My book The Way, My Way, is now up on iBooks – finally!

Kindle (Amazon) and iBooks (Apple) are the biggest sellers of e-books on the internet. 

Can I ask you all a big favour – the book on iBooks has no reviews. Those of you who kindly posted amazing 5 star reviews on the Kindle site, can I ask you to do the same on the iBooks site?  (You access it through Apple’s iTunes – both from a Mac & PC)

And those of you who haven’t yet written a review – can you do so on iBooks?

Having these reviews helps enormously in getting the book out to a wider audience. 

Thank you, in anticipation…

I'm comfortable with technology.

I love gadgets, I can find my way around most of the software I use, I embrace technological change.

I think we're living through an extraodinary time right now, with the advent of the Internet, and the huge benefits that digital technology can deliver to us.

But sometimes it just confounds me.

Yesterday was just such a day, when it seemed like technology wanted to “flip me the bird,” as they say in some circles in America.

First there was the tv.

All I wanted to do was watch episodes 11 and 12 in the final season of BREAKING BAD. I'd done the right thing and bought the entire season on iTunes. I didn't illegally download it. But do you think I could get it to play on my tv?

There was an issue of streaming, and “the cloud” and it took me 37 minutes to download the first of the episodes onto my tv. I then did the same with episode 12, and it took even longer.

Then when I came to play the episodes, it was as though I'd never pre-loaded them. I had to load them up again, which was going to take another hour or so.

By this stage it was getting late, so I went online, illegally downloaded the episodes off a torrent site, and Jennifer and I watched the shows – finally. I'd paid $25 for the season on iTunes, so I figured I hadn't deprived the show's royalty participants of any revenues. It was just more convenient to do it this way.

Then there was Evernote. I use Evertone all the time. It's software that takes notes and syncs them across my laptop, my desktop, my iPad and my iPhone. I've used it for years now, and it's fantastic.

I've been doing a typo and formatting revision of my book. It took me three days to do a complete sweep of the manuscript, and I noted down very tiny typo, grammatical error, and formatting error in the book.

I had about 5 pages of notes, which I intended to pass onto the formatter in the US.

The next day I got an email from him saying it would be easier (and cheaper) for me to do this work myself, and send him the completed revised manuscript.

OK, it would be tedious, but at least I had my notes.

Yesterday I went to Evernote, and they weren't there. That particular note had been truncated, with a message down the bottom of the page saying: Conflicting Modification On.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Three days work, lost.

First time this has ever happened to me with Evernote.

It will take me now another three days to do the work again. But each time you read a manuscript, you read it with different eyes, and I might miss some of the errors that I'd picked up earlier.

Like it or not, we live in a world that requires us to have a certain knowledge and level of understanding of technology.

Jennifer's mother is 85, and she's recently had installed into her house an emergency monitor which can detect if she's in trouble – had a fall, or a heart attack etc.

She came to pay for it, but the only method of payment was via the Internet, which she doesn't have or understand, or via credit card – again, which she doesn't have.

She keeps her money the old fashioned way, in a bank account in a bank, and that's how she wanted to pay – to go to the bank and pay in cash.

But it couldn't be done. It had to be either a credit card or an electronic funds transfer. It took Jennifer nearly a week, speaking to supervisors in Chennai, before she got it sorted.

Even the Camino isn't free of technological hassles. How do you keep in touch? Should you get a SIM card, how do you blog, why doesn't the wifi work – all these issues you have to deal with!

That's why a lot of people look on the Camino as being a tech-free zone – so that for a while, they can escape the petty frustrations that sometimes arise living in these exciting times of ours…

I’m reading these blogs of people currently walking the Camino – and they’ve been walking through rain, or mud, or extreme heat.

I had none of that.

I had maybe two days rain, tops. And the temperature was always cool and refreshing. For the 31 days of my Camino, (28 days walking, 3 rest days) the one day it poured with rain coincided with my rest day in Santo Domingo. The other couple of rainy days, the rain was light and intermittent.

I said jokingly to Steve that I took my weather with me – but I also said I never worried about the weather. If it rained, it rained. If it was sunny, it was sunny. It only ever affected what I wore, and whether I covered my backpack.

I walked the entire Meseta in glorious weather. Only on one day – near Sahagun – did it threaten rain. A storm came and went, and it made the walk very theatrical for me, and I put my rain jacket on for about half an hour, but that was it.

Steve left about three weeks after me, and he had bad weather. So I did my walk in this little pocket of amazing weather.

Here’s the thing though – back in Australia several weeks out before I was due to leave, I was watching the forecasts and they were predicting lousy weather. Lingering snowstorms, rain, cold temps etc.

I seriously considered bumping back my trip by… yes… three weeks. If I’d done that, I would have missed that window of fine weather I had, and I would have walked with Steve in the rain. Because the alternative date I was looking at was around about the time Steve left SJPP.

But my PGS told me to stick to my dates, even though it appeared I’d be walking through horrendous weather. That’s why my pack was loaded up with gaiters and thermals and snow gear. None of which I used. I got to Pamplona and posted them on ahead.

So, funny the way things turned out. Probably if I’d met Steve I would have thought him a meth-dealing biker, and he would have thought me a film-type wanker.

This way we met on the net and we’re good mates!!

Today I drove 8 hours to see a movie.

GRAVITY, with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.

