Loneliness of The Blood

 25 October 2025

Dear Diary,

I always get a little teary on the way to the bloodbank

Kindness, great snacks and staff who look you right in the eye and listen will do that.

Red as a cardinal's cassock, blood leaves me.

One time I gave plasma.

    Felt woozy.

    Insisted I was fine.

    The nurse knew I wasn't.

    They are face whispers.

    Stay she'd said.

And so I did.

    Nurses cared about me.

I cried,

a quiet cry.

Then marvelled at the selection of snacks on offer. 

I make a morning of it now.

    Mitigating loneliness

            One 

            Drop 

            At a time.

On the way to the blood bank this morning 

At the intersection

A woman I once knew 

Passed me in her car

    We were friends.

Every day I wake up thinking

    How is this possible that we are no longer friends..

    Middle East, North, West & South

Ruby, Scarlett, Crimson, Vermillion

Blood flows red as a cardinal's cassock

    Into rivers and seas.

I pause at the traffic light

Wanting to ASK

I am on my way to the blood bank

If you needed blood

Would you ASK who donated this?

Because I know that we are a match.

AUTHOR COMEDIAN MC
JUSTINE SLESS
COMEDY STORE

Zymurgy The Last Word in the Dictionary

 

zymurgy /ˈzʌɪˌməːdʒi/ noun the study or practice of fermentation in brewing, winemaking, or distilling.

Boys 

Brew wars

Blood Ferments 

&

Loss is distilled

Through the narrow neck

Of the

Demijohn

AUTHOR COMEDIAN MC
JUSTINE SLESS
COMEDY STORE

Late to The Party

 

Dear Diary,

I am late to the party.

The woman sitting opposite me, furrowed brow, hair that could use a good cut and tissue box between us.. listens.

I tell her the story of 'that job.' The one where I felt nauseous every day, a head in a vice kind of feeling, paralysed by mental overload, unfathomable spread sheets, unable to undertake rudimentary office tasks with ease; unable to see errors in documents, incapable processing what is being said in the endless meetings and transposing those words into minutes and into columns. 

Unable to function.

Unable to pull on all my usual techniques of navigation, glide easily from the macro to the micro and distill information into salient points, unable to pull on my greatest asset - my charm, my ability to read a room within seconds and navigate incredible outcomes and events.

Swilling in disorientation, unable to apply the usual of approach of being able feel the end game on a cellular level and reach the goal effortlessly without having to say how I did it, knowing the navigation points without needing to name them.

I am late to the party.

Very late.

Failed exams again and again.

I can't spell many words.

I don't understand grammar.

I learned to write properly when I was 15.

Adapting to the right hand world in a left handed way.

I can not remember names.

I can not write down phone numbers without hearing it 3 or 4 times.

I can not contain more than one instruction when being given directions..

And I can not read large tracts of text on screens.

BUT

I have a super strength emotional intelligence and empathy that is off the charts.

I can see a suburb from a great height and know how to weave in opportunities for connection through government and organisations, without being able to say how I can do that.

I see and feel texts in shapes, particularly novels or essays.

I find creative approaches to everything, and that is everything to me.

I can cook with a finely tuned instinct, no recipes, just feeling the way the ingredients meld.

I get a strong feeling in my left hand that indicates there is flow and assurance that the desicion I am about to make is the right one.

I can distill large tracts of text into a few words.

I write creative works that are short and to the point.

The focus of all my work is on doing good work, creating connections, empowering others.

*

The woman sitting opposite me, in a small room on St Kilda Road, pushes the tissue box closer to me and asks..

Has it every occurred to you that you are probably dyslexic? 

The rush of relief comes strong and fast.

*

I'm sitting in the classroom knowing that I will fail at everything..

A sister taunts me for not being able to spell.

A workplace admonishes me for not being able to take minutes in columns and for not being able to see errors in all that I have written.

 *

I want to write I really do.

I sit opposite my writing mentor back in 2016..squirming.. I tell them, I want to write - but I can not spell and I don't understand grammar or tense. My head is bowed with shame.

You can tell a story, that's all that matters. The rest of it an editor will fix, the mentor reassures me.

*

The dictionary definition of dyslexic surely must be

To carry shame, about the things you can't spell.

*

I am late to the party.

I write some stories.

I complete a masters by research in creative writing.

I publish two books.

The anxiety that there may be errors in each book is nauseating.

