Blogging My Obsessions…

My profile description exposes me as a man of “diverse obsessions”. My primary obsessions can be determined from the content of my three blogs.

At the top is faith in Jesus Christ. My first blog “Onesimus Files” (focused upon that faith) has now been going for 5 years. It’s something I take very seriously and I have deep concerns about the extent that church tradition and theology have moved away from the foundations of simple biblical teaching. So often theologians spend time explaining why the bible doesn’t really mean what it clearly says and “Christianity” today is far removed from the teachings of Jesus and the writers of the New Testament.

Where the "Blogs Have No Names", is the second blog I started. It has no specific theme, but it became a record of my move from Sydney to the country with a lot of emphasis on my gardening attempts.
I haven’t written much about my garden recently because, over winter, there hasn’t been much to write about. The garden is merely less productive and more lifeless than at other times of the year.
Winter has allowed me to make a start on my front garden – reclaiming more lawn to establish a new native garden bed. Unfortunately winter isn’t the best time for planting. The frost has hit things hard and some of my new plants may not survive.

The blog name was clearly influenced by the U2 song “Where the Streets Have no Name”, and I came up with it on the spur of the moment when I couldn’t think of anything clever to name it.

My most recent blog is “Out of Shadows”. A “literary blog” dealing with books I’ve been reading as well as some thoughts about writing and storytelling. When I started that blog I was going through a period of frustration. Several times in my life I have tried to change career direction, but every time I seem to travel full circle and end up back where I started – and again I’m back in an administrative job little different to every other job I’ve had.

“Out of Shadows” was initially a tool to revitalise the only career ambition I ever had – to be a writer. The first step on that journey was the revival of my interest in reading. I had to find books that I could enjoy, that would maintain my interest until I reached the end. I’ve started far too many books that were eventually abandoned or perhaps more correctly: forgotten through disinterest.

So far I haven’t done too badly with the reading part. By keeping a list of completed books I can see the progress I’m making, but there is the temptation to inflate the numbers through choosing “easy reads”.

Looking over my reading for this year I can see that the majority has been non-fiction, so I’ve drifted away from the aim of re-inspiring my desire to write fiction.
Authors are always being asked for advice from people like me who have writing ambitions, and one of the common pieces of advice they give is to read. I guess reading other writers is supposed to provide inspiration, but there are so few writers today who I would find inspiring.

Yesterday I looked over the list of the fiction I’ve read recently, trying to select my three favourite books. I struggled. There was only one clear choice, and a second that made the grade with a couple of minor reservations. For a third I had to compromise a little by choosing a book I ‘d recently reread – one that I had enjoyed years ago, but not quite so much the second time around.

I was intending to write an article about my top three choices (three fiction and three non-fiction) but have decided to wait until I finish reading Slam by Nick Hornby – I’m enjoying it so much that I can already see it will easily push the compromise book out of contention.

Reading back over this article I can see how easily I become distracted. In what was intended as a look at my diverse obsessions, I have touched on merely a few. Maybe a clearer idea of the things that interest me would be found in reading through earlier posts, both here and on my other blogs. And perhaps the books I’ve been reading will also give a clue to some of my many interests.

Neglected Blog Updated

This blog has been suffering more neglect than my garden. At least the remains of my veggie patch has been getting some occasional water from the tank.

The vegetable crop has been a little disappointing. We had a reasonable supply of Lazy Housewife and Purple King beans, but not as many as last year. Corn was very disappointing with less than 10 cobs out of three separate sowings. The last lot attracted a lot of bugs – Gloria refers to them a stink bugs, green things about the size of my little finger nail. I can appreciate the reason for Gloria giving them that name. A few months ago one flew into my mouth and the taste it left was revolting.
We also found the silk ends of the corn cobs were being eaten by something. What we managed to salvage were very juicy and had good flavour, but there were far too few to keep us satisfied.

We had far less zucchinis this year, but that lack was more than compensated for with our yellow button squash. We are still getting a few of those each day even though everything else has given up the ghost.

