Christmas time, right. Time to care, really.

In my family, we don’t do presents…which leaves a gaping hole for giving in other ways. Below are a few ideas, based mostly on some projects I’m working on…

1. give $2 to the homeless in your ‘hood.

I’m an ambassador for StreetSmart. So, is Stephen Fry! In the lead-up to Christmas, StreetSmart  restaurants – Longrain, Otto, Coast, Universal, Sake, Red Spice Road, Mezzo Bar&Grill, Ladro, Cutler & Co, Il Centro Restaurant & Bar, ecco Bistro, Urbane and hundreds of others – ask diners to donate $2 to StreetSmart on their bill.

The two bucks is simply added to your bill.  I’ve always liked this idea…it gives you the option to opt out…but invites you with conviction to give…it makes it easier for us to care, which I think we all want.

The cash goes to homeless projects in nearby areas – choirs, book exchanges and simple accommodation and food. This matters. Donating local I think is good. It’s more intimate. You’re more part of it. Your care is tangible.

I guess what you can do is choose to eat at a participating restaurant. And ask your favourite cafe/restaurant to take part next year.

2. if you’re buying gifts…

…check out this Women in Business gift guide Clare put together, which supports Australian women in business.

And avoid products made by this list of companies that committed some pretty sexist acts this year.

3. donate to Aboriginal literacy

Four out of 5 Aboriginal kids in remote communities can’t read. Donate some extra $$ to the Australian Literacy & Numeracy Foundation here.

4. or donate to young girls.

I’m also involved in the Because I Am a Girl campaign. ‘Because I am a Girl’ is Plan International’s global campaign to fight gender inequality, promote girls’ rights and lift millions of girls out of poverty. If you want to know why this matters…click here.

Do you have any gift ideas that matter? I’m happy for you to add here…

This week I push back

I know about a dozen people who simply don’t reply to email. I used to wonder how they got anything done, or sustained a social life. But they’re always at parties and are some of the most successful, adroit people I know.

OK, surely, then they’re in a permanent state of guilt-squirm. I mean, imagine walking around with that many unreplied emails hanging over your head! That’s a heavy karmic cloud, right there! But, nope. They’re unperturbed.

My friend James, one of the dirty dozen, says he feels justified in being so electronically AWOL “People think that because they’ve spent five seconds firing off an email asking something of me, they deserve a response that will take me 25 minutes to research and compose,” he says. “It doesn’t weigh up.”

In the past, he says, you’d have to compose a letter or pick up the phone, which required more considered application and was deserving of considered help. Which is actually a terrific point.

But isn’t he afraid important stuff won’t get done? No, he says. If it’s important to him, he does in fact reply (clearly mine rarely make the cut). If it’s more important to the other party, he says, they’ll find another way to a) get their answer or b) make it easier for him to give them their answer (eg: “Dear James, could you please advise which of these three carefully thought-out options works best?”).

Which sounds horribly selfish. But on consideration, it’s supply/demand theory applied to the time-poor economy. You want it more, you do the work.

Catching up with the Jameses of the world is bloody infuriating. But I wonder if they’re not the survivors… the post-nuclear fall-out cockroaches of this frenetic information age.

Every few weeks or so I feature one of Eugene Tan’s wonderful beach pictures on this site. I know many of you love them. Woah!, now you can buy the book.

Uge has become a great mate after years of running into him down at Bondi in the mornings where, for the past 11 years, he’s been found taking beautiful pictures of people being happy in water… which he then posts on his site aquabumps. 40,000 people check in each morning to view his work. And thousands have bought his over-sized prints. I’ve seen them hung around the world.

You might recall, I’ve written about Uge before. He taught me about “checking in with your inside people“. And I can safely say, Uge is one of the happiest people I know. He smiles when he surfs. It shows in his book.

Plus a gratuitous shot of our mate Gezza x

I reckon it’d make a great Christmas present. Happy, fresh, summery. This you might like to know:

* It’s a massive coffee-table spectacular (almost a metre across when open).

* It’s designed by Ant Donovan

* It’s $150 and you can buy it in Uge’s gallery on Curlewis St or here:

Have a great Friday xxxxxx

I’ve followed Daily OM for many years now and have chatted to Madisyn Taylor in the past and found her to be the real deal. She meditates each day to come up with her daily advice. And takes Tuesdays off to have a better life.  I like this post for today’s outlook about grounding yourself. It gets us to imagine being a Strong Container for Our Spirit. I think this is important – for ourselves and others.

