simply survive (and try to maintain some humour and perspective). Similarly, in parenting, what I’ve learned 4 1/2 years in is that sometimes just waiting it out is just what you have to do to get through a period of discomfort, pain, frustration or suffering (whether that be related to sleep, toileting, eating etc). Often trying to initiate, force or speed up change is ineffective or just not worth the effort. It makes me wonder how often I’m getting stressed and trying to intervene and change something in other parts of my life, when I’m better off just having faith that the hard stuff will eventually end? But on the flip side, how often am I clinging to some hope that things will be different without making any (or sufficient) effort to bring that change into being???

In other news, I’ve taken my friend Summer’s recommendation and started using some bluetooth headphones (well, I’ve appropriated Jason’s AirPods) and am finding evening chores much less painful with a good podcast or audiobook to listen to. A few new podcasts that I’ve been enjoying over the last week or so are Women At Work from HBR, The Pineapple Project (which actually makes personal finance interesting), and Anecdotally Speaking (a business storytelling podcast).

I read this article – Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read – and saved the link in my journal. A day or so later when reviewing my saved links, I couldn’t remember what the article was about, or why I thought it was important to save, which just kind of just proves its entire point! On re-reading, the key takeaway was acknowledging the difference between simply acquiring information and actual knowledge. Often I’m sucked into seeking out new information and the momentary experience of feeling like I’ve learned something, without actually learning. So one thing I’ve decided to do, instead of always focusing on the new article/book/podcast, is embracing re-reading and re-listening. This week I’ve relistened to Episode 1 of the brilliant 3-part Making Oprah podcast series (if you’re searching for it in your podcast app search for ‘Making Obama’ – the new series name), and I’ve just started re-reading Sarah Ferguson’s The Killing Season Uncut. So many life and leadership lessons from both (and plenty of #stickywisdom too) that I plan to blog about separately.

Stephanie Coontz (a historian who studies family and marriage) has been popping up in my feeds in several places this week – in episode 2 of Women at Work on couples that work, on the most recent episode of Hidden Brain (When Did Marriage Become So Hard?), and she also wrote this NYT opinion piece – For A Better Marriage, Act Like A Single Person. Date night always feels like enough of a logistical challenge to try and organise, but this article has inspired me to try and schedule in a few double dates this year!

Finally, I’m really enjoying walking Ella to and from pre-school. It’s so nice to live within walking distance from the school and it’s great to have the opportunity to chat. Asking ‘how was your day?’ is a hard habit to break, but I’m trying hard to ask better questions that get her sharing more. This list gave me some good ideas to try.

**Head & Heart is an occasional capture of what I’m thinking about, doing, reading and listening to**

Head & Heart #32

October 3, 2017 By Clare Leave a Comment

Whenever E wakes in the night to tell us that she’s scared of monsters, spiders, or a Backson (thanks Winnie the Pooh) we tell her that we’re nearby and that ‘mummy and daddy won’t let anything bad happen to you’. This shooting in Las Vegas just makes me realise that of course that’s a promise that is impossible for us to keep. Pain and hurt and fear and disappointment will inevitably be part of our kids’ lives, and I need to remember that it’s not our job to protect them from it, but rather to ‘assure them that when the turbulence comes, we will all hold hands and get through it together’ (and keep serving the peanuts!).

On a happier note, we got out for a family bushwalk at Tidbinbilla and it was great. I’ve mentioned it before, but bushwalking is really my happy place and it’s so nice to be sharing this with E. I listened to a recent episode of the Australian Hiker podcast on hiking with kids (#40) and used some of the tips on this most recent outing – getting E to be the guide, hold the map and look for the trail markers, and to carry her own water and snacks. She really took to the leader role (which won’t be a surprise to anyone that knows her) and managed to walk 3.3km herself (although there was a fair bit of whinging at the end and we had to pull out the promise of an icecream).

1. How Honesty Could Make You Happier

…one of my biggest takeaways was that we shouldn’t lie to children when they are asking us about grown-up words or ideas — otherwise, they will just ask Siri. If it’s between YouTube and me to explain prostitution, I pick me.

Part of supporting kids through hard stuff is being honest (in an age-appropriate way). While I try to avoid lying to E (as I know she’ll figure it out eventually and I want us to have a relationship that has a strong foundation of trust), I find it difficult to find truthful and acceptable alternatives to ‘we won’t let anything bad happen’, and the more innocent ‘I don’t know where that picture/bag/toy is’ (when it ended up in the bin during last night’s clean up)! This piece has prompted me to pay more attention to those moments duing my day where I have to make a choice about honesty.

2. Terrible, Thanks for Asking

This is my latest podcast discovery (thanks to Carly Findlay’s recommendation). I started with the latest episode (#14 – Best Friends Forever) and I’ve been thinking about it for days. It made me cry and reflect and filled me with gratitude for the wonderful friendships in my life. I’m now making my way through the back catalogue. Such a great podcast about love and loss and the hard and beautiful parts of being human.

3. Step into the sunlight

Most of us, I think, have had this experience: behaving quite differently according to the people in the room at the time. With some people we feel in perpetual shadow; with others, the sunlight seems to angle in and we are aglow.

This piece by Richard Glover was published almost 5 years ago, but it’s one that I think and talk about often. This week it came up twice in conversations, so I thought it was worth sharing here too.

Head & Heart #31

September 25, 2017 By Clare Leave a Comment

“We don’t go on because we’re ready, we go on because it’s 11.30”
~ Saturday Night Live producer and mastermind, Lorne Michaels.

Here I am writing a post, not because I have three things ready to share, but because it’s Monday. I wonder if the reason I don’t have a number of articles, posts or podcasts to share is because I didn’t come across anything that engaged my head or heart, or because my head and heart were distracted or weren’t as open this week? Regardless, I’ve decided that the habit and practice of regular writing, no matter how scrappy, is more important than being ready with something I feel is worth sharing.

That said, one of the things that I did enjoy reading this week and that is making the rounds of the internet is this amazing story by Dr Mary-Claire King – The Week My Husband Left And My House Was Burgled I Secured A Grant To Begin The Project That Became BRCA1.

I love stories which remind me of how many things in this world, including those we take for granted or seem inevitable, are actually products of people being in a certain place at a certain time and the small interactions they have along the way. I had a similar feeling when I read Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street earlier in the year and was struck by how many conversations, collaborations and people saying ‘yes’ were necessary for the Sesame Street we all know and couldn’t imagine life without, to actually come about.