Blog – PipBrennan

Art, death and all the things

Sunday Blog 224 – 1st March 2026

I’m in Hobart for a week – a few days’ work trip with several more of pleasure tacked on. To be in my 60th year and never having been to Tasmania before seems shameful, but I have a long list of places not yet visited.

So now that I’m in Hobart, by default I must go to Mona, the Museum of Old and New Art. This phenomenon is the creation of David Walsh. From his spoils as a professional gambler he has created this glorious money pit of a gallery dedicated to art, drinking and music, in his home town of Hobart.

Going to Mona means you need a day to visit. Then a day to digest. What’s stayed with me today is this installation by Arcangelo Sassolino entitled ‘the paradoxical nature of life’. Metal legs, a glass top makes up the table. And a large rock has been carefully levered into place. The glass bows under the weight of the boulder.

What I took from this artwork is that the boulder is our awareness of our own mortality. The the glass table is death, which will have its way in the end. Everything passes.

This magnificent tension between awareness of our own mortality and courage to function day to day is what makes life magical, I believe. To paraphrase E.M. Forster from Howard’s End, we are better humans, day to day, if we remember that in the end, we all die.

But right now, the glass is holding. Right now, we’re alive.

Analogue writing

Sunday Blog 223 – 22 Feb 2026

This is my love note to handwriting.

At some point in my school life, possibly in primary school, I developed a writer’s bump on my right hand. As someone who can be spatially challenged, I have by now an almost unconscious habit of touching my right hand to orient myself in space.

Perhaps my writer’s bump was caused by a burst of conscientiousness when I studied with extra force. Or maybe it was just normal at that analogue time of teaching and testing when pen and paper was where it was at.

I had tried to learn typing in my first year of high school, but the nuns assured me ‘there are girls that do French and girls that type, and you are a girl that does French.’ However even my Dominican Nun high school had become sufficiently renaissance by 1980 to concede that perhaps there were girls that could do both. (The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, anyone?) Being able to touch type was the single most useful skill I learned at high school.

But in those analogue days, I do know that by the time I’d finished high school and completed every last sodding exam, my handwriting was unravelling to the point of illegibility. In Year Thirteen when worked in a bank to fill in time before I could start at university, I had to learn how to print neatly again. None of the data processors who viewed my handwritten account application forms could understand what on earth I’d written.

Instead of going into medicine where poor handwriting is a career-long phenomenon, I went into the arts and community services. But by then, everything was being digitised.

And yet. Handwriting has been my go-to since I started journalling at age 23, committing the horror that is our twenties to the page. Even in those days when I would often note how much I wanted a Word Processor (remember those?), there was a recognition of the magic of handwriting. The moment of sitting down, pen to page to this day generates a deep sense of peace. Perhaps it is the different parts of my brain coming together to create words on the page, rather than just tapping them out on a keyboard. (See NPR article for a synthesis of a research article on the topic.)

And if ever I’m creatively stuck, analogue writing always shifts me into a slipstream of delicious forward momentum. And while life is much simpler at 60 than it was at 23, my journal will always and ever be my constant companion.

Letting Life Be As It Is

Sunday Blog 222 – 15th Feb 2026

I had let it go. The Sunday Blog. Because this weekend has been consumed with a creative writing assignment I thought was due a week later than it was. Because there’s the day job and travel and community volunteering and all the things.

But here I am, the afternoon is now fresh and bluff, and can still wind some of my thoughts into a spool of thread before the weekend is out.

Last week I mentioned my octopus issue – namely having so many things on it is hard to keep all eight legs in the boat. And this week I knew it was time to re-invoke the old acceptance of what is. One of the many remember, then forget, then remember wisdoms. I’m still painted into the corner of overdoing it, but accepting this immediately makes me feel better.

Also, I did my Vision Board prior to the Chinese New Year. So everything is going to be just fine. And if not, I’ll let it be as it is. Or something.