*

I find a podcast, Lessons in Dyslexic Thinking

I listen to episode after episode as I walk for miles, stopping sometimes,  tears of relief springing when I hear famous people talk about their dyslexia.

The host describes dyslexic thinking, and astonishingly declares in every episode, that being dyslexic is a super power and employers value dyslexic traits.

*

I am 58.

I am late to the party.

I crank up the music

And rise up from the mantle of shame...

JUSTINESLESS.COM
I TEACH WRITE PERFORM STAND-UP COMEDY & CREATIVE WRITING 

WORKSHOPS BOOKINGS HERE
BOOKS SOLD HERE 

The Talking Booths

 

When I was a kid I used to love taking a pile of pennies and going into a phone box to call cousins and ask if I could visit them.

The smell of a phone box, like damp cardboard.

Massive phone books, the A-Z of everyone who ever was. 

An encyclopaedia of names, we were all there.

A mess of brown bubbles, where someone tried to burn a hole in the window of the phone box. 

The phone books, crumpled and curled at the edges, like a thousand hands have searched for a mam they haven't seen for years, a cousin gone missing or maybe even a child they gave away.

The phone box was a whole world , away from the elements. 

Breath hot against the mouthpiece. 

I never thought about germs that could be harboured there.

Over time phone boxes were decommissioned.

*

In Australia there is an occasional hooded booth, where you can make free calls.

I was with a friend recently, waiting for a take away, they 'dared me' to make a prank call from a phone box. 

I rang my daughter, put on a silly accent and asked if they had ordered a vindaloo curry. For a moment it was just us caught up in the silliness of the prank, oddly exhilarating. 

*

Across the world pillar box red phone booth are reconditioned, made a little larger, a tiny table, two chairs. 

A simple instruction, JUST TALK. 

The only sign required.

The phone box becoming TARDIS like in its potential.

*

I read and re read Shrill Notes by a loud woman, passages about rape jokes told in bars fuelling the greater fire.. 

The man who trolled Lindy West ended up talking to Lindy. He changed. Lindy changed. 

*

Wars rage.

The world fragments again and again.

Before another missile is fired. 

Can leaders please make their way into a phone booth.

& 

JUST TALK

.

*

Job Interview Hack

 

A federal MP once described me as

'The James Bond of Community Workers.' 

I work with stealth.

I am fearless.

I trade in connection.

I hold a multiplicity of skills and bring each to the fore as required.

I can sit with a federal minister and advocate for change.

Or teach rooming house residents stand-up comedy, giving voice to the voiceless.

Years of writing and performing stand up comedy means that I am concise and decisive, in comedy every word matters.

I flow easily between the macro and micro.

Watching an audience respond to material, how it lands, where it can go and what needs work is a skill I apply easily to the workplace.

I bring wit and wisdom.

"You do a lot," I often get told..

It makes sense to me, all of it.

Social impact, an author, a humour academic - my area of research is humour as a power construct in the wider gender-based violence lens. 

I teach stand-up comedy enabling, fearlessness, resilience & connection through comedy. 

In job interviews I have learnt to apply the hack..

Fit in Before You Stand Out.

When I teach comedy 

I apply the hack..

Stand Out Before You Fit In.

justinesless.com

 

Diary of an NDIS Worker - countless days

 Dear Diary,

The last two weeks have been impossible - have had so many cancellations that my income has dropped to crazy low levels...

This is no longer sustainable.

I am also doing stand-up comedy workshops. https://justineslesscomedyworkshops.bigcartel.com/product/comedy-crash-course_ripponlea

Not feeling funny at the moment though.

Diary of an NDIS Worker Day 146

 7 April 2025

Dear Dairy,

The thing I love most about this work is that there are no meetings, I am never at the computer screen and that the accountability is way easier than a funding agreement.

I have enough work. The energy output can be tiring at times. Shifts can get cancelled and new shifts can be added.

C is still a constant - we are working on a creative project now - which gives great insight into her personality and process.

I shop for a lady - I am the only person she sees all week. We go through her list - it matters the type of bread I buy and the size of the potatoes I bring back too her.

I cook for a woman and her two kids. The work is good.

I see a woman who has a dog, we talk about food a lot -they have tried many diets. 

I am working with a woman who is writing a book. 

Another client we do gardening together, I am jealous of how great her compost is!

Nice to be working with care, connection, compassion and no tariffs.