Only if.

On one of our shows the other day we talked to Performance Psychologist Phil Jauncy. While he was talkign about the mind games of elite athletes, I took so much from his chat. He had the kind of attitude I really find refreshing.

The best part of the conversation was his take on the differences between dreamers and succeeders. It's very easy for dreamers to say "If only." If only I can find out what it is I want to do, If only I can save the money and move out of town or out of home, if only I can find the time. Successful people and people who actively seek happiness and success do so because they've already said ONLY IF. Only If I seek things that make me happy and fulfilled and do them, only if I make changes in my life to shake it up will I see results, only if I take a chance even if you could crash and burn will you see the benefits.

I know many many if onlys. Dreamers who just talk and talk and write and write about wanting to do stuff. It'll be incredible when they realise they just need to stop talking, writing and dreaming and just actively change their lifestyles, break away from the group, break away from the mould. I'm yet to meet half as many only ifs, but I can't wait to and find their advice and hear their stories.

Here's some more golden bits from Phil Jauncy's website:

"The Power of Positive Doing"

He doesn't believe in words like motivation, positive thinking and a good attitude.

"We cannot control our thoughts and feelings but we can control our actions. If we are feeling angry we start to act positively and eventually we find that the positive actions lead to positive feelings and thinking."

"Keep in mind that we cannot change the past or the present, but we can take control of the future."

The Six Steps of his for success and for successful change.

• What am I doing now?
• Is it working?
• If not, Change!
• Be specific (positively).
• Make a plan.
• Act on it.

I like this man. I like his plan. I feel positive even reading it, but I acted by reading it therefore my actions have influenced my positive feelings... just like it reads. Crazy.

Meeting Paul Kelly on Friday one of my absolute idols. His songs have meant more to me in the last seven months than I can explain. Tales of loneliness, of moving to the city, about Melbourne, about friends and losses of relationships, of attachments to new ones. They've filled me with so much comfort and company and a feeling that someone's felt this way before so it's all just going to be okay.

Out on that note for now and with thoughts of the lad many millions of miles away who I'm thinking of.


Tall trees are trembling
Dark clouds are bearing down
God's tiny creatures are all
Going crazy on the ground
My way is, my way is to you
Your gates were guarded
I had to swing around
Althe dogs are silent now
I can hear the softest sounds
My way is, my way is to you
Many times I've stumbled
Many times I've fallen down
But always I had
The dream of your dear ground
My way is, my way is to you

You've been on my mind

New place, old favourite music, new people, old comforts on a friday night. My love's away, my family aren't near and my old friends seem to have forgotten . It's difficult to convince myself I'm independent and not lonely. Perhaps a little of column a&b. This is a grand time to write lists of things I want to do, what I want to achieve and try and make a game plan for how I can get to it. I'm young and I'm sure people will catch up to the point in their own lives but I suppose I will wait and see if they get there before it's too late for those bonds I used to have with them to be salvaged.

As Oscar says "To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance." He also says quoting other is living through others, but I'm tired and he so eloquently says what I'd like to so often so I shall let him go at it.

I'm looking forward to the day in the near future where I have a proper social circle in this new city. I could go downstairs to this wonderful booming street and experience it with people, not just my own wide eyes. That'll happen.

Watching Paris Je'taim, some parts are so delightful and heartbreaking and some I want to skip a little bit, but it's just an experience of a show. To watch and choose and judge and sit back and enjoy. It sparks that little flame of wanting to get out and about in the world again. Next year's trip is on my agenda and I can't wait to get more ideas and get going.

T x

 

The Ecxeptional Mr Fry.

Seeing Stephen Fry Talk a few months ago was such a wonderful experience for me. He is someone who is completely odd. Different from all his friends, an individual and just went about his journey without looking back.


On his views on religion/atheism "I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance."


On writing: "It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue."


And how I currently am:  " Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word's full octave." 


This week in the media has been exciting. Challenging. A story we can't follow through on because it's too awful, but one that is huge. Ethics. All those things I studied for three years and knew when the time came I'd still be as grey as I was then. Journalism isn't easy, finding out what's in the public interest and what people just don't need to know. Or do they? That's the big issue.

This week is in my new house, sam's gone overseas, ez is out and I'm home alone. It's so nice though being alone with my thoughts, realising who hasn't made much effort to contact me lately and surprisingly who has so it's nice to have this time to just think and deconstruct the events of the past few months. Our new house is brilliant. My THREE wisdom teeth coming through are NOT. Such a challenge. Starting a whole new life and I suppose some people just won't be a part of it. I'm just so proud that I've changed my life, changed my social scene and branched out. I've grown! It's brilliant!