Octopus legs and personal growth

Sunday Blog 221 – 8th Feb 2026

It’s definitely too early to be making such heady claims, but I think my smart watch has created the personality revolution that I hoped I was paying for. Sure, I may have jabbed inexpertly at the preferences and set my goals a little low. It tells me every day that I’ve closed my activity rings, often by 8.30am.

But there’s a special magic to me of having a dashboard of my lifestyle. What I eat and how much I move is now on a dial. I take a photo of whatever I’m eating, and before you can say algorithm, it’s analysed it with frightening accuracy down to the last micronutrient. My display shows calories in and out, like seeing how much petrol or windscreen wiper fluid I have left.

A screen shot from my Health App showing all my activity rings closed — My rings. All closed again.

Sadly, this dashboard is only reflecting my physical behaviours. There are large swathes of self-sabotaging behaviours which are harder to measure, perhaps. Like trying to pack an octopus into a boat, no sooner do you get eighth recalcitrant leg into the boat when the first and second flop back out in rebellion.

Right now, my “over-doing” it legs are flailing around and paying as much heed as a dog at the beach pays to their owner. Lulled by the quietness of January, I’ve gone back to my compulsive “yeses” with the usual result of a diary that hypnotises me with its complexity. But I comfort myself with the impending Chinese New Year. I’ve got another chance to get all eight legs into the boat, if you will.

The Wonder of Weak Ties

Sunday Blog 220 – 1st February 2026

Last night I had the joy of attending a private musical evening with the sublime Alexia Parenzee singing. She will be touring more over 2026, so 10/10 I would recommend you sign up for updates on when and where and get along.

Before the music began, another gem was deposited in my ear by the host, Ecoburbia’s Shani Graham. She explained about weak ties and strong ties. Strong ties are our parents, partners, children, siblings. Weak ties are our local barista, the people in the dog park whose name you might not remember (known in your own mind as Banjo’s Mum), colleagues in a big office you might chat with at the water cooler.

While strong ties are important for wellbeing, even six or seven interactions with weak ties each day offers benefits equivalent to an hour of counselling, Shani said. There were audible gasps in the room.

While I couldn’t locate the exact paper that mentioned this, I discovered enough articles (like this one) about weak ties to bask in the sunshine of these findings today. This is why I spend my time volunteering in my neighbourhood to increase connection and community.

So I wanted to share this nugget with you, so next time we are schlepping through the supermarket and see someone we know and share a wave, a smile or even a chat, that’s a big tick for our mental health.

And now, as per last week’s blog, time for me to re-focus more on my writing goals and make sure my community volunteering isn’t yet another wily distraction from creative pursuits.

Shedding the Wood Snake Skin

Sunday Blog 219 – 25th January 2025

For those of you who have not yet jumped on the “New Year New You” bandwagon, one of my personal favourites, there’s still time. The Chinese New Year is not until 17 February. 2026 is the Year of the Fire Horse, of which more later.

Right now we’re still in the year of the Wood Snake, which was my year of turning 60. In this time I’ve visited my grandfather’s birth place in Corballa, in County Sligo, Ireland and then his grave in Margaret River, Western Australia. A life’s beginning in one hemisphere and an ending 77 years later in another.

See image – top left I’m smiling madly into the camera with my grandfather’s humble birth shack in the background. I’m hoping my distant-ish (second cousin twice removed or something like that) doesn’t suddenly show up and make good on the many threats codified on the farm gate. They all underscore the message “stay away, also I have a gun.”

The right hand image is my grandfather’s grave, with the not entirely true latin epithet that means “he has done all things well”. To be honest, he didn’t sound like the best of husbands and his parenting was patchy too. But, different times.

As I stood and looked at his grave, I spotted an actual snakeskin, tucked into one side of the grave. A sign from the patriarch? I took it as such. It was retrieved and photographed. Middle image.

And so to the year of the Fire Horse. Vogue magazine says “In simple terms, think: rapid change, fresh opportunities, personal growth, and a faster pace of life.”

