Day: February 25, 2026

I’m of the personality type where it’s very easy for me to be a hermit. My closest friends live far away overseas, my work all happens from home, and I’m happy pottering and pootling and tittering to the birds outside my window.

Because I live out of town, to come into contact with another human for the most part has to be intentional.

I need to ‘make arrangements’, to take myself off somewhere, to place myself in the flow of human action that I’m unlikely to stumble across at home.

I was recently talking to someone about this:

What I miss are the kitchen table conversations, where nothing is arranged, but your community, those you love, will drop in and talk about nothing in particular.

I miss my couch friends, I say, where I can collapse on their sofa and not have to be anything but myself and anything around that is ok.

About a year ago, my husband brought home a little leaflet from town that listed a few art workshops. ‘I think you would be into these’, he said, and I nodded. He was right.

I have become something of an addict and a groupie in the best possible way, learning from some truly tremendous people all sorts of arts and making that are both sustaining and delightful.

I have found myself part of a community of interesting, intelligent, kind people. Kate, who owns the studio, is a natural Bringer Togetherer. She draws you in. Generosity and inclusiveness beam out of her.

The other night, we had dinner together and hashed out a few plans for some shared workshops. We sat around and ate some food, tinkered with ideas and consider what we could work on in the future.

In this crazy, modern world of ours, where we are all pulled into our individual streams, being in community takes effort.

It often takes a punt, a risk, a placing yourself somewhere you haven’t been before with the possibility of being very awkward. It might take a few goes but keep going.

It’s peopley out there but the lovely Humans Beans are really worth it. I’ve discovered for myself that this is true.

My little art community are my #5 Small Happinesses.

(I really love my online community too but I’ll save that for a different post and day)

The other day, I was talking to a friend who reminded me of the sacredness that exists in the mundane.

She sent me a quote from a book she was reading:

“Revel in the repetition,” it said. “Love is built through it”.

In a culture of creative practice that has convinced us we must feel endlessly and constantly inspired we must revel in the simplicity of repetition.  We must understand it, perhaps, as the key to keeping on. To embrace that love is built through it.

A completely different friend was describing to me something similar.

‘I don’t always feel like writing,’ she said, ‘and yet I do write every day. I am the work horse, putting on my harness to plough the field. I do this regardless of the weather, because this is a practice I have chosen and there is beauty is continuing through the parts that don’t feel brilliant.’

‘In fact,’ she added, ‘these are the exact conditions needed for brilliance to occur. I show up for what’s needed and get to work.’

There’s another piece I want to add:

I think that this whole “showing up” business is how we make ourselves available for creative collaboration. Not with another human (although that may for some of us be the case) but –**gestures to the world that is out there**– with whatever that energy is that infuses our thoughts.

Take, for instance, the amazing Dahlia that’s popped up in my garden. She is, without a doubt, a co-conspirator. I imagine her petals as skirts, adorning my own body and in my mind, I skim across the floor, and I am twirling.

Us humans frequently forget that our creative selves are rarely the consequence of us alone, but more often, as I read recently ‘an intimate and passionate negotiation and co-authoring with our animal and vegetal collaborators.’

We are a braided river with the world, and if we are lucky, things pop up in our path that cause us to remember and to notice.

The Dahlia is my #4 Small Happinesses, for the majesty and beauty she brings the world, and for my eyes that pause long enough to see it.

When Frankie was a very tiny puppy, she quickly figured out how to take herself off on adventures. In the beginning, we were slightly baffled as to how she was doing it- the height from the veranda to the ground is very high- but then we discovered she would abseil.

Supported by the dense foliage, she would squeeze her way through the wooden rails and allow the leaves and branches to support her as she scrambled her way down.

Having secured the area, things were quiet for a time. That is, until they weren’t.

At first, I blamed my husband for letting the dogs out at inconvenient times. Then, he blamed me. Then, we blamed the kids. Until we realized that together, the big dog person body of a German Shepherd and the little but big thinking dog person body of a Border Terrier, could collapse a weaker part of the fence and find their way out.

Yesterday, G had been out and just come home, and I had been teaching a workshop, and he came in just as I wrapped up. He was holding our smallest Dog Person.

If they were feeling guilty, there was nothing to show for it.

“I found her at the top of the driveway,” he tut-tutted.

I made the sound of shock.

“She was sitting in the orchard eating the apples”.

I’m afraid I can’t escape the vision: My Apple Eating Person Dog is today’s Small Happiness.

xx Jane

PS. For those wondering they are “locked up” on the deck for approximately 2-3 minutes per day, which Frankie finds quite inhumane. She also likes watermelon. Basically, anything edible and quite a lot not. The weak part of the fence has been restored.

I was driving home from a workshop yesterday and there was a woman tootling along the cycle path. She had a big sun hat on, that was pinched in at the middle by a long ribbon holding it in place.

Her skirt was bright and colorful, of a size and nature that seemed immediately inconvenient on a bike, but didn’t appear to be inconvenient to her.

Of the things I loved the most, this was my favourite.

Everything that follows now is total fiction. That’s the beautiful thing about moving through the world- we’re never completely sure what effect we are having, who we might move by doing nothing but simply being ourselves.

I imagined her to be a lady that says inappropriate things quite loudly where the people around her are so shocked there’s a moment before they find their laugh.

I think she eats things. Things with chocolate and icing, loads of them, plenty of them.

I think she gets in the sea whenever she wants, however she wants.

And she paints. She definitely paints. Probably naked people that take up whole walls and when her relatives come over, they titter amongst themselves and gasp and play with the seams of their clothing and shuffle their shoes.

She’s a relief really, isn’t she? That to be yourself can be such a rebellion.

I shall care less today, in all the right ways, because of her.

Yesterday, when I was coming back from walking my dog, Frankie, I stopped at the little roadside stand next to our house that’s open for 4 hours on a Friday.

I bought an organic lettuce, coriander, basil and cucumbers, and juggled the whole lot in my arms while I walked up the hill home.

I bit on a fresh cucumber and listened to the birds, and wondered if the very rich men that hang their faces off buildings would feel such contentment and delight from a cabbage and a walk.

I decided they probably wouldn’t and I felt instantaneously blessed and very wealthy.