My Journal:

June 2010

Help! Half the year gone and dusted; too fast, too little done – and now it’s time to begin sorting through accounts to prepare for the accountant – not a job I relish doing but one that I can’t avoid.

On the writing front, I just heard that I have won a first prize in a writing competition. The other four I entered didn’t rate a mention, but at least I have four pieces to send out to other competitions. Obviously I will have to work on them a bit more.

I received some sad news early in the month – a friend of mine from university in Perth days died. She was diagnosed with cancer some years ago and had been fighting it ever since. Too often lately I am hearing stories of cancer from friends or friends of friends, and even family of married family members. Each story is the same, but different in their own ways. It seems to me that there is nothing that stands out as a trigger, that cancer can strike the healthiest and fittest of people. I guess the lesson there is that we should enjoy each day as if it might be our last.

Apart from the usual volunteer stuff and a few dinners out, not much else seems to have happened in June, at least on the personal front. Winter does that to me – I hibernate when I can, with a fire and a few good books, venturing out only to feed the chickens and the birds, or to get some more firewood. I am trying to keep up my studies (of Italian) but with university closed for a month or so, there’s not the motivation I need to keep me at it.

Nothing has been heard about the funding for the proposed literacy program I wrote about in May, so I have to assume that it won’t happen, at least not until next year. As a result, and also to get away from the cold for awhile, I’ve decided to drive north for a few weeks. I have family and friends all up the coast so will go as far as Cairns, or maybe even Cooktown, to visit them.

More next month, when I return.