
Bringing in the new year with the wankiest of all wanky ciders. It's so wanky the brewers won't even ship it out of Melbourne.
I start every working weekday with bleary eyes, saving blank news script templates with the broadcast area, time and date. Today’s would’ve been MKY 630 311211 and RKY 630 311211. After a while the dates seem more like the Dewey Decimal System, a way of filing work rather than marking time.
I feel like I’ve lived three years in the past 12 months.
I spent last New Years Eve taking social photos in Toowoomba for my then-new job as flood waters washed over Emerald and just under the floorboards of my family home. Ten days later the Toowoomba flash floods tore through the garden city and the Lockyer Valley, killing dozens and destroying entire towns. For me it was 14 hour days, mud, Xanax, gratitude and a steep learning curve.
Our family held our breath through February and March as my Dad received and recovered from open heart surgery.
My colleagues and I were made redundant just before Easter, and I spent most of May and June living in my car and working for the ABC on the Sunny Coast.
I started my new job in late June, which has been another vertical climb. I’ve moved house twice, cranked out 3 zines, 2 demo releases for one of my bands, joined a second band, got 2 tattoos, had a couple of one night stands and one way romances and mitigated mania and depression with medication, sleep and love.
I guess what I’m trying to say is the universe scoffs at the idea of organising days and nights into cycles of 7, 4, 12, 26, or 365 and I scoff with it.
I don’t scoff at love and good times though, so I hope there’s plenty of both in your life tonight.












2011 in good reads.
I was an incredibly nerdy bookworm all through my early childhood and primary school.
I had the reading age of a 16-year-old by the time I was five, and I remember being taken up to the Year 3′s classroom when I was in Year 1, so they could see how badly they were being owned by one of the smallest Year 1s in the school.
Unfortunately this led to some pretty hectic bullying, which I tried to avoid by spending all my lunch breaks in the school library. Having no friends also left me with plenty of spare time, which I spent volunteering at the local town library after school.
Yes, I really was that much of a nerd.
I ditched recreational reading throughout most of my teens. This was mostly because I’d been seduced by learning guitar and music in general, although going to boarding school meant I had friends and therefore a social life for the first time ever.
While music and I have had some great times, I’m stoked to be reading regularly again.
Once a nerd, always a nerd.
Here are some of the reads of last year that have stuck with me. You can check out my favourite reads of 2010, if you’re super-keen.
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