Today I started my day with a game of golf. I put my name down to go around on the course for a practice run fully expecting no other person to join me. Instead, another lady who had exactly the same idea as me joined me and we used the opportunity to play with three balls each just hitting from different spots and terrains on the course for practice.

There was no pressure with anyone behind us and no one in front of us so we took our time and I have to admit, I really enjoyed it. There’s something about being out there in the fresh air and looking at the green which calms me.

(Although we had to watch out for snakes. As it’s been raining a lot, there were lots of water hazards and all the snake holes were flooded. They were out and about looking for new holes to live in)….

She wanted to show me how to use the golf app MiScore on my phone but I politely declined. One think I’m realising now is that I’m trying to minimise my “cognitive overload” with tech and gadgetry especially when I’m trying to learn something new.

I reasoned to her that I find Golf a cerebral game anyway. That is, I’m constantly thinking about the terrain, the wind, the clubs, the lie of the land, the bunkers, the compactness of the sand in the bunkers, and so forth. There’s something grounding to just think of only those elements – I even mark my cards with pencil and paper cards because it makes me add and think. So I’m always using my brain – for that one task: improving my golf skill.

Usually what happens though, when I add a tech gadget into the mix, is that I get distracted. If I open the phone and see a message, or a notification, or it pings, my brain automatically switches to that and is distracted.

I don’t want distractions. I want my brain to be in the moment. My body, my mind is present for the here and now which is all about playing this shot on this hole. Nothing else.

Golf for me is a game that is fully in the moment. I don’t think ahead, I don’t think of the past shot. As a result, I come off after a game and rather than feeling tired, I feel invigorated. For that simple pleasure of invigoration and being in the moment, I’m willing not to use my phone to score on the app. I’ll submit it all afterwards, only when I’m back at the club house and can get my brain moving to the next thing.

Afterwards, I went to the office to pick up my new member kit and ended up recounting to the lady at the reception, the story of the history of the old house that used to be on the 7th Hole in the 1880s (a book review that I’ll publish in the next month will go into this story because it is a major and unbelievable coincidence that happened in my life recently). I wrote about it in Eerie Coincidences.

I picked up my member kit today too. It’s all official. I have an engraved bag tag too.

Later, I headed over to my elderly Italian neighbours who are in their mid-80s to see if they needed anything. They recounted the story of who owned our place in the early 1970s and how they planted the paperbark tree and built our garage. This is history of our house that I was unaware about and it made me realise that Andrew and I will be staying in this house until the rest of our days. Again, it pleased me to know that we will be in one place for a long time and in future, be the ones who also share the stories of this neighbourhood to newer families who will move into the area in coming years.

In some weird way, I felt that I’m part – and will be part – of the story of this neighbourhood and our house over the coming years.