Science was never my thing, at school. Loathed it, completely. Seemed to be about neatly recording the right answers rather than anything real. Now, I can’t get enough of it. Still misunderstand it completely but that doesn’t stop me constantly clicking on stories about scientific advancements to feed my late blooming fascination with the power of science to change the world. 

Hi there! This is a Public Service Announcement. You are doing a great job. No! Shoosh! Stop it. You are. In fact, even if you are a terrible person - a narcissistic politician, say, or a boss who gaslights everyone in the office into needlessly fretting about spreadsheets and nobody meets your eyes in staff meetings  - you are still doing a good job. You are! If you recognise yourself in either of these descriptions, chances are you should quit your actual job, but if you look closely, there will be, somewhere in your life, significant areas in which you excel. 

When you think of being sick in bed, there’s something quietly delightful about the idea. ”Sniff!“ you imagine yourself saying adorably as you snuggle under the covers and watch endless episodes of something utterly wonderful and somebody brings you soup. Being sick, though (and this is something only sick people understand) really does suck. 

What are eight eights? Sixty-four! Hi. Welcome to maths class. Take a seat between the tedium and the building anxiety. Prepare yourself for rows of numbers, alarming test questions, and an unnecessary degree of hectoring regarding the exact moment at which Billy and Betty pass each other on separate trains heading in opposite directions.

There. That’s it. That’s maths, right? 

You know that thing where you’re going about your business and then, suddenly, completely unbidden, totally uninvited, apropos of nothing, a crippling memory of your own social dorkishness injects itself into your thoughts so violently that it eclipses your ability to walk/talk/think/exist as a human in the universe? Hopefully that’s not just me. Whenever this happens, usually in public like when I’m walking down the street or something, I find myself involuntarily folding in on myself like an origami transformer and muttering half-sentences aloud to myself in a kind of sustained groan. It’s as though I have been possessed, which, in a way, I have. Possessed by unpleasant memories, my mind wiped of all other contexts. This is me now. 

Well, we’re nearly there. We’re nearly at the point in the year where summer is well and truly behind us. Here comes autumn, tricking us into believing it’s just a fuzzier summer only with socks and the occasional cardigan. And maybe none of this matters, because no matter what season it is, life just happens. The good bits and the bad bits all happen in whatever order they happen in, and it doesn’t matter if you’re sitting in the sand on a 30 degree day or hunched into the corner of a bus stop waiting for the rain to stop drilling you into the ground, the universe doesn’t discriminate. Lovely sunny days can be catastrophic. Tempests can be lovely. There is something about summer though, isn’t there. A mood brought on by the season that is so strong we like to think it defines who we are as Australians. Be nice, wouldn’t it, to take some of the summer with you, into the next bit? This is a Public Service Announcement. Put some summer in your pocket. Take it with you wherever you’re going next. 

When you were a baby, you looked at the sky and it swallowed you up. You did. It’s true. When you were sobbing and bellowing and waking the neighbours, someone took you out to look at the stars and your wailing became a small echo in a large universe and you stared at the bigness of things and your brain ate up the distance between you and everything else until you were calm and tired from it and you slept. 

Look at everybody! Just look at them! Doing things. Saying things. Living their lives. Who are they all? What are they thinking? Don’t they realise you’re here? Right in front of them? Living your life, full of all the you things? Don’t they realise they’re background noise to all the things you’re dealing with? Can’t they see you dealing? 

Happy new year! What a momentous occasion! What a time to reflect! What a meaningful yardstick against which to measure our hopes and dreams! What a fabulous time to make resolutions. Because tomorrow, everything is going to be better. We’re going to be smarter, and fitter and more morally upstanding. We’re going to be charming and attractive and rich and witty and correct. Everything before now has been a shambolic accident, a reckless mistake, or somebody else’s fault. None of that applies now. Nope! Not anymore. Now, we have better friends, smarter ideas, boundless resolve, and new notebooks in which to plan it all.