Tag: life
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The Shape of My Learning
What colleges have you attended? I am a perennial learner. Not because I am restless or obsessive, but because learning itself animates me. It is the process—attention, discovery, application—rather than the outcome, that draws me forward. I began with pure mathematics at University of Sydney. I was young, immature, and not ready for what I…
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Playtime
Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you? When I was younger, play looked like sport. I was six when I first laced up football boots, and from that moment I was hooked. It was physical and technical, but it was also something more: it demanded that you pay attention, read…
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My Biggest Challenge
What are your biggest challenges? New Year’s Day 2026 It’s tempting to name my challenges as problems to solve, but that isn’t quite true. They are frequently awkward, demanding, sometimes painful—and yet they keep asking something of me that feels important. So rather than list what frustrates me, I’ll try to name what I’m learning…
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What Makes Me Feel Nostalgic
What makes you feel nostalgic? Some people live in the past, some live in the present, and some live in the future. I’ve never quite managed the first two. My imagination has always leaned forward, toward what might be, what could still be built, what decisions made today might open up possibilities fifty years from…
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What Relationships Have a Positive Impact on Me?
What relationships have a positive impact on you? When I think about the relationships that have shaped me, what stands out isn’t a single defining person or moment, but the way different people have unlocked different parts of me over time. I didn’t become myself alone. Who I am was built gradually—through conversations, corrections, encouragement,…
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I Don’t Fit the Box Anymore
How have your political views changed over time? When I was younger, my politics were simple. Not because I lacked conviction, but because I hadn’t yet needed to question it. My family leaned conservative, so I did too. It felt like the default setting. But growing up rearranged the furniture. Somewhere along the way I…
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The Threshold Room
You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like? There is a room in the house that isn’t quite a room.Too small to be a bedroom, too lived-in to be storage,too full of sunlight to be forgotten.It sits on the edge of the family room,like a hinge in the house—a…
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The Car That Carried More Than Us
What is your all time favourite automobile? I’ve never been a car person. I don’t follow models or specifications, and I don’t care about engines for their own sake. Cars, to me, have always been practical: a way to get where you need to go. But my father loved cars and he developed a passion…
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How I Am Creative
How are you creative? Some people are creative because they can hear music. It forms in their mind and flows almost unimpeded onto the page, then to the keyboard. Some people are creative because they can see. Images assemble themselves in the mind’s eye and find their way to canvas, screen, or stone. Others are…
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1957
Share what you know about the year you were born. Dear 1957, You were already busy before I arrived. You were sketching sails on Sydney Harbour, trusting a bold, improbable vision from a Danish architect, long before anyone knew how hard it would be to build beauty at that scale. You were awarding Patrick White…
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What Arrived This Year
Is your life today what you pictured a year ago? Is my life today what I pictured a year ago? The answer is yes and no. I lived on the beaches for thirty years, so my worldview is shaped by surf culture. One of the first things you learn is that you don’t control the…
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Cities as Conversations
What cities do you want to visit? I’m not really someone who carries a list of destinations in my head. Places don’t usually attract to me on their own. They arrive through people—through stories, relationships, and small associations that linger. Montreal comes to mind first, though I’ve never been there. My wife travelled there by…
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False Starts
Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc. I was four. Which, in hindsight, explains a lot. There had been no preschool. No gradual introduction to groups or routines or puzzles on low tables. My entire social world consisted of Robert, who lived three doors down. Robert was…
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The Komodo Dragon
What is something others do that sparks your admiration? I’ve spent enough years teaching performing artists to know that they move through the world differently. They don’t just perform something—they become it. And that has always sparked my admiration. Music was my first window into this. I’ve watched musicians touch the human soul with a…
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From Bedrock to Bluey
What’s your favourite cartoon? Cartoons have changed a lot since I was a kid. Back then, my favourites lived in a prehistoric suburb called Bedrock. The Flintstones felt clever to me in ways I couldn’t have named at the time — the stone-age gadgets, the dinosaur appliances, the playful send-ups of adult life. But cartoons…
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Doing Less of “More”
What could you do less of? My mother has always said that I do too much. She may be right. If the blog prompt asks what I could do less of, the honest answer is this: I could do less of “more.” There’s something in me—an impulse, a reflex—that thinks I can always add one…
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The Hidden Wins of 2025
What positive events have taken place in your life over the past year? It’s been a tough year in places. My parents are going downhill fast, and my mother is now permanently in a nursing home. It’s stressful for them and stressful for us, yet I’m grateful that the whole family has shown up in…
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The City Is Never Empty
Do you ever see wild animals? One of the quiet joys of living in Australia is discovering how thin the line really is between suburbia and the wild. We talk as if the bush is “out there,” somewhere beyond the edges of our cities, but the truth is that the wild never left. It waits…
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Five Things I’m Good At
Share five things you’re good at. Some people’s strengths are loud. Mine have always been quieter—subtle things that don’t announce themselves, but settle into the background of a room, or a team, or a community. They’re not the kind of skills that appear on a résumé, but they’re the ones that shape the way I…
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The Quiet Thread I Would Change
What is one thing you would change about yourself? Someone once told me that when I get up to preach, it’s like watching someone flick a switch. One moment I’m my usual quiet self, and the next I’m fully present—clear, confident, grounded. Here’s the funny thing: that version of me on the platform is the…
The Afterword 