I’ve now sown one whole bed with seed I saved from my broad beans. We didn’t really like the beans but they’ll make good green manure. They are growing quite healthily. I also put in some green feast peas and snow peas. Those are two regular failures that I’m hoping will give us better results than usual. The only other things on the way are a few rows of carrots, beetroot, turnips and radishes. We always do okay with beetroot and had the best harvest of carrots we’ve ever had over summer.

One thing I want to try again is cauliflower. I’ve tried them every year and had only two successful heads. This time I want to read all of the books and make sure I do everything right. If I fail again we’ll have to resign ourselves to buying them instead of growing our own (which will be no change from the current situation).

Yesterday afternoon I was pleasantly surprised to find a few goji berries on our bushes. I’d been wondering whether it was worth keeping the plants because they were a bit straggly and have demonstrated a tendency to send out vigorous runners. We’ve had a few new shoots emerging a metre and a half away from the parent plants.

There wasn’t much fruit but we had enough to have a taste, and if they become more prolific it will definitely make it worth keeping them. The fruit was very pleasant: sweet and juicy but I’m not sure what the flavour could be compared to. The bright red-orange fruit would make a very interesting addition to a fruit salad. The fresh fruit is nothing like the dried examples we found packaged in the supermarket. As a dried fruit I found them tasteless and splintery. Gloria tried to re-hydrate some and describes the result as smelling like an old wet blanket, and tasting exactly like they smelled.

Last weekend I reduced our lawn by several more square metres. I laid down heaps of newspaper and had some topsoil trucked in. I think I’ve almost decided on the layout for that part of the garden. Part of the remaining lawn will be turned into a paved or gravelled area suitable for an outside table and chairs. I’d prefer gravel but I’m concerned about its potential to get weedy, and if I change my mind it’s much harder to remove gravel than it would be to pull up paving.

I now have quite a large area of bare garden beds. I’ve held back from planting anything until I decide what kind of plants would be most suitable. At the moment the whole area is covered with sugarcane mulch waiting for me to be hit by some inspired planting ideas.

For the last few days we’ve had swarms of locusts all over town. You can’t walk anywhere without stirring them up. We’ve often had patches of them outside of town but this is the first time I’ve seen so many in around the town itself. I tried to photograph them in the garden but they don’t come out clear enough in the photographs.

Sunday turned out to be a day marked by weird coincidence. In the morning I started reading a book called Blackout written by Connie Willis* In the evening Gloria and I were watching a new TV series called “Survivors” about the aftermath of a catastrophic plague that kills off most of the population of the world. Of course, as a result of the plague all public utilities including electricity collapse. Just before the end of the episode our own power was cut off, blacking out our part of town.
It was annoying to miss the end of the show, but there was some compensation for the disappointment: on a moonless, powerless night, the stars have never looked more brilliant.


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* review to come on my other blog as soon as I finish it.

Heat Effects and Death to the Lawn!

Apart from a short post about kamikaze insects I’ve neglected this blog for a while. With a couple of weeks of extreme heat, gardening hasn’t been very appealing and a as result the garden itself has taken on a neglected look.

It’s been hard to keep things in order when the temperature made it too uncomfortable to spend time outside. And there was just no way I could keep dehydration of the plants at bay with the hose. Now, most of the roses have crashed and my potatoes are very bedraggled after a very promising and healthy looking start.

With the lack of recent gardening inspiration I have been spending time starting up my new “literary” blog: Out of Shadows and I’ve tried to catch up on some of the books I’d been neglecting. But my garden was not completely abandoned.

On some of the cooler evenings I did venture out to reclaim some of the lawn area by creating two new garden beds. The first of these was next to the new water tank (which is now half empty again). We had three cubic metres of garden soil delivered and only half was needed for the tank area, so I used the rest to extend an existing garden.

