As per my previous post, below, I have achieved another concrete thing today, as opposed to writing a few pages of something I am bound to delete at a later date, which is what the word "achievement" comes to represent in the world of writing.

I remember once getting the uncontrollable giggles in the audience of a Chekhov play because someone near me in the audience loudly predicted the next line would involve someone yearning for work. The person who predicted this did so in a broad Australian accent, loudly and at a moment of intense silence. I totally lost it. This was of course the great Chekhovian joke, that people in loungerooms sit around all day gossiping and desiring with heartfelt passion to contribute in some small way to society, but never actually contribute to anything apart from the monotony of their own dreary existence.

I don't know about society but I have definitely contributed to the upkeep of my motor vehicle. That is to say, a Mr Rick Thorn contributed to it and Stew and I "helped". As a result of this, I now have a shiny car. Check it out. If you concentrate, you can see Stew in the reflection:

Trouble is, after doing a cut and polish on the car, I have also cut and polish my hands, part of my face, and a section of pant. Oh well. At least I'm a hardcore DIY home improvement nut now. Right?

If you study Literature at some point in your life you will discover this: existentialism is a movement in literature most ably demonstrated by a book called, in English, The Outsider. You will, if you study Literature, learn this maybe 12 or 13 times. You cannot, apparently, know it enough.

In one of the 12 or 13 essays I wrote about The Outsider, in one of which I seem to recall I claimed that existentialism was a state of being usually only experienced by male protagonists in rich white countries (I did an arts degree) I focused on a segment in the book where the protagonist shoots somebody. In this segment of the book, pretty much the entire point of the narrative so I hope you enjoyed the spoiler, our protagonist pulls the trigger because of a number of factors, none of which has to do with morality. It's noisy, he's uncomfortable, and most of all: it's hot.

As we enter our second day of record hot temperatures in Melbourne today (the hottest in over 100 years) it strikes me that an unexamined element in The Outsider is that it's actually an ecological horror novel before its time. Heat killed a man dead. Heat can do that.

Heat stops trains - anyone 5ks out of Melbourne knows that. It also stops brains. Dear everyone I have to submit something to this week: please be thankful I haven't killed anyone and let me off the hook. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to stick my head in the freezer.

I like to blame it on the fact that I juggle a writing life with a real life, but whatever the reason: if I were a website, I'd be lastminute.com

I'm quite good at planning actually. I do it in my Law Talking Job and I do it when we put on a show. Trouble is, if I know I've got enough time NOT to plan, I don't.

In Melbourne at the moment, it's raining. In November. This is not usual. In fact, in recent memory, rain is not usual. We here in Australia are in what is known as a drought. People, everywhere, are looking furiously at the sky and forgetting their umbrellas.

A couple of my friends have mentioned how annoying it is to have to change over winter wardrobe to summer wardrobe and then break into the winter one again. As in, actually unpack their wardrobes and put them in... vacuum packed bags? Outerspace? The toaster? I don't know. Point is, they're organised. They take umbrellas to work in the winter and pack them the night before.

SO GUESS WHAT THAT MEANS?

I TOTALLY WIN!

Days like this, weeks like this, when everything's unpredictable and the sky is likely to wee on you at the last second just when you aren't expecting it? THAT IS EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE!

HUZZAH! I AM BETTER AT LIFE THAN EVERYONE ELSE FOR A DAY! IN YOUR FACE!

Okay so here are some things you might not know if you didn't work writing about things you previously didn't know about during your day job. Today's subject is "Wangaratta", a town, by the way, that requires regional legal education programs, the research into and reportage on which I am paid, irregularly but with enormous goodwill, to undertake.

The Victorian Tree Climbing Championships take place in Wangaratta this weekend. Don't miss the Friday evening gear check at the CWA hall. Volunteers welcome. Tree climbing events for children included.

Their tagline is excellent.

"Everyone welcome for an enjoyable in the park!"

There's also the Speedway (tagline: Get Your Backside Trackside) and the Wangaratta Show, which includes the Beaut Ute competition and a performance by ABBA tribute band, ABBARATION.

I've been to Wangaratta. It's a great place. The air is fresh, there's art, there's music, there's a cinema. I just had no idea it was THIS GOOD.

By the way, in terms of Standing There Productions news, Rita is still in Sydney working with interesting people on interesting films, Lorin is slowly re-learning like an accident victim how to use Final Cut Pro to cut together some Bundanon videos, and Stew is bossing us into doing something new before our public liability insurance lapses.

By the way, I know I've said it before but I mean come on! A CAT? PLAYING THE PIANO?

Today, I drove Rita to the airport at 7.15 am.

I know, I know. I must like her or something.

Anyway, I was very pleased with myself until a moment ago when I became infuriated that my mouse wasn't working. I thumped it on the mouse pad several times and then it rang.

It was, turns out, my mobile phone.

Productivity levels = awesome.

Every year, I write something here about tax deductions for artists.

