Last night I was taken to a surprise party for my 40th. It was a lovely night. So many faces I haven’t seen in ages all sitting around a table at the local club with a slightly smug expressions that said “ha, we didn’t let it slip“. Frankly, I’m impressed they didn’t. They’re more accomplished liars than I thought they were.

It was sitting at the local RSL Club last night, eating the biggest chicken schnitzel I’ve ever seen, that I realised half of what I’ve been talking about recently is more than true. Life – at least for me these days – is no longer about the grand gestures. It is about the little things, that make you smile and feel happy. It’s about being with people who matter, laughing at the rather terrible cover band – poor love couldn’t remember the words to most of the songs she was singing – and trying to cut your birthday cake before it collapsed in a spray of rainbow coloured sponge, weighed down by about 3 ton of the sweetest icing I’ve ever eaten.

Last night all the work problems, money problems and stress didn’t matter. Last night it was just about fun. Old people fun, as quiet frankly by 9:30pm we were all ready to go home and put on our slippers and have a warm cuppa before going to sleep. But fun none-the-less.

Tomorrow I’m off to house sit for friends for a week. It will be the first time I’ve been on my own and out of the house since I lost my job. I packed up suitcase last night and sent it down to the house so I didn’t need to worry about it on the train tomorrow. I packed all the usual supplies, but in the bag, I also threw a few books on creativity and visualisation, a pencil and eraser, and anything else I could think of to make next week worth something.

I’ve decided to make the most of this time, secured away in a house in Sydney. Meditation, reading, journalling, working with and on my creative visualisation and clearly setting a road map on what I want out of the next part of my life and how I aim to get there.

I’m also going to be bringing along the Mac so I can write more of my novel – both of them with any luck. I may even do the odd writing exercise, I really don’t know.

What I do know is it’s time for me to throw myself back into life. And for me, living has always been about the words. Whether it’s a conversation, or a journal entry, a novel or short story everything I do revolves around and settles on the words. So I’m going to spend next week writing and dreaming and walking the dog. That by the way is not a euphemism, part of the reason I’m house sitting is that my friends have a dog, who thinks she’s people.

So while they’re off jet skiing or water boarding or whatever one does on Hamilton Island I’m invoking squatters rights, changing all the locks and pretending I’m a grown up again, with my own house and a dog who thinks she’s people.

I guess the point to this post is there are more ways to own your own home than to simply buy one. You can, like me wait for friends to go on holidays and just steal theirs. It makes much more sense and frankly, it sounds cheaper than the other option.