To create the first bed I put layers of newspaper over the grass, piled a good thickness of the soil on top and added a covering of sugar cane mulch. Towards the back of this garden I planted a fuchsia that is supposed to grow up to two metres tall. If that height estimation is correct it will make quite an unusual looking plant because its flowers are tiny. Unfortunately I’m not very confident of its future, it seems to be struggling. Planting during an extended period of extreme heat perhaps didn’t give it the best start – although it is in one of the more shaded areas of the garden.

The second garden bed will be left for a while. I approached this one differently. Firstly I marked its borders by digging up the grass around the edges. I then placed the clumps onto the garden area grass side down and covered them with thick biscuits from a bale of “lucerne” straw. [I put the lucerne in quotes because there seemed to be more oats than lucerne in the bale – with an occasional hint of “Riverina bluebell”!]. I covered all of this with a good thickness of newspaper and topped it all off with the rest of the delivery of soil. I won’t plant anything here until the various layers have settled down significantly giving the area a bit more stability. I also used the last bit of my sugar cane mulch to cover half of the bare soil.

Looking at the back yard now I can see it taking the shape I’ve been looking for. After more than three years of planning and replanning, I feel like I’m finally getting somewhere. There were two clear turning points that started to move things out of my head and onto the ground. Firstly was the relocation of the old Hill’s hoist clothesline which had been right in the middle of the garden, limiting access and mobility. We replaced that with a removable clothesline to the side of the house which opened up many more possibilities. It also improved the view from the windows in our family/dining room.
The second turning point was the installation of the water tank. Now that the tank is in place we can attend to the area that was needed for access for the tank delivery.

Eventually I will reclaim all of the lawn at the back. Most will be converted to garden beds, with a small open paved/gravelled area in the middle. We’ll need to shade that area in some way, but the means of doing that will be considered later.

I’ve written quite a lot here without including any photos to illustrate the things I’ve been writing about. I haven’t taken any photos recently because the decline of the garden (after such a promising start in early spring) has been a bit discouraging. But now the weather seems to have cooled off a little, and after a decent rainfall yesterday, I might take the camera out again in the next couple of days to take a few more photos to post at a later date.

Autobiographical Musings: Ambition, the Arts and Literary Leanings.

When I started this blog it was intended to be an outlet for my thoughts and experiences relating to artistic matters, yet because of changed personal circumstances it has evolved into something entirely different

Most of my spare time over the past few years has revolved around our move from Sydney to the country and the very slow establishment of the garden. I enjoy the productive side of gardening: seeing things come to life and being able to harvest fresh food from the backyard, but I miss some of my other interests that have been put on hold and pushed aside

Some times it’s necessary to step back and take stock; to re-evaluate where I am and where I want to go.

I suppose when I moved to the country it seemed like the perfect escape from a stress and work-dominated life in Sydney. And the emphasis was on the “escape FROM” instead of an escaping TO. What would happen once we left the city and how we would create a viable lifestyle was not given enough consideration. We were caught up in the romanticism of the move, trusting in many impractical ways of supporting ourselves.

After an almost idyllic first year, reality returned and I now find myself working full time hours in yet another admin job, not too different from others I’ve done. No matter how many times I’ve tried to change direction I eventually end up back where I started.

Have you ever had those interviews and performance reviews in which you are questioned about your ambitions and where you see yourself in five years time? I always thought that my presence in those interviews was a sign of my LACK OF ambition. I wouldn’t have remained in those admin/clerical positions if I was driven by the desire to climb the corporate ladder. My sense of purpose has NEVER been connected to career and employment. Spending most of your life working in an unfulfilling job merely to support a barely existent “life-style” doesn’t seem like a very good investment of time, but what could I do about it?

Part of my most recent attempt to escape this rut has been documented on this blog, but this is not the first failed attempt.

In the early 90s I left full time employment to study at University. I enrolled in a Bachelor of Creative arts course to study creative writing.
Earlier I touched on my lack of ambition – but that lack has only related to the business world in which I’d become trapped. Looking back throughout my life I started to remember my childhood desire to be a writer and realised that writing was the only ambition I could recall having.

