There's something intrinsically Australian about a bunch of brothers and school friends getting together as a band at a very young age and all pulling together as a band at a very young age and all pulling together as mates to make something happen.
I was acting since I was a kid, going to drama classes and being involved in every school play and musical that I could get my hands on, so it was something that was a part of me from a very early age.
From the age of four, I loved ballet and tap. I was in the school band, the choir, and all my school plays.
I did school plays, and then, at the age of 18, I applied to drama school in London, and I got in. I've been very lucky that no one so far has stopped me from being able to live my dream - the industry or my parents.
I was writing from a very, very early age. My father used to write. He died early, and my mother was a schoolteacher, so my academic background from childhood is a strong one, a good one.
I read. It's also nice for me to get involved in schoolwork, which is a totally different world than acting. It makes me feel like I am doing things that normal people are doing at my age.
For chat-room tyros who expect to make their first million day-trading by age 27, paging through the Sunday newspaper with a pair of scissors just to save a couple of cents on Cheetos seems so, well, old economy.
When I was a little kid I used to play with guys twice my age, so, I was the last one picked, so if I picked I knew that I had to get the ball to the scorer if I wanted to stay on the court, so that was pretty much my job.
When I was a kid, there was unhappiness in my family - was dealt with partly by escaping to television. And from a very early age, for whatever reason, I became scornful and resistant to and angry about that. And some other time in my life, I realized that there's a lot I loved in television.
It's not easy to reach the summit of your career by the age of 24 - and for the years after to be a humiliating scrabble downhill.
As soon as you reach a certain age, you're thrown onto a kind of mental scrap heap.
Sometimes I think there ought to be a coat of arms for all of us who listen to Oberst's band Bright Eyes past the age of twenty-six. 'With Love and Shame,' the motto would read. The handwriting would be the cramped and tortured scribble of a high school freshman.
And from the first time I picked up a basketball at age eight - I had a lot of difficulty when I first picked up a basketball, because I was a scrub - there were things that I liked about it.
Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.
The sea change that has come is the information age. We don't have to just read The New York Times anymore. We can pull up something on the Internet and get any news that we like.
The thing is, I really can't relate to anyone my own age. Not in a superior way - an inferior way, if anything. Socially, I have no idea what my friends are talking about. I don't listen to any new music. I feel very secluded.
What a terrible thing it would be to be the Pope! What unthinkable responsibilities to fall on your shoulders at an advanced age! No privacy. No seclusion. No sin.
Disruptive innovation is competitive strategy for an age seized by terror.
I feel more grounded and more settled than I ever have. I don't know whether that is to do with my spirituality or whether I'm wiser about life, but as you age you become more selective about what you listen to, devote your time to and who you hang out with.
Self-acceptance has been a blessed by-product of middle age.
