Are you doing it alone when you don’t have to be, or dealing with someone who is? Here are 7 reasons we won’t ask for help.

Source: pexels

Wedding planning is a crazy time. It’s exciting, it’s confronting, it’s encouraging, it’s challenging, it’s happy, and it’s up and down. Or at least those have definitely been my experiences with it. The death of individualistic living and the birth of something completely new. My poor utilitarian mancave of a house will never be the same.

PS. That’s actually a really good thing, I can only imagine the thoughts people have kept to themselves over the years when they’ve come over!

I remember some advice that’s been passed on to other people during their engagement and also recently repeated to me – “don’t be afraid to ask for help”. And how awesome it has been to ask for help and to get it. Continue reading

Brisbane, Australia is probably the best city in the whole world. Or at least to me. Here are seven things I love about Brisbane.

This was taken by me at the end of last year on a cruise of the Brisbane River

Okay, so I can’t comment on the excellence of Brisbane in California (which is pronounced “Brisbaaaane” instead of what the Australians call “Bris-bin”), and I can’t comprehensively rule out the greatness of all the other cities on earth, but my personal bias leads me to loving the city I was born in. Like most Brissie babies I was born at the Mater Hospital (now the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital), and have lived here for the majority of my life. I’ve known many people who have come from all across the world to spend part of their life here, and any of my friends who have ever moved on from here will always tell me that Brisbane has something that nowhere on earth has.

And I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on a lot of the reasons why Brisbane is the place people never forget, and the place many people never want to leave. Here are 7 things I love about Brisbane… and 2 that I don’t.

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Even the strongest soul can become overwhelmed with a sense of discontent and a lack of direction. Not all who wander are lost… but maybe some are.

All that glitters is not gold. These are the immortal words of Shakespeare that were adapted by Professor JRR Tolkien in the poem of the same name. Essentially the point of this statement is that there are other things that catch the eye and appear to be of great substance aren’t necessarily of value. Another take on the statement is that there are things that are valuable beyond the traditional definitions of wealth. Either way, what we have in this statement is a ploy of misdirection – we know gold is always valuable and always glittering, but not everything that pikes your interest is actually valuable.

Tolkien then goes on with a similar line – Not all who wander are lost. A famous slogan that almost every travel and tourism agency in the world has adapted and used in one form or another, Tolkien is similarly suggesting that although we usually associate wandering with a lack of direction, not everyone who is wandering is doing so without an aim or a purpose. It’s a true enough statement.

And yet I think we have come to love this statement so much that we fail to acknowledge a truth that is besetting many of us.

It’s that not all who wander are lost… but maybe some are. Continue reading