volume one hundred and twenty-seven

i don’t make new year resolutions

📍Written from bed in Mulubinba (otherwise known as Newcastle), as multiple bird songs come through the open window.

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🎤 Upcoming Shows:

• Funny Coast Comedy at Solbar, Maroochydore - January 16th

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Welcome to a new year. Does it feel all that different to you? While I don’t exactly set ‘resolutions’ for the new year — as when I see room for changes I want to make I do them then and there rather than wait — I do like to reflect on what I have done, what I want to let go of and what I hope to achieve. In this week’s volume, I am grateful to be doing that by way of sharing some excerpts from a recent workshop.

These snippets are pulled from my responses to some prompts from

Ralf Junge-Pearl

’s Feel It, Write It, which happens once a month with FieldTrips and which also happens to be one of my favourite spaces to spend an hour of each month with Ralf’s thoughtful prompts and his wonderful space-holding presence.

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I’m tired but not grumpy about it. I feel so wonderful that I had a late night because I was out following what lights me up. I jumped in, I did my best, I was grateful, and I am grateful. I told jokes on stage for the first time in months and it was my happy place. I am in such satisfied exhaustion because I was with peers… AKA people who get it. I sat and watched and learned, too.

I am happy to be tired because, after a late night, I woke early to write and I love to write.

I am living the life I desire, crave, and love. Lack of sleep is such a gift when it comes from following the path that sets my soul on fire.

This is it. This is the magic I crave in my life. Daily. Spiritually. Essentially.

My heart is swelling. The sky outside is illuminating with the first rays and every time I look up from the page it is a different colour. 

This is the life of my dreams, starting the day with pen in hand.

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I’m leaving behind old ideas. At least I want to try to. These old ideas are those I have of others, and of myself. I’m saying goodbye, to the best of my ability, to:

• Old resentments, and instead looking forward

• Assumptions about money and scarcity mindset that have made me a workaholic in the past

• The idea of my past career/s, knowing I can — and I am — recreating a new era based on what I know to be true about myself now. No regrets, all thanks. I did then what I truly thought I wanted and it made me happy while it did 

• Self-sabotage

• Fear of rejection in my creativity

• Holding back on comedy 

• Holding back on writing submissions

• Pressure to do it all. One day at a time. What feels good today?

• Whatever I am willing to give up in order to have the life I keep pretending I want. I will reassess and check-in with this often

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By leaving all this behind, I am free! I am free of expectations of myself for any particular outcome and free to just explore what I love, to follow that “on my path” feeling. I’m free in time, energy, and space, and can direct it where my heart says “go!”.

Without it, I’m free to enjoy relationships as they are today. To be present and in the moment and make the most of what is to come, leaving behind the past wreckage. 

Without it, I’m able to see what is possible and what happiness I am capable of when I make that the driver.

Without it, I feel connected to my muses, heroes, and creative inspirations. I feel I am doing them proud, which means I’m doing me proud. I’m doing little Loz proud — the one who ran around playing make-believe: entertaining, performing, writing — I’m reconnecting with her to say “Hi!” and then we play together. It means I haven’t forgotten her, anymore. She is still very much alive and a part of my life. As she should be. Always. I can make amends to her for silencing her for so long, by giving her a constant voice now.

The two of us are in this together. I’m so thankful for her joy she reminds me to keep and hang on to in every decision I make.

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The timing is perfect to be in this blissful exhaustion.

I might get busy or distracted from the path and from who I am, but never for long. These prompts showed up this time, and my Higher Power will send messages through others in other ways at other times — just like this — to gently nudge me back to where I want, need, long, desire, hope and absolutely love to be.

I love the gift of writing. I love the gift of writing to prompts, with others, by hand. I love coming back to myself via all of these practices. I am happy, whole, determined, thankful, ready.

Lovely reader, head into the comments and feel free to reflect on what you have accomplished, what you want to let go of and what you hope to achieve.

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here are three things I struggled with this week year:

🩷 Choosing to follow my heart. That all became much easier once I started leading with “Does this light me up? Yes or no?”.

🪩 Living life on my terms, ignoring “shoulds”, gaining income from places of joy and letting go of those without it, letting go of things, places, and people (as in the comfort of my besties being a few minutes away all the time as I set off alone on adventures).

🦘 Stripping myself of societal expectations of marriage, family, home, career, life, being a “woman”...

here are three blessings from this week year:

🌇 The sign of a good night/day/company is the desire to stay outside. Many times in 2023 saw me opting to walk home to soak up every last minute of daylight or warm air or suitable up-and-about hours, and not catch a bus or take an Uber. Walking it out, for an extended period home, is making sure I have the time to absorb every part of the bliss.

♾️ Digital Sabbath Sundays are SO LONG! They make past wishes come true: Sundays that last and last and last!

🛫 The feeling of a plane taking off and landing.

here are three goals for the coming week year:

✨ Dear Little Lauren: Let’s put on a show, or play make-believe. You are the writer and director and I am here to be in your world, in your performance! Let it shine! Let’s go!

🏎️ Comedy, creating and writing are getting the front seat.

🛝 Loz. Only a select few call me this and that is sacred to me as this is my childhood name. I am going to meet with her a lot from now on.

pics or it didn’t happen:

walking viewssssssssss

I love you. Now I am off to connect with my own inner child by spending time with my favourite kiddos. Aunty Loz is ready to run around the backyard!

🧡, LD/Loz (lauren deborah | she/they)