The Census Meme
So it seems America has just released it's data from last year's Census and this has brought about a meme with people going back ten years to note where they were at this time.
As it's just one day before my 41st birthday, this seems a good time for me to do it. So, jump aboard [image error].
March 10, 2011 – I live with my husband in a three-bedroom villa in Queanbeyan, just outside of Canberra. I write full-time, and am currently working on the sequel to the Dream of Asarlai series, being published by HarperVoyager in Aus and NZ. I'm also currently working on losing weight and since September last year have lost more than 11 kilos. Slow but steady, as they say. I'm less than a month away from my second ever overseas trip (the first was last year, to New Zealand). This year I'm going to America, with visits to LA and San Francisco, and attending the RT Convention.
March 10, 2001 – I live with my husband in a tiny two-bedroom house in Sussex Inlet, on the NSW south coast. We've just moved here, having sold the flat in Sydney. We've been married fourteen months and it's not been an easy year, with his health severely deteriorating. I came close to a breakdown and left teaching and now my focus is on my dream of being a writer. I've had a couple of short stories accepted and I'm shopping around my completely unrevised but completed first manuscript (oi, but I cringe at the memory). Hubby is setting up an office to work in on the mainstreet, which has a lot of space he's not using. In the next few months, I'm going to turn that space into a second-hand bookstore and a place to sit and write.
March 10, 1991 – I'm about to turn twenty-one. I'm in my first year as a teacher at St Nicholas of Myra Primary in Penrith – teaching kindergarten. I have my own flat, and I feel very grown-up and fabulous. This is gonna fall apart a bit – within twelve months, I'll be back with my grandparents, trying to start adulthood again. I'm getting to the end of my first season playing with the Penrith Cricket Club and despite the fact I can't play FOR SHIT, I'm loving it. Am dealing with some massive self-esteem issues and as a result, have panic attacks any time a guy looks at me – not helping.
March 10, 1981 – About to turn eleven and I'm in my last year of primary school (elementary for the Americans) at St Anthony's in Wanniassa, Canberra. This is the year I discovered writing – up until now, all our writing had been reports or 'What I did on the holidays' stuff. This year, a new thing from New Zealand called 'process writing' was introduced to the school and we were encouraged to write what we liked and then learn to revise and edit it. My first story was Thunder King – the story of a boy and his horse, which won five Melbourne Cups and three Caulfield Cups and killed lions in its spare time. The next was a saga of me and my friends, all grown up and with jobs as air hostesses, flying around the world, having adventures and falling in love (yes, even at that tender age, I was writing romance).
March 10, 1971 – About to turn one. I live with my parents and my one-month-old brother in Penrith. I'm already walking, and causing my poor mother all sorts of stress in trying to deal with a sickly baby (actually, at this point in time my brother's still probably in the children's hospital in Camperdown, having been born very premature) and a toddler. In a few months, I'm going to cause the first major family emergency. I was jumping on the lounge, Mum was bottle-feeding bro and she had a pot of boiling water by the side of the couch to keep his bottle warm. She takes the baby in the kitchen, I fall off the lounge and into the water. The scars on my arms are now barely noticeable, but when I started school they were the cause of much conversation.
So, that's the census of my life. Hope I get to read other people's [image error]