Sign me up. Whatever we’re doing in 2026, it’s going to be a galloping year. Get out your planner, shake out the vision board and let’s go.

Never a Cross Word

Sunday Blog 218 – 18th January 2026

Like many teachers, my parents married in January. On an excruciatingly hot January day they embarked on more than six decades of wedded ~~bliss~~ adventure.

The in-joke each anniversary was like a nervous tick “X number of years and Never a Cross Word.” For their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 2009, I immortalised this verbal tic into icing on a cake for them. (Top image, cake on right, Mum and Dad on the left.)

This celebration was less than a week before my wedding. Somehow I’d convinced Mum it was a great idea for my wedding to be held at their house. Dad needed no convincing and had spent months preparing the house for the wedding with his big energy. Their fiftieth wedding anniversary almost slid under the radar of the fuss of my wedding, during a week where Mum was always on the verge of a “why, oh why, oh why did I agree to host a wedding at my house?” meltdown.

The gap between the trope of fairytale wedding endings and reality is wide. Children have a ringside seat to the grinding reality of their parent’s marriage. Perhaps this is why we so enjoyed the tired “Never A Cross Word” joke. The chasm between the hope and experience could possibly be encapsulated by one of Mum’s quips a couple of years into her four-year widowhood. “I’m missing Dad so much I almost long for one of his homophobic rants.”

Dad died in 2020, Mum in 2024. January 2026 marked 67 years since they married as a mature couple (for that time, being 29 and 30 when they married was OLD.) They had chosen each other with the vulnerable hope of older adults and they made it work.

Feeling maudlin I slipped down to their graves with a bunch of flowers for their anniversary. Someone else had been to visit them, had left a small posy.(See small photo below Mum and Dad’s 50th anniversary pic).

This year was my 17th anniversary of getting married under Mum and Dad’s mulberry tree (bottom left, and there’s a wistful shot of me in 2024 looking up at the mulberry tree just before the sale of their house settled).

There have been cross words in those seventeen years. It took me at least fourteen years to work out that conflict in itself is not the problem. In fact, as the Gottman Institute for relationships and families states, 69% of conflict can never be resolved. It can only be managed. It’s how you repair afterwards, whether you feel closer or further away at the end of a conflict cycle that counts.

And that is perhaps the punch line. There will be cross words. And that’s OK.

To Dawnie, With Love

Sunday Blog 217 – 11th January 2025

Can it be two years since you left us Dawn? When I checked the date of my last post about you it was indeed written two years ago. I’d attended your funeral that very week, and was trying to sum up how I felt about you as a human.

Life has a way of flowing on, and flowing on, and here we are. Two years after your death, a retrospective exhibition of your work spearheaded by your son is on all until 26th January for those of us lucky enough to live in Perth.

Image of girl in white clothing flying with two birds. Dawn Meader art exhibition at Moore and Moores Fremantle Perth from 10 to 26 Jan 2026

There was an Opening Night crush. Of course there was. We lined up waiting for the door to open, the queue slowly growing outside Moore and Moores. Then we filed in to see your artwork.

Just past the reception desk there was a big white board where we were invited to write about what gave us joy.

I accepted the invitation and scrawled that writing, being creative, and loving people gave me joy. I cried a little. Walked about the exhibitions. Looked close at your pencil marks and brush strokes and images and words.

To see all your artwork in one room was overwhelming. And not just your works large and small, sketchbooks and drawings. Your old post box you painted, and the plants you nurtured in your East Fremantle garden. I felt you every where.

So many of the images are friends from calendars or prints or art classes or visits to your home. There were real-life friends from your courses, workshops and retreats, and we hugged and some of us cried. (Well, especially me.)

Today I went back in the quiet after Opening Night and before long I was crying again. At once so much artwork and not enough. Because you gave so much of your time to teaching people like me, and that cut into your time to create artworks.

Around 2012 I first went to one of your classes seeking permission to be creative. Actually, I thought I was signing up for an art class. Turns out, you were there to help me wriggle through the fence of self-doubt and learn to gallop through the endless paddock of creativity.

