What?! I am actually going to blog about my latest mental breakdown, make it public to those who read this blog. Well yes, and for a very good reason, people need to talk about and understand mental health issues. A person who recently turned sixty-five cannot expect to survive a life like mine and not have had such a problem. After all, I was born into it. My mother was schizophrenic with paranoid delusions, and my father most likely passed on...

The Night of Fright  I have endured a couple of floods in my time around Queensland. The 1974 Brisbane flood destroyed everything I owned. The recent Townsville flood came very close and I wanted to write about the personal impact of such a natural disaster. So, the comments here are from my point of view only. Of course, as a longtime resident of Queensland I have gotten some extreme experience of droughts, floods, bushfires, and...

I was told by someone who I thought a fool that liking black and white was a kind of aesthetic? Some people don’t think too hard, never mind, people don’t think most of the time. Starting any artwork requires some drawing: on paper, on canvas, on a computer tablet, on a cave wall, on a toilet wall, whatever. I like using those Chinese brush sets with a black ink (Chromacryl Waterproof Drawing Ink)  and a couple of nibs I have...

Painting flower pictures is something painters do. It’s natural like walking a dog, cooking a meal, and keeping yourself clean. No great effort is required and is the perfect motif for the occasional lack of motivation or mind blanks that occurs with stress. Living is stressful, studying is demanding, finding meaningful work is challenging, good health is unreliable, friends are fickle, and neighbours and family are doomed to disappoint. So, a...

Where did 2017 go? Well, I did a post-graduate course in teaching, secondary education, grades 7 to 12. The course started after Australia Day in January and my results come out 5 December. Some days were tough, some days I wanted to go some place else, and some days I had wonderful surprises; but, I have got through so it seems. Academically, I do quite well. The practicums, where you observe and teach at various schools, was either...