I’ve never really been a person that makes goals.
Short term, long term… all prepared for those sweet, friendly conversations you have with meaningful people, who say, ‘where do you see yourself in 5 years?’

Um… in the mirror?

Maybe it’s just because I have a hazy memory, what the hell was I doing 5 years ago?
I’m sure I was doing something really fun.
It’s surprising really, considering I am one of those people that has a closet love for stationary. Pens and papers, post-its and paperclips, aah, I can sit in a room and hang out with them all day… you’d think I’d just snap up an implement and make it work for it’s love. And if you nod your head knowingly and say it’s cause I’m a Piscean, I may smack you.

I have just spent the last week at a Music Camp called Summersong, where I was unbelievably honoured to be asked to teach vocal technique, music theory and improvisation. It’s held in my sleepy little Lennox Head town and so many amazing and warm hearted people travel in from all over the show to come and feed their minds, brains, hearts and souls for a week. I always giggle when I tell people about it. I feel like I don’t know how to describe it without making it sound like some really weird cult. I guess you just gotta go, and trust, to know. And by the way, it’s not a cult.

The people of this camp make up a big part of my creative family. I have been going for around 8 years. And my forth coming album was made with sharing it at Summersong as part of my goal. Summersong feels more like New Years than New Years. New Years Eve is this built up fandangle creation, that is usually tainted by watching someone in Byron vom all over a road. Summersong is my week long meditation for resolutions, thinking up amazing goals, laughing till I cry and just generally hugging…. holding sweet people in my arms and feeling so lucky.

Teaching a class there for the first time totally rocked my world, filled my heart, cemented my joy of teaching and helped me gather strength for the goals implanted in my heart for 2012. That being said, the week after band camp is more like hanging out in a brain cocoon. Sleep deprivation and allowing yourself to feel that good for seven days must only be followed with a completely balancing tightrope maneuver of sleeping and spring cleaning.

And so today I awake, ready to begin; ready to complete the final and simultaneously dragging and deliriously exciting steps of this album ( a/ finish artwork, b/ decide on track listing, c/book a gig somewhere cool, d/ start picking peoples brains about what to put on this list), to find a rainy, stormy sky, water dripping incessantly through a light fitting and no promise of sun for days.

So my thoughts, while I hole up in a rug with tea and an array of Mac products snailing around me, listening to the rain drops, inside and out, is actually with all the people who dealt with floods at this time, last year. I remember a few months ago driving up to where I teach, winding through my country roads, listening to the Radio National documentary on the flood waters that thrashed through Grantham on January 10, 2011. I reached my destination and sat, heavy in my car, listening to these people tell their stories, small tears welling in my eyes. I don’t know them, and they don’t know me, but story’s like that are the only way to see humanity. I donated to their flood fund, and I hope …  … I just hope.

I’m a hoper.

So raise your glasses (or cups of tea) high; I hope for you safe rainy days, and fruitful short term goals fulfilled.

Be safe, dream big, and when in doubt, sing.

(and baked beans…. there is no mistaking it… this is baked bean weather if ever I’ve seen it)