This graphic was not created using AI. It was generated using a couple of markers the old fashioned way.
- As a professional speaker, the hardest audience of all is one that is monumentally hungover. They would rather be dead and I would rather be on a plane headed somewhere else. No one can be more attention-grabbing than a liver in survival mode. Except perhaps a speech on hangover cures.
- Sourdough baking is a chemistry degree that comes with lifelong learnings. I wrote about it here.
- Phone addiction is a tragic waste of the best hours of your day and the best years of your life on trash, AI slop and advertising. Find an app that limits your use and return to 2001 when we had time for books, hobbies and sport. I use one called Be Present1. If I want to break my preset limits I have to click a button which says I GIVE UP. And I refuse to give up.
- In 2025 I read four or five books about the neuroscience of art and creativity. Making art is not a luxury. It is therapy, exploration, creativity and joy. Art heals your trauma and maps new pathways in your brain and is downright essential to everyday life. Engage in art and make art for the same benefits. That includes all forms: music, dance, plays, poetry, storytelling as well as the fine arts and doodling.
- Writing a novel is a massive, enormously fun project but when you are finished, young women who cannot pull together a good sentence will tell you that your book is shit. That is sadly part of being an author in the age of the internet. You deliver a baby into the world and the talentless will hate you for it. I wrote about it here.
- You will only sew if you leave the sewing machine out, threaded up and ready to go. Grey is the safest thread colour for most projects or urgent mending.
- Painful truth: kids are an ongoing thankless inconvenience, even as young adults. It never ends. But I love them so much the soles of my feet ache. They are going to have the best lives. I just had to lay down 20+ years of mine specifically for them.
- In 2025 I did a 16-day residential permaculture design certification on the Sunshine Coast where I learnt some valuable pearlers including but not limited to ‘use the edges and value the marginal’, there is always room for a stripper pole in a good permaculture design, and don’t use a lawnmower when you are stoned off your face2.
- Buy original paintings rather than prints.
- One of the best decisions I have made in the last decade was to give up booze for good in 2022. I have not once woken on a sunny Sunday morning and thought, ‘damn, I wish I’d had a few drinks last night’. And the drinkers: you are boring as all get out. I have left networking events full of people talking repetitive crap, far too loudly with pink teeth, after telling me: ‘Oh I hardly drink these days’. Yeah right, dude. Carry on.
- You’re probably spending way too much on gifts. I was. My accountant has made me track my personal spending since 2018 and she pointed out that I was being far too generous. Flowers die. Booze will kill your friends. I stopped spending on gifts and saved money for travel and a little share fund. Now I bake a loaf of sourdough if I love someone.
- Travel. You are gonna die so don’t put off the places you want to see for when you have the time. One of my closest friends lost her mum at age 68. She was standing on the curb in Wollongong, waiting to cross the road, when a bus mounted the curb and killed her right there. She was young and healthy and full of life. Don’t put off adventures. You’re gonna die and we will never know when.
- If it won’t make you homeless, go do it. This is advice from my bestie regarding the cost of further education, adventures, art making – anything your heart really desires. If the cost won’t make you homeless, go do the thing.
- Aging is no fun at all in the age of youth worship. I wrote about it here.
- Don’t build your empire on rented ground. Do not rely on any one platform for your main revenue stream. Meta will charge forth, legislation changes and it could all be gone in an instant.
- Build what is needed, not what is trending.
- I heard a bloke speak at a conference in 2024 and will never forget one of his statements: humans are not designed to sit all day. We need to move every 20 minutes. Do that and you will have the same cardiac health as a marathon runner. Notably you will not have the knees of a runner, just the pumping heart. I sit on a hard wooden bench to work now that I know this, and my numb bum gives me my 20 minute get-up-and-go reminder.
- Christmas is for kids. Now that mine are young adults, I have opted out of Christmas obligations and the retail orgy we get sucked into by marketers. I find it super stressful, expensive and tiring. This year on Christmas Day, I will be deep in the Okavango Delta in Botswana with a team of horses. Giddy up.
- Women in regional Australia are my kinda people. They’re down to earth, call a spade a shovel and don’t piss in ya pocket. When I speak in places like Longreach, Central Queensland or Kalgoorlie, Western Australia and I meet the women who make the wheels turn in those desert towns, I feel glad to be alive. They laugh easily and welcome a bird from the city with pink hair like I am one of their own.
- Fuck we are only up to number 20. I will observe brevity from now on. Brevity is good.
- Halfway marks are good for conquering things. Even better is when you chop projects up into 10 small pieces. Much easier.
- Swearing is good for you and a sign of intelligence.
- Don’t make important decisions at night.
- Lateral violence is a product of the patriarchy. I wrote about it here. If you are a woman, don’t fall for undermining other women. It only serves patriarchy as it tries to divide and conquer.
- Sleep is a crucial health metric. I use a smart watch to measure my sleep, steps and stress. The health benefits of more sleep are amazing. If you follow point 3, sleep will benefit instantly.
