Life is generally good. Right? I say that to myself a lot. Like, really, sherdie, if you think about this properly, get some perspective, life is actually pretty damn sweet.

But then sometimes I feel like dirt.

And when that happens, I’ll often make some tea. Hot tea, iced tea, black, green, rosehip, mint from the garden. Any kind. Sometimes a few kinds.

My brain wants to be that person who can STAY TOUGH and PUSH THROUGH and GET ALL THE THINGS DONE and MAKE IT RIGHT. My internal organs disagree and want to avoid and organise sneaky rebellions so I have to sleep and move slowly and eat okayu and be still instead of MOVEMOVEMOVE. It’s a fundamental disconnect. And neither side is right. But there is a balance in there that I often struggle to find.

The tea doesn’t fix things, but it does remind me that it is just a job, and they are just people.

Here’s to the next forty.

• Marinate roo (for dinner – Australia Day, natch)
• Sort desk
• Put all the things away!
• Make gyoza skins and gyoza
• Go to Sydney for a decadent weekend
• Get my first som tam of the year (yum) at Chat Thai in Thaitown (still not as good as the Parap markets but that’s mostly just because I’m a wanker)
• Sip chilled wine with chilled people in a chilled-out courtyard
• Eat an incredible dinner at Sokyo (Moreton Bay bug sashimi holy moly)
• Have an amazing coffee tequila shot
• Be exceptionally hungover
• Have a breakfast tagine in Balmain (amazing, really, I should have taken a photo but was far too hungover)
• Pick up a salted caramel lamington from Adriano Zumbo
• Watch a middle aged woman with a small dog sneakily leave her dog poo in a bag on the footpath – possibly not realising (or more likely not caring) the entire verandah of the the pub across the road was watching her
• Watch the poor owner of the shop she left the bag in front of come out, pick it up, and look quite disgusted
• Go to a fabulous party in the penthouse at the Meriton and watch the Chinese New Year fireworks from above
• Swan around in my new dogstar splurge dress
• Eat a platter full of German pork products for breakfast (well, part of a platter) and rediscover my love of sauerkraut. And my love of crackling, although it never went anywhere so it’s not really rediscovery, is it?

Failed on the following:

• Knit like a mofo
• Repot shiso
• Split bromeliad

Will rectify those shortly. Just as soon as my liver stops whimpering.

And one of those days I have all to myself. No plans. Just me. And a to do list.

It says:

• Marinate roo (for dinner – Australia Day, natch)
• Knit like a mofo
• Repot shiso
• Split bromeliad
• Sort desk
• Put all the things away!
• Make gyoza skins and gyoza

This is what my life has become. And it’s ace.

Well, not technically busted. Technically lacking mechanical stability. And not technically my wing, being as I can’t fly, but in fact my shoulder.

You get the general idea though. I can do most things as long as I don’t, you know, move my right arm. Lift it or suspend it in the air or try to use it or lie on it.

For how long? Well, until it stops hurting, apparently.

Approaching it as a reason to slow down and look at things. Consider things. Chill out. And make the Architect hang out all the washing (line’s too high, no way I can get my arm up there).

You know what’s tricky? Making 4 litres of kimchi with your left hand.

Yep. Tricky.

But totally worth it.

That’s four LITRES of kimchi.

And I’m back.

Am I doing it wrong? Not too sure. Talking to a dear friend just now, I said that I feel like I’ve made it through the tunnel and into the light. So something is working. I’ve been chipping away at this, whatever this is. This complex muddied thing that needs shifting. Making little spaces here and there, and then filling them up with light and love and softness to crowd out the stress and sad and crunchiness. Lots of reframing things as choices, such as working late or on weekends because I’m choosing to. Lots of trying to sneak around the ego and adrenaline thing, which is still hard, but getting easier with practice. Being okay with doing things less than perfectly… I really suck at.

I’m excited about keeping on with all of this. Keeping on carving out those little spaces for myself. Doing things for no other reason than I want to. Not doing things for no other reason than I don’t want to. Ridiculous that those two statements should seem at all remarkable. Still, that’s what I’m working with. And it’s making everything (paradoxically even doing the stuff I don’t want to do) easier. In October, I’m going to learn how to make cheese. Why? Because it makes my heart quicken (you should follow that link, and read it).

A way to go still, and a few more navel-gazing blog posts ahead. But progress, for sure.

The Architect and I have been using Food Connect, the (only?) Brisbane CSA enterprise, for… a long time now, so long, in fact, that neither of us can remember how long it’s been. I’d say more than a year, but probably not two years.

