The best talkers are listeners.

 

I attended a writing workshop today.

 

Yes, it's going to be an exciting blog.

 

I was really looking forward to this workshop. I look forward to them all. I love learning about the craft, discussing writing with peers and experts, and getting inspired to go forth and work on my projects.

 

Today’s workshop was disappointing. Not because the facilitator was lacking, nor because the content was disinteresting.

 

It was because my writing peers seemed to translate the concept of a ‘writing workshop’ into a ‘group therapy’ session.

 

Cold, heartless beast might I be, but I’m sorry, time is precious to me these days, and taking a full day out from three jobs and a full-time university degree to prioritise my love of writing is a big deal to me. If I feel there’s something personal I need to discuss, I’ll seek a referral from a GP and put that mess in the box it belongs. Or I’ll go home and write about it. Or I'll get drunk and call my sister. Like healthy people do.

 

What I won’t do is use time allocated to focus on honing my craft to indulge in ‘my story’. We all have a story. That’s why everyone on the planet is a writer (You are. Your Facebook posts are published material, just so you know…Did you proof read…?!).

 

Some people’s stories today were fascinating, heartbreaking, and truly intriguing. I am not discounting the validity of the personal story. But I was there to learn how to tell the story better, not to engage in a competition of who had the most tragic personal anecdote.

 

I brushed the frustration off and headed home ready to work on some techniques I did actually absorb today.

 

This evening I came home and sat at my computer and commenced my standard writing preparation ritual: Facebook.

 

For the umpteenth time I scrolled through ‘news article’ after ‘news’ article of utter bullshit. Apparently members of One Direction committed the ultimate offence of smoking a joint the other night.

 

Well. Holy-fuck-me-dead. If the individual who broke that riveting piece of investigative journalism feels a sense of accomplishment this weekend, I really should not burst their Walkley-deserving-high by disclosing that had they been a fly on the wall at any gig I worked on or attended in the past seventeen years, they just might have had the globe’s most disturbing front-page bombshell.

 

A joint is a quiet night in, mate. That’s rock’n’roll’s equivalent to a few Hail Mary’s and a peppermint tea.

 

If every muso who smoked a joint was news, the Telegraph would surpass War and Peace in content daily. If the amount of trees being massacred by the number of Tally-Ho being burnt up was not a news story in itself, perhaps the equivalent in extra newspaper production would be. Get on that 60 Minutes. Blow my mind.

 

Let me just spark a joint first, so I can actually find it interesting.

 

I’m not alone in my opinion on how infuriatingly pointless this ‘news’ is. I briefly scanned the thousands of comments on one post – all – not some – all stating how exasperated they were by the fact that this supposedly respected publication considered this worth violating their precious newsfeed. That shit bumped off a cat video for Christ’s sake.  

 

People are fed up with click bait. We are sick of the vacuous celebrity culture fisting our subconscious’ every second on every device we engage with.

 

The consequence of living in an ultra-connected world is that we are more aware than ever of the problems facing humanity globally. As a race we are conscious of the struggles of our brothers and sisters down the street and on the other side of the world.

 

We might be privileged and spoiled enough to access to the internet that provides us with this information and choose to express outrage in the atrocity that is Taylor Swift’s attempt to ‘dance’ and share three second videos of some bogan in Campbelltown doing a burn-out in his Torana, or share sappy memes that declare love for their children (please), but deep-down the shift of awareness to what really matters is happening and it’s happening just as quick as the next iphone will be released.

 

Media everywhere, we want and expect more from you now. We know your budgets are being slashed and you think Lara Bingle and Sam Worthington’s selfie is more deserving of page three than an article about domestic violence or elder abuse or indigenous affairs or the youth body image epidemic or animal welfare or pollution, but for me, all it does is repel me from your brand and motivate me to seek the truth of the world elsewhere.

 

The conversation is occurring publicly, in real time, all over the internet and living rooms all over the world.

 

If it's your job to talk, perhaps you should consider listening first.

 

 

 

 

 

I whinge here too!

 

 

 

Saving our own worlds

“We can’t save the world, Monique,” my mother said to me in an early month of 2007, as I sat in my recently deceased grandmother’s armchair, crying at the television.

 

As many mothers do, she rubbed my back, and consoled me on bended knee, as I wrapped myself in a luxurious felt dressing gown she had bought me for my previous birthday. I felt her pain, feeling my almost irrational pain.