Dawnie, you always brought so much joy and fun to your classes. And your artworks are sublime. Thank you again. You were a one-off.

This is a pastiche of some of the artworks I created with Dawn in her art classes. Top left was the first one I ever did. Bottom left is my favourite. Top right was one of the vision boards I did with her, and bottom right was gold woman.

Memory Jar

Sunday Blog 216 – 4th January 2026

Last week I tantalised with a picture of the contents from my 2025 memory jar; this week I thought I would write them out like pearls. Here goes.

Flowers from darling husband for our 16th wedding anniversary
Dinner with my daughter at Ode to Sirens – a new(ish) Greek restaurant in Fremantle
Having a gorgeous time at Jackson’s 30th – good to see familiar faces (that was one I didn’t write)
My writing breakthrough at Carmel, California
Movie night with my daughter starting with wine and cheese. We saw A Complete Unknown.
Susie’s birthday afternoon tea with the friends and cousins and sisters
Dinner under our new gazebo with the fam (another one I didn’t write)
Singing happy birthday to my nephew for his birthday party I hosted
Red Tent Easter Sunday brunch with the Sisters – food, talk and ceremony. (darling husband was away for all the witchery)
Sleepover with my daughter that night and re-doing the Easter Ritual together, writing our rebirth intentions and burning them in the caldron (yes, there really was a caldron)
Yoga, poached egg and witchy Easter business with Mum (another one I didn’t write)
Wagging the Digital Health Festival afternoon sessions to see the Van Gogh Lume and Virtual Reality show. Bliss.
Kalgoorlie trip with darling husband in July
Meeting Helen Garner in July

This is such an incomplete list of 2025 highlights. It cuts out before the August and September trip to Ireland, Italy, France and Greece, for example.

But still. It got me to thinking. Where does the Memory Jar concept come from, other than from Instagram? After a bit of AI slop I found this article which highlights how writing out and re-reading memories can make us happy.

I reckon I’m going to have another go at a Memory Jar in 2026. Aim for at least 52 memories, one a week.

Days between the years

Sunday Blog 215 – 28th December 2025

I would be a liar if I said I didn’t like this time of year. The days between the years – between Christmas and New Year – are all about the goals. Reviewing the goals. Setting the goals. Talking about goals. And I’m all about the goals. Weekly goals. Monthly goals. And I love me a New Year’s Resolution.

Days between the years - image of a jar where a woman is writing memories on bits of paper and putting them in the jar

I’ve tried all sorts of ways to deaden the blade of my ego-driven goal setting. Setting process goals (developing a writing practice) rather than outcome goals (finishing the damn book). Desire-based goals where I focus on how I want to feel and make sure I do more things that make me feel those feelings. Like a sexy process goal I suppose. But however I try and game my own tendencies, I’m wired to make goals. And vision boards. And crack open the new planner to dream up a whole new year’s worth of goals.

But first, there’s the navel gaze of 2025. Generally, I’m very happy with how I’ve shown up. The most important thing, finishing the damn manuscript has been achieved. Having two women to review goals each month has been just as transformative as my 2025 planner said it would be;

People with written goals are 42% more likely to achieve them than people without written goals. Telling a friend increases this rate to 78%.

MiGoals 2025 Diary, in the Goal Setting 101 section.

But even with all that stationery and motivation and monthly goal check-ins, that still leaves a 22% chance that goals won’t be achieved.

So there is one little ache as I finish up my 2025 navel gazing. I tried to set up a weekly jar of good moments. But something about this felt tender and vulnerable and perhaps a bit stoopid. Mostly my beloveds were not inclined to commit happy moments to the little square bits of paper I left next to the memory jar. I tried encouragement and maybe a little coercing in the first few months of the year but I gave up. So only a handful of weekly memories have been committed to paper, folded and put into the jug I left on the hearth. Looking through the few of them still gives me a warm, glowy feeling. Should I try it again in 2026?