How it works:

Food Connect gets food from a range of local farmers, divvies it up and dispatches it around the city (to “City Cousins”), all depending on how many people have ordered. You subscribe to Food Connect for a number of deliveries of a certain type. At the moment we have 13 deliveries of a single veg box up our sleeve, which we get once a fortnight, and add onto things like fruit, honey, olive oil or extra vegies as needed. There’s a nifty online ordering system now which makes the adding on a lot easier, as well as pausing or moving our delivery (for when we go away). The delivery gets taken to my nominated “City Cousin” on a certain day, and I go and pick it up. Our single veg box comes loaded with locally grown, mostly organic veg (click here for more detail). It lasts us a fortnight because we tend to eat at home only four nights a week. We also tried the medium veg and the mixed mini – but the single veg with fruit as an optional extra works best for us.

Why it might not be for you:

Starting out, I was most worried about the lack of ‘choice’. What comes in the box is what you get, which can be a weird concept when we’re used to an overwhelming array of choices, especially when you’re the customer. I adjusted pretty quickly; there’s a good range and mix of things in the box and it’s easy enough to add extras if you need them. We’ll pick up other things if we need them for a specific dish or event, either from the supermarket or the markets, but that’s pretty rare. Now that I’m used to it, I actually like the convenience and the challenge of it. I’ve learnt how to cook with a bunch of things I wouldn’t have chosen – like beetroot and radish – and cook new things with vegies I’m familiar with. Having said all that, if you have a lot of likes and dislikes, or the idea of not being able to choose freaks you out, this might not be the way for you.

Something else that might bother people is the look of the produce. Anyone with a vegie patch or fruit trees at home will (I imagine) be familiar with the bumps and pits and spots that turn up on normal produce. The taste is fine and there’s nothing wrong with the produce – but people used to seeing row upon row of shiny, unblemished fruit and veg at the supermarket might get a bit of a surprise. Twice we’ve had a piece of rotten veg in the box that went beyond what I’d consider acceptable, but apart from that it’s all fine (and twice in about 50 deliveries isn’t too bad). Both times were in the middle of summer and a prolonged wet season in south east Queensland, so I can understand how that happened, as well.

Finally, it’s seasonal. I like that – I always tried to buy what was in season anyway – but if you’re one to lust after lettuce in August or crave snow peas in December, again, maybe this isn’t for you.

Why it’s good:

The main benefit is the taste. We started off, as you do, with a four week trial. In the very first box, there were some carrots. Those carrots were the best carrots either of us had eaten since… who knows. In that moment we decided that we’d give this thing a proper try. Far out. How much better life is with good tasting food. Plus our diet is generally better – we eat plenty of vegetables, and we hardly ever have to buy tasteless, hard supermarket veg (and when we do, we are reminded how lucky we are to have an option that gives us vegies that actually taste like vegies!).

The way the system works, you pay a set price in advance – which means a big chunk of our food costs are stable as well as paid ahead for a few months. If we both lost our jobs tomorrow, we could still eat! And it makes budgeting for food pretty easy, because I know that each fortnight we’ll pay $36 and have enough veg to last a fortnight.

It’s more convenient (for us) than going to the markets. I chose the City Cousin closest to my work, and it’s a simple matter to swing past on the way home. The irony hasn’t escaped me that I drive to work on “Food Connect day”. I bussed it a couple of times and it made the whole thing feel really difficult and annoying; my general rule when making lifestyle changes like this is that if it feels difficult, I won’t stick to it, so I do what I can to make it feel easy.

And finally, there’re the bigger reasons to do it. Supporting local farmers and helping to make their businesses sustainable. Doing something to combat the stranglehold of the Coles and Woolworths duopoly. Buying local. Buying organic. All the environmental benefits that flow from those two. Hooray local action.

The end: I hope I didn’t get all preachy on ya

So that’s a bit about CSA. I see that Adelaide and Sydney have Food Connect now too. I tried to find CSAs in the ‘berra and Melbourne but there doesn’t seem to be a lot out there. Maybe in places that already have good farmers markets, it’s not so popular. Anyway. I like it. And that’s what it is.

Not being one to pass up free food, I took two. Not one, because what’s the point of one choko? Not three, because I’ve never had chokoes before, so what if they were awful? So. Two chokoes in my vegie crisper. What does one do with a choko?

