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24/12/2004 End-of-year reflections 2004 |
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Dear friends, Thanks for sharing in this past year with me, and making my life an enriching and rewarding adventure! You have all been an important part of the experiences, words and thoughts that have made up my year! Here’s how… Scarce water but free-flowing ideas: This year has been significantly more productive than previous – thanks to good health, great supervision, and a network of talented and committed colleagues. I hope to be finished my PhD by this time next year. The usefulness of a social/institutional approach to helping solve water scarcity is becoming increasingly apparent. Hopefully my small contribution will help to keep your H20 on tap in a more sustainable way! Travel to almost all parts of Oz: My field research and related conferences have taken me to Perth, Cairns, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Adelaide this year. And I also went to Melbourne for the wedding of a top friend. (Congrats Geoff & Teesh!) And then I went to Brisbane again to help run a seminar for a church convention. So no far-flung travel plans for my Christmas break: I’ll be more than happy spending time with my family on the central coast: going to the beach will be about as far as I go! Peace amid madness: The best part of getting away from Sydney is not going to another urban rat-race but camping and hiking in nature – especially with great friends! Some great memories of this year include camping in the Kangaroo Valley, visiting the Three Sisters, hiking part of the 6-foot track and climbing one of the Glasshouse Mountains. I couldn’t do the City to Surf this year but my knee is on the improve and I’ve been able to spend many mornings running through the bush adjoining our leafy suburb of Turramurra. Great for quietening the spirit and rejuvenating the soul – though wearing out joints! The wheels have fallen off: My ability to get around has been somewhat curtailed by the lack of a car. My trusty old Colt finally broke down with a repair bill greater than the value of the car. So it had to be sold – for all of $100. (I got 5 times that back from rego & insurance!) Prophetic Mondays: For such a mundane day of the week, Monday nights on Monteith St have been enlightened for much of this year by a prophecy seminar that my flatmate and I decided to run for friends and neighbours. Environmentalism, capitalism and Christianity – strange bedfellows: I’ve taken a few speaking appointments this year and have developed a sermon integrating some of the environmental themes of my research with Christian ideas – revealing links between environmentalism and Christianity that neither group tends to recognise. Next year’s challenges: I’ll be taking up a challenging role as an assistant church youth leader this coming year. Hopefully my research is well enough progressed that I can still keep a balanced, sane and productive life! Keeping my technical bent: My research may emphasise the social over the technical, but I’m still an engineer and I still love tinkering with web design and administration. I’m hosting/maintaining/administrating several sites now – some as hobbies or projects and one for money. They’re all linked from my website at the below address, and (for the really keen) are a source of countless more insights into the intricate details of what really happened in my life in 2004! Wishing you all a safe, prosperous, happy, loving & peaceful Christmas and New Year! Daniel Livingston
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