Wow, doesn’t the year just slip away once October is finished! I’ve spent some time today on my November calendar, and my list of things to do next week is super full. I’m trying to stay calm about that, and focus on the essentials.

I’m prioritising ruthlessly at the moment. There is much I feel I should and would like to do as this year draws to a close, but I really want to make sure we have some time for things that are most important,  and these most important things this week included playing hide and seek and Simon Says with my little boys, watching a school assembly, and taking our youngest to his first swimming lesson.

Most important today was having a long nap this afternoon, after the overwhelm of doing the November calendar followed by shoe shopping with my eldest four children while feeling a bit under the weather with a low-level virus. I woke up to a BBQ being prepared for dinner, with a salad already made and just waiting to be dressed. How awesome is that?

I didn’t have much time for personal reading this week. I’ve only got a few things to share with you today:

How to be creative when daily life is making you feel like an old boot (or like my mother-in-law has said, like a wrung-out dishcloth). My favourite line of Pip Lincolne’s (Meet Me at Mike’s blog) is this one:

Creative work is not a frivolous endeavour. It’s important work.

On the other hand, it’s also possible to take creative work too seriously, to the point of that any creative life is dessicated out of you, which I well know! Still, what Pip writes is true. Creative work more important than a great lot of things, more important than making sure the laundry is all up to date and the lawns immaculate, for me at least.

This column I wrote for The Catholic Weekly. It’s possibly my best one. People still remind me of it, four years later. They ask what happened to Whitey, my daughter’s beloved reading couch. Alas, it is no more – but I still have the written tribute, and I’m really glad I wrote it. It captures that time with our young family, moving house with four children under eight and another on the way. It also reminds me that I have the ability keep my sense of humour in the most stressful of circumstances. That’s a really important thing to remember!

The Traits of a Solitary Bird. From The Sayings of Light and Love (#121) by St John of the Cross, posted at A Solitary Bird blog by a secular Discalced Carmelite mother and grandmother. I spent some time with this for spiritual reading this last night, instead of going to the first Friday of the month adoration at our parish because I wasn’t feeling too well.

Finally, Hayley Stewart’s review of the Catholic Woman’s Companion, with its organiser, prayers, Sunday Mass reading references and checklists has got me thinking about how I’ll need a 2017 diary/organiser soon. I quite like the cheap, generic, week-to-a-page ones I usually get from the Reject Shop in December, but the Catholic Woman’s Companion looks like it might be worth a try too.

I hope you’ve had a good week too, and have some time to rest this Sunday.

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Why am I blogging? Writing makes me happy, and it’s just nice to have a little creative space here. Much like growing my little potted garden, with things of my choosing that others can enjoy too, except it’s not bunches of parsley or marigold seedlings I’m sharing with guests and passersby, but thoughts and ideas. Sometimes, you might let me know about a thing you lack at your place and I’ll see if I can grow it or source it somewhere else.

What you get from subscribing. I aim to post twice a week, with a little personal update since most of my readers are real life friends or writing colleagues, links to things I’ve written or edited, the previous week’s Catholic Weekly column, and/or useful links according to a mishmash of interests – spirituality, Church news, prayer, parenting, time management, personal development, and maybe a sprinkling of micro gardening and popular science. It’s a quiet space. Nothing very flash, or particularly brilliant or controversial here. But I will be pleased to see you, and I hope to arrange a real-life catch up sometime next year in Sydney.