By Kelly Kayne
Hours of Dog videos
The DoDo channel became a favourite rabbit hole to go down. These dog rescue videos always had a happy ending which was exactly what I needed.
Finding New Walks
Kororoit Creek Trail made me feel like I was out of Melbourne – black cockatoos, the occasional turtle in the creek and a few tiger snakes as it warmed up.
Reading Old journals
Apparently 1993 was ‘the worst year of my life’ because River Phoenix died and he was ‘the John Lennon of my generation’ and ‘it was my life goal to meet him’. I also said I would be ‘very disappointed to hear that he died from drugs’.
Epic Cooking Sessions
I am talking all day sessions once I lost my job. It was therapeutic. I cooked for elderly neighbours and did food trades with friends who could bake. Favourite new recipe from lockdown was cherry cheese strudel. It is HEAVEN!
Friends With Benefits – the walking, talking kind
Lockdown changed friend dynamics. Those I used to see all the time across the city became group message mates for small talk. Previously peripheral friends in my 5km zone suddenly were my new besties. Friends I only see once every five years sent care packages from interstate. And it was a special type of friend you could facetime for hours and hours and feel like you were in the same room.
Turned off screens
Not Netflix of course, just my phone, social media and the news. At one point I got a notification saying I was reading the news for five hours a day. The covid updates, the numbers, the restrictions, the deaths all just made me a stress ball so I turned it all off and regained some sanity and stopped crying so much.
Conscious reading
Black Lives Matter meant educating myself so I could speak to this issue in a more meaningful way, but also learn about the magnificence of indigenous knowledge systems and the absolute devastation caused by colonisation.
- The Yield by Tara June Winch
- Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta
- Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, edited by Anita Heiss
- So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- The White Girl by Tony Birch