In 3D, and IMAX

I figured the movie cost me $120 – ticket price, parking, gas, road tolls, meal.

Was it worth it?

YES!!!

It was truly amazing.  A great cinematic experience.

If you go see this movie, see it in 3D. Better still, see it in IMAX.

You will feel as though you’ve spent 90 minutes in space. A terrifying 90 minutes in space!

My father instilled in his children this maxim: do what you love. If you do, you'll be good at it and it won't seem like work. If you're good at it, you'll make money.

I kind of fell into what I ended up doing. I started out studying Medicine. But I was spending so much time writing and photographing freelance articles for magazines that my studies suffered, and I switched across to journalism.

I mention this today because I am driving 8 hours to see a movie.

That's how much I love what I do.

There's no cinema in Mudgee. And whilst there are cinemas in towns about an hour and a half away, I want to see this particular film on the huge IMAX screen, in 3D. So I've driven to Sydney – eight hours there and back.

The film is GRAVITY, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. It's directed by a very exciting director – Alfonso Cuaron. He made a film that I thought was spectacular – CHILDREN OF MEN.

I read the script of GRAVITY several years ago, before it was cast, and off the page it read as an amazing movie. Today it opens worldwide, day and date. I'm excited!

In ten days I spend a week addressing students at the University where I'm an Adjunct Professor. They are soon to graduate with a degree in Fine Arts, Film & Television. And I will tell them: do what you love.

Be Still, My Heart.

I am a contemplative nun. That means the primary focus of my life, every day, is prayer and meditation. I believe deeply in the power of prayer – I’ve  seen so many blessed, mysterious and miraculous things happen as a result of prayer that I would be a fool to feel otherwise!

When I am not praying for the world and the people living in it, my directive is to live prayerfully. To live loving, as much as I am able, as Jesus did, and as He tried to teach us to do. Part of that loving manifests in spiritual counselling and teaching others how to find God within and all around themselves. There is nothing in this life that I would rather do, and I count myself blessed to be able to live the life I want and need to lead.

Most contemplatives live under a vow of silence in their own convents and monasteries. Some live alone in private, rural settings that are conducive to contemplation. That’s what I had been doing until my son became a quadraplegic and I was given dispensation to have him come and live with me. So a lot of my time now is taken up with the 24/7 care a paralysed person needs.

You can do anything, or live any kind of life, prayerfully, and having him at home hasn’t  diminished my life in any way – in fact, I am indescribably richer for it.

But this week I’m  trying to get ready to go on Retreat. It’s enough of a job making sure ministry committments are provided for. Many of us have also written and prepared lectures. Now I also have to make arrangements for my son’s care while I’m  gone, and it has to be done with delicacy to preserve his dignity, boost his confidence and help him to find pride in just how much he can do for himself. An emergency nurse who understands that can be hard to find.

It’s not going well. I keep running into obstacles and out of time! I feel extremely stressed, and to frost  the cake, I am moving onto my third night of painful insomnia. Instead of feeling filled with joy and expectation about my Retreat, I am bad tempered, overtired,  snappy, unpleasant,  angry at times, and a little resentful. This all makes me feel even worse!

Some of you may remember my mentioning a very special, sensitive friend of mine who has a gift for asking probing and revealing questions. Recently she asked, “Sister, what is in your heart today?” It stopped me cold because of course I saw that the one and only thing in my heart at that moment, was ME.

Which is why everything was going so badly. I was so intent on doing things right that I forgot to do them lovingly, and prayerfully. I forgot to live from my heart and my spirit and my faith. I forgot to listen for the Holy Spirit and my “PGS”. Thank God that we have the option to go on a Camino or to a Retreat, and find our centre again.Thank God for the blessing of sensitive friends!

How is your week going?  What’s  in your heart, today?

This is a reprint of a story that first appeared in London’s Telegraph newspaper. It puts a face and a voice to the crippling state of Spain’s unemployment problem –

Next time you walk through a village or town, give some thought to the situation – and how the Camino is at least providing some revenue to the places you visit…

A young Spaniard with three degrees has become the face of the country’s ‘‘lost generation’’ after an online rant in which he complained that the only work he could find was cleaning lavatories in London.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/three-degrees-yet-i-clean-a-lavatory-the-tale-of-spains-lost-generation-20131002-2urqo.html#ixzz2gbkBlSaY

Jennifer was cooking dinner again tonight.

She went outside to get some fresh herbs, and the saucepan she was cooking with caught fire.

I regard this as the Universe paying her back for yelling at me last night.

In John Lennon's words…

Instant Karma!

There is currently a thread on Ivar’s forum on Best Books on the Camino.

Now, me being such a humble self effacing bloke can’t really get on there and thump my own drum…

But, I’m sure you’ll agree that my book is brilliant and groundbreaking, and will no doubt feature prominently in next year’s Pulitzers… and given that I’m from a British colony the Booker Prize is surely not out of the question.

(I think the Nobel Prize is a bit lofty at this stage, but Nobel Prize winning books are really boring anyway…)

Anyway, it would be inordinately crass of me to self publicise on Ivar’s forum about what a great book The Way, My Way is. But, you my PGS family could….

Please…..

http://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/threads/best-camino-books-nonguide-books-in-english.4852/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PilgrimageToSantiagoDeCompostela+%28Camino+de+Santiago+de+Compostela%29