- Get a good proofreader. Mine is Kate Boccaccio and she even forgives me when I spell her surname incorrectly. It’s easier to call her Boccas. See the next point.
- Language is more fun when you shorten everything and let the non-Aussies figure it out. Sambo, ambo, leccy, seccies, doco, loco…
- Hobbies trigger happy hormones. If you are not making time for the hobbies you love, you need to make time to see your GP for mood meds. Brutal summary, but this was true for me. I re-established my love of knitting of late and made an alpaca wool blanket last winter almost entirely on planes.
- Block unpleasant people from your life. Block ‘em hard without explaining and enjoy the peace.
- Forwards is the only direction you have. It’s like being born. You can’t shove yourself back in. You have to just keep moving forward. This includes jobs, exes, all regrets, failures and that dude I flew all the way to Alice Springs to meet3.
- Single women are the happiest group in society. I am starting to see why. I was married for 20 years and didn’t realise how miserable I was. I have now been wild and free for ten. Huzzah!
- Your gut is always right. Spidey senses are never wrong. You can back out anytime you like.
- In 2017 I decided never to work full time again. Long hours at work will kill ya and after your death, you will be replaced and the workplace will just churn on. I wrote about it here.
- Don’t wait for acceptance or permission from big business. Go make it yourself. I created my own ticketed events and became a professional speaker. I created my own advertising agency and became a Creative Director. I created a publishing imprint and became an author.
- If you can overthink the worst, you can overthink the best. The best will make you feel better, sleep better and be less of a dork to your loved ones.
- When you are being sold to online or in person, you’re being emotionally manipulated. Our brains justify with logic after the sale. I give a whole speech on this topic.
- Five percent of people everywhere you go are monstrous dickheads. They are your haters and roadblocks. Another five percent love your guts no matter what you do. They are your superfans and your mum. We spend far too much time focussed on those extreme 10% while we ignore the remaining 90%.
- Listicles are a really good article format until you decide on the number 52.
- Vivienne Westwood was right when she said ‘Buy less. Choose well. Make it last.’ A subscription to Choice Magazine will help you achieve this – at least when it comes to appliances.
- It is OK not to finish projects. If you love starting them and then they bore you to stores, move on. Permission granted.
- The male gaze dissolves when you hit 50 and it couldn’t have come soon enough.
- Eat food, mainly plants, not too much. This is a guide by author and professor, Michael Pollan and he is right. Processed food will kill you. He also says don’t eat food sold where you buy petrol. But I wish to argue that BP service stations in Australia sell the best road trip sambos anywhere.
- Develop a personal mental health first aid kit for days when you are flat as a pancake and cannot get out of bed. Mine looks like this: cancel plans, wash my hair and get into bed, tee up some movies that are not violent or depressing, tell my bestie, make no decisions. I speak on mental health and wellbeing too.
- Gather a pit crew of epic people who work for you. I have the best ops manager in the world, an accountant I adore, a hairdresser who knows all my secrets and a technical dude who only disappears when the surf is up. Only work with 10/10 people who will cheer you on and love your success.
- Be that cheer squad for others.
- Do something every day that scares your family.
- Don’t fly out of Ballina. Always choose the Gold Coast.
- As Dr Jane Goodall said, ‘the best animal on planet earth is a dog’. RIP Jane.
- As Dr Catherine Hamlin said to me in our last ever chat before she died, ‘Men have always told me what to do but I do whatever I wish with a polite smile’. RIP Dr H.
- Chase dopamine in all its natural forms: novelty seeking, flow states, music, sunshine and ice baths.
- Seek friends outside your age group. Their brains are very different and they help you see broader perspectives.
- Turning 50 was a hard milestone. I was in Broken Hill for a speech and felt sad. Onwards. It is the only way. Now I am 52. Age is just a number that gives you a vague indication of how many trips around the sun you may or may not have left. According to my life expectancy I have around 31 summers left but that is not certain. Off I trot.
1 This is not a paid or sponsored article. Just a brain dump of life learnings and links for further reading. Enjoy.
2 This was probably something I already knew but it was entertaining to witness a stoner pushing a lawnmower in a forest. I was not the driver of the lawnmower and 420 is not my thing at all. Safety is my guardian of decision-making in the wild because I like having 10 toes after a day of gardening.
3 We went hiking at Kings Canyon and he spotted his ex with a new dude and had a monumental meltdown. I counselled him all the way back to Alice. The end.
2 This was probably something I already knew but it was entertaining to witness a stoner pushing a lawnmower in a forest. I was not the driver of the lawnmower and 420 is not my thing at all. Safety is my guardian of decision-making in the wild because I like having 10 toes after a day of gardening.
3 We went hiking at Kings Canyon and he spotted his ex with a new dude and had a monumental meltdown. I counselled him all the way back to Alice. The end.
