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.

A gentle thing Aristotle once said:

“The important thing is not to learn, but to undergo an emotion, and to be in a certain state.”

I’ve been in my head a lot most of my life. But I’m unlearning. Unfurling. I’m feeling into life more and more. Slowly. Tediously.

Of course, the more you seek to feel and unlearn, the more intellect and thought and words resist and react and hold on. As you unlearn, words rear their little heads to analyse it all. They chatter and insist they stick around. As I meditate, the words try to creep in to reassert themselves. When they do, I realise how annoying they are in general. How unimportant they are. And the “certain state” matters more and more.

To be in a certain state…this certain state is a still, magnificent, broad, expansive, light knowing. It’s nameless. It’s just a certain state. And when you find it, say in meditation, you hold it gently for as long as you can…until the words take over again.

Do you know this certain state, too?

A little while back I had building biologist Nicole Bijlsma do a run-through of my flat to see if it was toxic, and making me sick. It was. Although my initial Sunday Life column didn’t outline the full extent of things. It was a bit too controversial for the magazine…plus, I hadn’t really digested the brunt of Nicole’s message. Now I have.

Basically, my bedroom is making me sick. No bones about it. Here’s the deal: when Nicole did an EMF (electro-magnetic field) reading…the scanner spun around madly. The reading was dangerously high. And erratic. Nicole was shocked.

So we went outside…my bedroom sits right above the fuse room for the whole building (12 apartments).