Some Recent Notes.

Thought it was time for another post. I have a specific one I want to do, looking at a book I read recently, but I think that will be for later.

I still haven't talked about SWF, so I'll do a section on that here. Then there's a few other things happening that I thought I'd chat about.
The Sydney Writer's Festival was quite a bit of fun this year. I got to do a lot of the school days and children's events, which I hadn't before, so loved that :) Went around a bit, as well - was at the wharf (Walsh Bay), of course, but then also at Campbelltown, and out at Penrith, and had an early day helping at the office, which was cool. Had one day that I was helping an older lady, and got to sit in on her events - which was awesome, because they were both sold out before (so I wasn't really sitting, but you know) - and they were just really interesting. One was a panel on the attitude towards immigration in Australia; they talked a bit about how we're quite unique in that we're an island continent, so we can completely control who comes and goes by sea. Also had a bit of the flavour of the old 'White Australia' idea. Essentially, they - and pretty much everyone else in the room - felt that the government had a pretty terrible attitude towards immigrants and refugees/asylum seekers. Agreed. The second one was more historical - someone talking about their book on the Byzantine Empire, and particularly Constantinople; which I found quite interesting, because I'd just been reading Inferno (incidentally, the book I want to do a post on), that included a section on that. So that was cool. I rather enjoy history.

So. Recent bits and pieces.

I've become the worship leader for the PM service over at Cobbitty Anglican, which is significantly awesome. It's the sort of thing I've wanted to do for ages, so really enjoying that. It's also quite a smaller team, and a congregation size that's quite familiar for me, so a good place to start. Looking forward to seeing how that grows :)

I've been working on an idea for a board game, that I'm calling Septimus. I wrote about some of the backstory here, and you can see me talking a bit more about the design of it here. I'm getting pretty close to having the first draft done; over the last little while I've been getting it ready for printing, so that I can start playtesting. That's going to be fun :D But I've really enjoyed designing the different bits for the game, and figuring out how it's all going to work together.

I've also just gotten the final bits of video from my album launch back in September of last year, so I'm going to be working to get that released and out to people as soon as I can. Then I can think about getting the next album recorded....really looking forward to that one :) I might be biased. It is an album about love, after all.

I've been invited to be the speaker for another Cru Camp, happening in the first week of the holidays. It's a study skills camp for year 11s, and they've got a special keynote speaker coming in on the first day - Deng Adut. You might not know the name - but you'd probably remember his face from the new WSU ads. So if you know someone who's in year 11, definitely encourage them to go along! We're also looking for some teachers who can help tutor different subjects and such. You can see more details about the camp here.

While I don't have a job at the moment (apart from the one at the church, that is - but that's just a few hours a week), things are starting to look up. There are more possibilities opening up, more opportunities, more doors that are starting to open rather than be closed. And exciting ones! The hard part is always deciding which ones to take....

But yeah :) Though things have been tricky this year, I think we're heading towards a turnaround. And I can't wait :)