Shine

I’ve always been the type to love lots of things. Change my mind, move on easily, spread myself too thinly. Life is just so rich in things to do, people to know, places to see, things to achieve. How could I ever settle for just one thing, just a few things?

My writing history began early. Perhaps it sprang from the genes of my grandfather, Wilfred Winter, who was a prominent journalist, photographer and historian in Tasmania (1916 - 1993). Bampa, as we called him, was a great and dear love of mine. How I admired and adored him.

I had a big imagination as a kid and I guess I still do, though it has, of course, turned a little more grey thanks to grownup-hood. I wish I had access to that colour again. The brightness, the newness of everything. The sharp, accessible memories that are now only evoked by smell or sudden rememberings – all too fleeting.

Keeping a blog is a personal thing. Although I’m an avid diary and journal-keeper, publishing such things for public consumption has never been on my culinary agenda. What has been on my agenda is to share the journey; to give others a nibble, taste. We love to share journeys, us human beings. We love to relate, empathise, sympathise, vicariously live or envy or even trample. Whatever makes us feel better, valued, informed, empowered. Emotional. We are emotive beings. We like to feel the extremes. Words do that to us.

The other reason I have been reluctant to start a blog, even though I write prolifically, is that I am a private person in general. It also took me a long long time to be able to shine. People in general don’t like shiny people. They want to knock off your gloss. Shine people, shine! It is your right and your obligation. So now it is time to write a shiny blog. Christ, even shiny people have their darkness and their trouble. What is so terrible about shine? We need to lift shine, encourage shine, multiply shine. Not relegate it to some disgustingly insecure remnant of existence, where it gets shat on by shits.

I have been so many places in my life. Not just on an aeroplane. In my heart and in my head. I have had many incarnations in this life, as we all have. I have been the little girl. The older girl, the lost girl, the teen, the laugher and the laughed at. I have been lifted, exalted and shamed, revered, adored, exalted and shunned. I have been a woman, mother, friend, sister, wife, auntie, a chameleon, a clown, a lover, a cheater, a saint. I have been true and false and candid and guarded. I have been confident, terrified, exuberant and despairing. I have soared and crashed, risen and failed. My life has been one unholy joy. Terrific and shattering, inane and superb. It is always like this and always will be. The rollercoastering is how we feel alive.

This rollercoastering is discovering who we are amongst the chaos and the change. It is sheer bliss that sometimes smarts. And one of the greatest joys of it all is the love we give and get back, clichés aside. Finding out we are both vulnerable and needy and one God-almighty lioness when need be. Falling in love, watching my children grow and learning so much through them, reaching forward while hauling along the past and watching bits of it fly off in shards and chunks as I go. The freedom of seeing it fly away and how light I feel. Discovering where it is I want to go, and how I can get there. Learning to let go. To move on. To trust or not to trust and learning that this dichotomy is actually ok. To protect myself and demand the best for my own life, and that of my family.

Thou shalt write thine own life, thou shalt never regret. – Edvard Munch

It has been a challenge but a joy. I have lost so much, given so much, received and achieved so much. But let me tell you… when you get “there” – when you find your Path… my word. My word and lordy lord. It is good. And you then spend an inordinate amount of time wondering what the bloody hell took you so long to get there. How you wasted so much time, so much energy, so many thoughts on bullshit when it could have been so focused, so honed… So much time gone… but here we are. And we have arrived.

This above all – to thine own self be true. - Shakespeare

Frankly, though, you can’t hurry it – this arrival. You can’t will it to come earlier. It just comes when it is ready. Like spring.

I’m not in spring yet. I’m in the height of summer. Fruits are bearing, things are growing rapidly like weeds. And it’s purely because I know. The purity of my intent is palpable and it makes reality big.

Reality carved from dreams feels good.

So now for some journey-sharing. You’ll find many different things being added to my blog. Perhaps some memoir meanderings. Maybe some jill-of-all-trades, frustratingly mashed-potato career-logging. Then maybe some day to day additions and addictions – bits and pieces. Nothing that matches or colour-coordinates. Just ramblings. Sometimes about my kids, sometimes about my work, my challenges, my joys.

I hope you enjoy and please send me a note some time and share some of yourself with me.

I am not famous nor particularly academic. What I am is esteemed, clever and driven. What I am, too, is a regular Australian woman who is living my passion, squeezing out my talents and loving what I do. We all want to inspire, so sure – I hope this inspires you. For that is the reason I’m sharing it. Oh – and so I can continue to shine.

Shine!

- Tania McCartney
Beijing, November 2007