Throughout primary and early high school years I would write stories and especially plays. For a time I had some very encouraging and tolerant teachers who made way for my creativity, allowing performances of my plays in class. Often these little dramas would be nothing more than a rewriting of recently seen movies or TV shows, but occasionally I’d come up with an original story and have the thrill of having a work of my own imagination performed in class.

I suspect things changed when my family moved from England to a new life in Australia. I was thrown into a very different educational system with very different people. With all of that came a loss of confidence as I tried to adjust to so many new things at the same time as I was entering puberty. My creative output became limited to set school assignments and writing for pleasure became a rare activity.

Fast forward 10 years.
In my mid twenties I decided to put pen to paper again. I started writing a mixture of articles and stories and submitted several to magazines and newspapers. While nothing was accepted I received enough positive feedback to keep me going. I also attended a couple of writing courses held by local colleges. Eventually all of this led to the gamble I took when I gave up my job of ten years to enter the academic world.

Within the first weeks of the course I changed my focus from Creative Arts to a normal Arts degree, majoring in English Literature. I was still able to do all of the writing subjects I wanted, but was no longer under any obligation to include art subjects that didn’t seem relevant. In their place I had more opportunity to study the literary topics that took my interest.

After three years I graduated with very pleasing results and I spent a year applying for work in fields that would utilise my writing skills – with no success.
One employer replied to my application with the suggestion that I seek employment in heavy industry and manufacturing because that was more suited to my previous work experience.

Again my writing started to take a back seat – or more accurately it was banished to another vehicle entirely, until I discovered the internet world of the forum and the blog. And perhaps that brings me back to the present.

My writing in its current stage has been focused on two main areas of interest divided between two blogs. This blog in recent years has been mostly about my garden and the move to the country. The other blog “The Onesimus Files” has been an outlet for thoughts on theological topics.

I am now considering a third blog that may put me back on the literary path. The seed of this idea perhaps started to germinate when I came across the website of one of my former lecturers. He is now a successful full time author and his site contains interesting and useful information and links that have helped to rekindle my desire to explore some literary possibilities.
















I will probably stick with “blogger”. It is a familiar format and I don’t have the time or the will to play around with something else. I can also keep all of my blogs connected and easily accessible by sticking with what I know.

After making this decision I have already run into the first obstacle – what do I call it? Coming up with suitable names is not something I find easy – as can be seen from the name I gave THIS blog.

The first two names that I came up with have already been taken – either the world is far smaller than I realised, or my talent for original thought is severely lacking. Clearly that is not a good omen at the start of a new creative journey…

WHERE THE ARTICLE HAS NO NAME

Inspired by Molly on her Cross Roads blog, I am giving thought to the reason why I write here. What is THIS blog's "central theme". I think the name gives an indication of its lack of direction when I first created it.

I have two very different blogs. The most active, The Onesimus Files is "theological" in content and has always had a sharper focus than this one.

"Where the Blogs Have No Names" started as a place to write about various other interests. However, when I finally had the opportunity to start gardening my garden became the main focus.

It is only recently that I’ve started to investigate other blogs. I now have several favourites that help to keep me informed and educated. Some of those blogs have helped to revive my desire for a simpler lifestyle.

That was one of the intentions behind our move to the country, but the need for some kind of employment helped to get me back into the “financial security” trap. My initial hope was to work part time to get enough of an income to maintain a simpler, more frugal lifestyle. But without even trying I found myself in a full time job again and I think my lifestyle has slipped back into the same rut I tried to escape by leaving the city.

A lot of my recent reading (particularly on blogs) has been centred on self-sufficiency and frugality, trying to pick up tips and inspiration to help me back on track. This blog will perhaps reflect some of that journey, but it will also continue to look at my various interests and influences. As my profile states, I am a man of diverse obsessions and when my interest leans in a particular direction my involvement is rarely half-hearted.