 

My grandfather, in his final months of terminal dementia, sat across from me staring blankly at the news bulletin. His head rested in his left palm as he rejected the world’s affairs and quietly lamented the loss of his beloved wife of sixty-four years. At eighty-three years of age, who really gives a shit if the world around you is imploding or exploding? Two months ago, his world already ceased to exist. The moment the woman who he held in the highest regard died, the moment his fairy tale came to screeching halt, was the moment he check out of any major world issues, or local for that matter. Who can blame him?

 

My grandfather, whom passed away twelve months later, was a rare breed of a man. He held my grandmother on a pedestal and recognised her to be a woman of strength, character, stoicism, and grace. She managed their life, family, household, and general affairs with class and resolve, and made decisions that impacted countless numbers of family members beyond their time for the better. She wasn’t just a great woman. He was a great man, because he owned the depth and comfort of his own masculinity that stepping aside to allow the more capable person in the relationship to make calls on behalf of the family was not a concern for him. He knew her power, and his ego did not interfere with the greater good of our family.

 

At the time, I was in a state of turmoil. Not only had I lost my grandmother, whom was a friend, confidant, and idol to me, I had split from my boyfriend, moved back in with my mother and grandfather, and was commuting five hours a day return to pursue an arts career. I was grief-stricken, exhausted, broke, and lost.


Still, I thought it was my obligation to look outward.

 

Watching atrocities committed in my own backyard and across the globe was more than I could bare. I wanted to contribute to a positive shift in this wayward world of ours, but I was paralysed by the enormity of it all.

 

I resented what I translated to be my mother’s flippant dismissal of world events: animal cruelty, genocide, corruption, rapes, murder, human rights violations at every turn… and I was determined to prove her wrong as a defeated white, middle class person who just got on the treadmill of life and forewent greater good for personal preservation.

 

Seven years on, I now understand that my mother did not become shut off from the world, or ignorant to the issues of the human race, rather, she developed a filter that allowed her to block out what was beyond her reach, freeing her to nourish, protect and nurture her world. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. She just had the wisdom to know that her best practice was caring for her children and her parents.

 

It starts at home.

 

I have ridden a rollercoaster of guilt and grief for every person and creature on the planet that has endured a less fortunate hand than I have been given. I was certain I would do something that would change it.

 

At thirty-two years of age, I now find myself shutting out world news, so I can connect with who I am, and make sure that person is someone I would want to be around. It has been a challenging, arduous journey.

 

What I now know to be true is that, of course, my mother was right. I cannot save the world. If I weigh myself down with every issue that faces us as a race, I will fall in a heap and cry with despair and helplessness like I did so many years ago.

 

If I make sure I am progressing toward an open, honest, altruistic and flourishing existence, I will be better equipped to extend my understanding of the world to those around me, and hopefully, have a positive impact on my own, small world.

 

There are 234 girls in Nigeria who desperately need help. I will do everything I can to contribute to a movement that will take them back to their families and send a message that in the year 2014, whether you’re in Australia, Africa, Asia, America, or Antarctica, we’re all equal. We’re made of the same stuff, and we will suffer as long as our neighbours suffer.

 

The current model is failing. We’re on the brink of environmental suicide, children are dying from starvation, the vulnerable are ignored or exploited, and women are supressed.

Meanwhile, this week, our headlines were dominated by two cashed-up bogans in fisty-cuffs, and our Treasurer having the audacity to be a human and smoke a cigar. Four blokes. Running the country. Winning.

 

The patriarchy is failing.

 

It’s time to embrace change before we end up in damage control as a race. Growing older, and more comfortable in my own skin, I am more aware now of my capabilities and the realities of what is being fed to us through media.

 

I know this is heavy for a Sunday night. It is Mother’s Day, after all, but I can’t think of a better way than to pay homage to my mother and grandmother than acknowledging their strength and significance as people. Women who have struggled without complaint through generations of oppression and change. Women who know through instinct and emotion and experience that we should be in charge, if not completely, at least fifty percent, of this world, because if we were, incidents like Nigeria would not happen.  The rate of sexual assault (currently 1/3 of every woman on the planet will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime – WHAT?!) would not be what it is. There would not be the domestic violence rate there is. The poverty rate for women would not be what it is. I’m just going to say it: the world would not be as broken as it is.

 

I’m not a man-hater. In fact, quite the opposite. I think it is a tough time to be a man. But beating and raping and extorting and controlling women through action or non-action or worse – silence and condoning  - things as they are, you are contributing to the demise of our people.

 

You have had your turn, men. Now, be like my radical, forward thinking, brilliant grandfather, and accept when it’s in the best interest of the greater good to step aside.

 

And the only way we can really achieve change, is by looking in the backyard. Criticise those who are taking action all you want.

 

What are you doing about it?

 

 

Save the world on Facebook.