And yet when sick I still go home, with Whitey, hang with the Armstrongs and enjoy mum's homemade soup.

Until next time,

T 

Put your finger on it.

It's difficult to really put my finger on why I feel so completely different this year to ever before. At the start of this year I was living in a place I had outgrown trying so desperately to have fun but not ever wanting to leave the house because I wanted sweet, fun memories to be my last. I didn't want to look back and be thankful to have left, I wanted to leave on a high. I now love going home to see and play and hang out with my family. However the local pub makes me feel extradordinarily claustrophobic and anxious and I can't help it. I need a longer seperation period. I need people that I love to come to the city with me and experience some of what the world has got to offer and I can't help but selfishly want that to be what they all want to. It isn't. Yet anyway.

This week I move into a new place and start a new chapter of this new novel life I've already begun. It's so exciting and I've never felt more completely at ease, less anxious and more accepted and appreciated since I've moved away. It took a while to get used to people just moving on and not really missing you, but it's all pretty natural I imagine. You start to realise you aren't contracted to other people. You don't need to be a part of THE group, you're much better off not being a part of it as you'll never figure out who you are from the inside.

I've got so many projects in the works. A book to write, a future show to create, concerts to think about and logistics to plan, three news and variety shows to produce on a daily basis, gigs to review, gigs to choose to attend, presents and letters to be writing and a few other works in the pipeline. I'm only 22, I'm noticing that's quite young and I intend to make the most of this year being so young and already connecting to incredible people who I can learn from and just sit back in awe of. It's all good.

In the meantime I'll continue loving Arcade Fire's Suburbs. Their first Funeral I listened to as I finished up school, started uni and became sure of what I was about and what I no longer needed in my life in order to grow up. Neon Bible came in the year that said growing up took place. I was on my own and making plans, I travelled, I met new people, I socialised and I realised radio was where I wanted to be at and took a chance. Suburbs now comes at another growth spurt, totally on my own, out of the suburbs and out of my claustrophobia and into the city meeting like minded people and experiencing completely new and wonderful things every single day. I like you Arcade Fire, just putting it out there.

Suburban War

Let's go for a drive
See the town tonight
There's nothing to do but I'll unwind when I'm with you

This town's so strange
They built it to change
And while we're sleeping all the streets, they rearrange

And my old friends, we were so different then
Before your war against the suburbs began
Before it began

All my old friends, they don't know me now
All my old friends, are staring through me now

T

Film noir, Australian Politics, Reviews

Covering this year's Australian Federal Election as my first working in the media has been incredible. All of these extremely experienced journalists I'm working with tell me that it's the most bizarre campaign they've ever seen and the most apathetic public they've been in contact with.
Drive host went out on the streets for many a vox pop and was so shocked by the amount of people who A) knew NOTHING of the policies, the big issues facing our country or B) didn't care.

I laughed a little and realised that in my peer group, i'm honestly surprised and delighted if I hear ANYONE who is in any way interested in our political system. It frustrates and infuriates me that we are so lucky in this country to have the ability to choose our government and to decide who should be in charge of our country and who should go international and represent us as people. It's a complete embarrassment when some of the cleverest people I know go into a polling booth on election day and either throw away a vote or draw a picture of a donkey.....

End political rant.

For my birthday last Sunday 29th August I visited undergroundcinema.
http://undergroundcinema.com.au/

A few weeks ago we knew it was 1940s film noir themed. The war was over- hurrah! No more knowledge. A few days before we knew it was located in Bourke Street, City. No more info. We arrived in our 1940s bestAnd were greeted by an array of actors and showmen and women all playing their parts. American soldiers, Russian women on the poverty line, tramps, ladies of the night, marines and jazzpeeps. It was incredible. Once our papers were stamped and we were allowed through in no more than 10 minutes did it become difficult to tell who was a guest and who was an actor. Such great atmosphere, exploring and meeting and greeting the soldiers in their characters (very handsome and as my 91 year old nana told me today the American soldiers were VERY well groomed, she should know she dated one for the entire war period!)

Film was A Good German w/ Cate Blanchett, George Clooney, Toby Maguire and more. A film noir take on life in Berlin post WWII. Cate Blanchett was incredible and it was wonderous to sit, sipping champagne, costumed and watch a film I might never have had the opportunity to see if I wasn't completely absorbed in the underground cinema experience.

Next theme- halloween. I'm there!

I've done two reviews this month of gigs I've been at. Puda Madre Brothers at the EBC and Big Scary at the Toff check them out at pbsfm.org.au

Big scary

Puta Madre Brothers


Until next time,

Tess