Grounding ourselves is a way of bringing ourselves literally back to earth. Some of us are more prone than others to essentially leaving our bodies and not being firmly rooted in our bodies. There’s nothing terribly wrong with this, but while we are living on the earth plane it is best to stay grounded in the body.

One of the easiest ways to ground ourselves is to bring our attention to our breath as it enters and leaves our bodies. After about 10 breaths, we will probably find that we feel much more connected to our physical selves …Just a few minutes of this can bring us home to bodies and to the earth, and this is what it means to ground ourselves.

I just came across this collection of ghastly ads from, well, not so long ago. It’s hard to believe that there are people still alive today who made these ads. It’s a reminder of why we need those bloody leftie, femmo, do-gooder, paradigm-questioning agitators. They shift shit.

I have a vitamin D deficiency. So this is what I do:

* I sit in the sun most days – sometimes in the middle of the day – with no sunscreen on, no hat. No slipping or slopping.

* I eat full-fat saturated animal fats. Like cheese. And meat.

There, that got your attention!

A lot of you out there would also have a D deficiency. Which is not great. Because D is proving the most underrated nutrient in the world of nutrition -  it helps to prevent osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer and breast cancer, diabetes and obesity. I’ve been told my deficiency is contributing to my digestion problems, my thyroid issues, my calcium deficiency. Some are claiming it’s the biggest health challenge we’re facing.

Here’s the funny thing:

* Sunlight is the best (and really only) way to get Vit D. But we’ve been told to cover up and stay out of the sun for years. Ergo we’re deficient.

* We need full-fat food to synthesise Vit D once it’s in our system. But we’ve been told to stop eating such food for years. Ergo we’re deficient.

And it gets funnier (in the cruel ironic sense):

* We stay out of the sun to avoid skin cancer. But studies show we have a faaaaaar greater chance of dying from a Vitamin D deficiency-related cancer than of a sunburn-related skin cancer.

I get “city fever” a hell of a lot.

I’m always saying to friends, “I need to get out of Sydney”. And so I take off for a weekend. Or a week. Or a month. I guess it’s a bit to do with growing up in the country. But I think it has a whole lot to do with the kind of life I (and many of you) lead – frenetic and up close with rarely a view of the horizon.

I need to see an horizon to get perspective. And so I do road trips.

They’re not always road trips. Sometimes, they’re train journeys. Or bike trips. But they always have a destination, require a map and involve camping or pubs in small towns where the crickets are louder than the traffic.

Last week I did a road trip through northern NSW, around the Tweed hinterland area, along parts of the The Rainforest Way. It was sublime and the area is a perfectly cultivated area for a road trip – solo or with others.

I went solo.

A Tweed Valley Road Trip:

This is what I did, in case you’d like to do something similar. I like sharing recommendations about, so I’ll give a blow-by-blow account which you might like to save.

I should also highlight that NSW Tourism organized the trip for me, but I was not a guest as such of any of the places I recommend, so they’re true recommendations.

Day One: Byron at Byron and a gin martini in the rain

I flew into Gold Coast, hired a peanut of a car and headed south to Byron. And checked into Byron at Byron.

I’m not a resorty, retreaty, spa kind of girl. I prefer more rustic digs where I can do my own thing. So I wasn’t as excited about Byron at Byron as I should have been.

B at B is the retreat for the anti-retreaty. The accoutrement are here – the massages, the steamrooms, the yoga classes – but they don’t work to a stringent timetable. You can choose to use the facilities or you can choose to simply to be there. And not get too earnest. And not be on a schedule. And instead hang in the rainforest. The accommodation is all about jutting you out into the bush with sunlight and gumtrees and lyrebird cracks seeping in through the louvres and meshed balconies. I also like that they have kitchens. You can self cater. Or you can walk the long boardwalk through the rainforest to the restaurant with chef Gavin Hughes who uses local produce in his bright, fun meals (be sure to have the Bangalow pork!).

The fresh berries chef Gavin picked that morning (he does tours of the Farmer's Markets on Thursdays

I got still. And sat for a bit. Then went for a very slow shuffle along Tallow’s beach, just through the rainforest from my bungalow.

A slow shuffle at sunset in the rain: now that’s good for the soul!

This week I get sad

I’ve been writing this column for a while now – 72 weeks to be exact – and I have to confess, I’ve had it with trying to be happy.  It’s all become too much.

While this column is a somewhat tortured search for a better life, most of the literature I’m exposed to is about happiness. You see, since positive psychology emerged ten years ago, happiness has become the holy grail of our existence. Everyone’s trying to get happy because a happier life is a better life. Or so we’re sold.