I asked the Architect’s mum. She wasn’t sure either but pulled out an awesome Dictionary of Australian Recipes (or something) that was printed in the 1930s or thereabouts. In it we found that chokos could be boiled, steamed, roasted, mashed, fried, etc etc etc. Add butter and salt, they all seemed to say.

So choko #1 is at this very moment hanging out in the steamer basket, peeled, quartered and de-seeded, just waiting to be steamed lightly and smothered in dairy salty goodness (and served with some rosemary roast lamb, nom).

Choko #2, still in the fridge, has in its near future a more modern treatment (thank you, internet) and will be stirfried with garlic and sesame oil and a dash of shao-hsing wine.

I ignored the warnings about the irritant in choko goo and dealt with it as I would any other vegie. Interestingly, the skin on my left hand (which was holding the choko as I peeled it) has lost a couple of layers and my palm is very smooth. Choko skin peel – you saw it here first – coming soon to an overpriced James St beauty salon near you.

Anyway. Yay for expanding vegetable horizons, I say. I feel very Queenslandish right now.

UPDATE: First choko: Tasty. Fresh. Butter and salt were good.

The bad

First full week back at work. By Friday I was stupidly tired. Not helped by a futsal game with no subs on Thursday night – about 10 seconds after I started running I realised I had nothing in the tank… and still had to keep running. Ugh (and we lost 15-1). Of course, now it feels like I’m making excuses; once you’re back at work, no-one but you remembers that you were sick and/or recovering. In the past I’ve been guilty of saying, “if you’re not well enough to be effective at work, then you shouldn’t go to work”. True… but I am well enough to go to work, just not to smash out a 12 hour day. People might think I can’t do my job, oh noes! Which leads me to…

Ego. Adrenaline. My addiction to being busy. I was right when I said this would be a big challenge. The ego thing is fuzzy and complex and circular, but I think it mostly comes from my desire for external validation (what Gretchen Rubin calls gold stars – oh, so true!). There’s a part about enjoying being part of the action and being able to influence it. A part about enjoying the ego boost that comes with being busy and in demand. And a part from that little voice that whispers to me that I have to prove that I am capable and clever and whatever else, to everyone around me (and something in there about competition). Woven through all of that is the addiction to the adrenaline that comes with those things, with being busy and frantic and rushed and smashing through and always having the next thing to deal with. I noticed this one day this week when I had lots of meetings and we had lots of media requests on a bunch of different things and (I told myself) I was the only one who could deal with all those things. I was working on draft releases during meetings, meaning I was only half there, and then trying to prepare for meetings while our media guy was trying to talk to me, meaning I was only half there. And I was enjoying the adrenaline and the feeling of being very, very busy, because it meant I didn’t have to feel weak and exhausted or worry that people thought I wasn’t pulling my weight because See! Here I Am Being Needed And Useful And Important! I got to skip along the top of things without dealing with the difficult parts of them – because I was so busy.

The good

Mindfulness is all about practice. Later on the day of adrenaline, I realised what was going on, promptly closed my office door and hung out in a standing forward bend for a minute – to get the blood back to the brain and calm the hell down. It worked, for about an hour. And in that hour I got a lot done. But as the adrenaline wore off I became more and more tired. So I went home and went to bed. Lesson learnt. And I also realised that noticing this stuff is easier when you have physical limitations like exhaustion and a burning pain in your abdomen. Silver lining, I reckon.

Seeking and finding wisdom. I love, love, love what Penelope Trunk says about this thing where busy is an addiction:

Those of you who walk around telling everyone how busy you are, get a grip. Make some tough choices and calm down. There’s a big difference between a busy day and a full day. The former is so frantic that you aren’t effective.

Seth Godin is another clever person who talks a lot about the difference between being busy and being productive. I try to remind myself of statements like “You don’t need more time…you just need to decide” in those moments where I’m gearing up to be busy again. Of course there’s Havi, always a treasure trove of ways to bring more mindfulness in and change patterns that aren’t useful. And the Architect offers me daily reality checks in his kind and direct way.

Making space. Starting small, I’m carving out little pieces of the day and making them mine. The three things I did this week were: Taking five extra minutes to go the long way through the park back to the office after a meeting. Arriving early to where I’m going and sitting outside on a bench and soaking in the autumn morning for a few minutes. Turning off the computer at 5.30 at the very latest and not checking my emails again until the next morning (this one I was less successful at).

Next

More of the same. Keep working on and refining the Plan. Create space. Get stronger. More mindfulness. I’ve been enjoying getting back in to this space too. Yay.