Now, the way it works, so far as my non-existent accounting experience allows me to understand, is that if you use it for work, you get a tax deduction. So, if you write, you get a tax deduction for your new macbook pro and any subsequent extensions of warranty, which incidentally you should remember to buy (unlike some of us who are idiots and who will regret this later). If you work in film, your movie tickets are tax deductible. If you work in theatre, Kafka novels and ill-advised affairs with people who are not your girlfriend are presumably tax deductible, and if you work in a bank, well, now, I hope you have a career to fall back on.

(Sorry, but it's not often I get to feel clever about not having selected a career involving financial expertise and forethought).

But I digress. My proposal, on these pages and, well, in pubs at around tax time, is that for a writer, one's main job is observation. It is remiss, I honestly believe this, not to listen in to a conversation in a cafe or a train or, say, a hospital, if you're a writer. If you are visiting your grandma, for instance, and the nurses' staff room is next to the room your grandma shares with three bewildered men in pyjamas, you are duty-bound to listen to the shouty argument between the nursing staff. You are also well-advised to tune in to the subsequent debriefing session between the less senior nurses upon the departure of the most shouty. To not listen would be like skipping a lecture, or not reading a book that's going to be on the exam.

I have perfected the laid-back stance of "I'm not really listening, I'm unaccountably interested in this piece of wood", while simultaneously being quite frozen on the spot, lest I miss a vital detail, such as one of the nurses guessing how long it would be until the senior, shouty person either left the hospital or died. Conclusions regarding shouty lady's robust health due to "not having taken a toll on her body at all" are especially important for the files I have stored in my brain for future reference. I cannot remember my bank account details, but I can remember entire conversations between people I have never met.

There have been several examples of this in my life recently, including yesterday, when I was walking to a workshop at the Arts Centre for my law-talking job and I heard a familiar noise. A familiar tune I couldn't quite put my finger on. All I knew was, although the tune wasn't unpleasant to listen to, I didn't like how it made me feel. After a couple of moments of concentrating on where the sound was coming from, I realised it was coming from the girl walking alongside me. It was coming from her backpack. It was her phone, loudly singing her alarm. She was wearing headphones and had no idea her alarm was screaming at her to (presumably) get out of bed. People everywhere were narrowing their eyes, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. She continued, oblivious, blaring loudly from the lump on her back.

It wasn't so much the fact that she was blaring that made her interesting, although I enjoyed the suggestion that but for a different set of circumstances she would, now, be waking from a heavy sleep and pausing the alarm for a few moments' reprieve. It was the effect this was having on the people around her that made the incident intruiging. United (once they figured out what was going on) in a knowing, nodding pleasure, her fellow commuters looked for co-conspirators in the naughty giggle at the expense of someone foolish. Someone we all knew, but for the grace of a slightly different morning routine, could be us.

This small observation, worthy of nothing on paper, indicates many things about human behaviour, about character, about time and the individual pursuit of happiness and hence story and subtext. It's a metaphor, it's symbolism, it's a theme. It's human versus technology, time versus youth, the individual versus society, good versus evil. It's just the stuff of every day life, but in the right hands (not mine perhaps, on a Tuesday evening, but I imagine Kafka would make a good fist of it) it's a mirror against which we see ourselves, even if we are bankers, who have other things on our minds right now. Even then, we can read or watch or listen to something that leads us outside of our usual contexts and into a contemplation of the way the world works. Our imagination is stimulated. You see? It's a service to the public. It could be built into the health system, so positive is its potential effect.

Now, where was I?

Oh yes.

Ergo, I should get a tax deduction for living.

Thank you very much and goodnight.

Dear Self Motivation,

I am writing this letter because I can't seem to find you. Are you in town? Are you drunk? When we all left Bundanon, did you stay there? Have you left me for someone else? Is it Zadie Smith? It's Zadie Smith isn't it. She gets all the self motivation. She gets up before she goes to bed. She writes book after book and wins prize after prize. I hope you realise she's just using you. I hope you realise you're the only thing I've got.

Look, I know you must be confused right now. I was all wrapped up in you for a whole month in Bundanon and I admit I've gone cold on you since then. I guess I took you for granted. I admit that.

Remember the good times? Remember the looks on the faces of the people in the Melbourne Uni Law School front office when we rode our bike into the actual office, panting and red in the face, and handed in our essay at one minute past five? Remember the time we rewrote an entire play because our hard drive died and we had to start again from scratch? Remember learning all those lines for Three Sisters that time? Remember how we used to go to gym?

So I know Zadie's probably great. I know she probably does what you ask, when you ask it, and the rest of her life isn't full of boring distractions like bills that need to be paid, washing that needs to be sorted, life that needs to be lived and so on, and I bet she hasn't got Foxtel, but listen, you mean a lot to me. I can't do it without you.

Please come back to me. I'll do whatever it takes. Zadie Smith gets up early. You want me to get back early? I can't do it without you. See how that works? We're a team. A real team.

I even cancelled a few social things. I know how you love that. Meet me tomorrow at the library. I'll be holding a red carnation.

Yours,

L