And, so, every week I’m sent half a dozen happiness books to review, I’m invited to happiness pow-wows and my inbox receives a chundering of the latest theories and studies about how best to land a smile on one’s dial, usually involving Tibetan monks or a bunch of Greek goat herders.

Ergo, I have happy wash; I’m “cheer exhausted”, you might say.

Happiness used to be something you experienced appropriately, on occasion (on birthdays, when running under sprinklers). It was a spontaneous thing you got glimpses of, if you were lucky. Nowadays, these countless theories prove happiness can be manufactured and sculpted. We can work hard at being happy (by turning sad thoughts into happy ones and thus reshaping the synapses in our brains). And, when we do, we attract more happiness (you reap what you sow and all that jazz).

All of which has served to create a highly tedious imperative to be happy all of the time. Which has simultaneously rendered the slightly less sunny among us, well, lazy. You’re not happy? The sun not shining on your patch? A bit down that you have incurable cancer? Pull your socks up!

I had someone do this to me the other day. He bounced past me on the street and told me to, “Smile, be happy”. Had I been in a more beamish mood, I’d have said, “No thanks, I’m experimenting with the miserable end of my mood spectrum right now. It’s proving highly productive.” Instead I glowered.

But has anyone stopped to ask if happiness is all that much chop? Is happiness the only path to a better life? This week, having reached saturation point with the Pollyanna antics, I thought it was time to ask if pessimism doesn’t also have its place.

Happy Friday. Good week. Big week. I filmed for a few days with Eat Yourself Sexy, the new show I’m filming on Lifestyle YOU (on telly next year). Two of the women undergoing our diet and lifestyle makeover look completely different women…they’d lost the puffiness in their faces from holding onto toxins. One woman reduced her cellular age by five years in 8 weeks. Just by eating well. I cried. Twice.

Then, last night I got a Twitter DM from Alain de Botton, the astute philosopher and writer. Which is funny, because it was in regards some banter about this tweet he’d posted: “To get a readership of 50,000, you probably need to be known to a million and actively disliked (but not read) by 20,000.” My readership has just gone over that mark…which is cool…and so is the synchronicity here…ANYWAY…

I just like this image...it's a few weeks old now. Boys...in suits.

Also, my favourite comments from this week. Thanks for sharing…

* I love these tips in response to my thyroid post this week where I shared some stuff that sends me over the edge, and how I cope:

Dani wrote:  “One of the reasons windy days are so draining is that the air becomes charged with positive ions (unless the wind is coming off the sea). Compare this to how relaxing and refreshing a sea breeze is, or a cool change and thunderstorm at the end of a stinking hot day, when the air is charged with negative ions. You can recreate this by chilling out near the surf or a waterfall or just taking a shower”.

Stephanie: “One thing I’ve started doing … is making (my own) tea.  I add licorice (Adrenals), nettle (allergies and iron), echinacea and astralagus (immune), dandelion (cleanse), and pau d’arco.  I buy my herbs from the organic store on Oxford st and boil them for 10 mins. It tastes fowl, but works for me.  Another thing I do is take an adrenal support and get my bloods checked to see what supplements i need such as magnesium and zinc.”

I also liked these eco fashion tips comments:

Olivia likes 99 Dresses: “You use your facebook account to sign in, it’s free to upload, and when someone buys your item you receive buttons (e.g. 1 button = $1). You then use these buttons to purchase other items you like.”

Cath says: “You must check out The Sustainable Stylist. Kim is AWESOME.

I have a theory. You do your best. And then sometimes things go to shit. In such cases, you do what you can to get through.

Too often, we push and push to eat right, exercise right etc etc and it’s all pushing and punishment. But we don’t allow ourselves to collapse in a heap right. Which sometimes means doing the “wrong” things.

At such times I try to recall something John Lennon sang, “whatever gets you through the night, s’alright”. And sometimes it is.

I was reminded of this when reading a comment from Dani in response to my post on coping with “thryoidy days”:

“On really bad weekend days when I don’t make it out of bed until mid afternoon, I’ll also often have a coffee, which works for me for a couple of reasons. One, it helps clear the fuzz (I usually have 3 or 4 regular coffees a week, so it’s not entirely an addiction thing). Two, it forces me to get out of bed and out of the house and walk 400m or so to my local cafe = gentle exercise. Three, it means I enjoy the human interaction of chatting to the baristas and the regulars. It works for me, but I udnerstand coffee is not on everyone’s “OK list.”

Yeah, coffee is totally “wrong” if you have thyroid issues. Except when it’s right.