The trick is to write this and send it before I
Get tired, or
Chicken out
I’m not sure what I want to achieve here. I’m less interested in being seen with each passing hour. Firstly, people on the internet are mean and I don’t really feel like inviting the evil eye into my life, particularly when my proverbial crops are not exactly flourishing as is.
But the other, realer reason is that it has come to my attention that creative work based directly on my own life, (videos, substacks, etc) that I make with the intention of sharing publicly, don’t actually bring me any closer to myself. If anything, they do the opposite. Not to be all Bo Burnham or whatever, but like… the internet can be kind of bad for us sometimes !!
For a long time I’ve suffered from a mild affliction of not feeling real to myself (maybe we all feel like that) and maybe some of what is compelling to me about enshrining my life in videos and essays and emails and anecdotes is that desire to make evidence, to make it all tangible. But these things don’t make me feel real. I don’t feel intimately connected to my own existence, my own self, when I curate it for the consumption of others. Yet this January, in the bleak-est of bleak midwinters, I have started feeling that intimacy come back, and I guess I want to write about why I think that is. (before I chicken out!!! Let’s go let’s go!)
*
I’m writing this from my childhood bedroom in Dublin. It’s that part of the winter when it gets black at 4pm and the wind and rain burn your face and everyone (everyone) is at least slightly depressed.
2023 was a brutal year in a lot of ways. There were deaths, breakdowns, breakthroughs, health disasters, scares… it was relentless. I came to this year feeling not at all connected to the concept of healing, of self care, of selfhood at all- I feel a little world weary, a little faithless, a little curmudgeonly (an example of the curmudgeonliness: I have been taking the I think I like this little life videos EXTREMELY personally!!! life is not little!!! it’s full of enormous, opera-level tragedy!! )
It may not be reflected in this newsletter (lol) but in real life I am an almost pathologically cheerful person. The kind of person cool protagonists mock in 90s movies because they think anything can be solved with a vision board and “I know just the thing that will turn your frown upside down!”
Normally, when I find myself in a slump for one second, I immediately start planning an exit strategy. A new routine, a new philosophy.
But a few weeks ago my mum and I went for a walk and she said something so wise: “this isn’t a blank slate” she told me “this isn’t a time to rethink everything and make a million new friends and devise some regime. You just need to do some wintering.”
By “wintering” she was talking about Katherine May’s book of the same name.
And so, after a full year without screen-time (an arguably successful experiment I conducted in 2023 which you can read about here), I went back to the very bed where I spent all of those very terrible years of sickness, and quit. I quit all of it.
I quit trying to be better. I quit trying to figure my life out. I quit meditating every day, I quit quitting coffee and I quit quitting sugar (by which I mean- I lived on coffee and little cakes). I quit yoga (mostly) and getting up before midday. I quit not watching tv and I quit positivity. I quit “Reaching out” and I quit “accessibility is vulnerability”. I just quit. (I didn’t quit cardiac rehab though, I don’t fuck around with the heart that shit is scary).
It seems unhealthy or maybe even nihilistic to write- but FUCK did I need to quit. NOT taking care of myself was oddly one of the most… actually rejuvenating things I’ve done in a long time.
After a year of quitting screen time, I curled up in three duvets (my parents house is pretty fucking cold) and watched a gem of a tv show called Ramy.
In the three seasons, we see Ramy (played by Ramy Youssef, also the writer and creator of the show) sort of fleabag around, navigating life and family and religion and love. He’s on a spiritual journey, a journey to find peace and find himself, and embodies all of the flaws, the narcissism and contradictions that that entails.
I thoroughly enjoyed hibernating in this show, forgetting my life, living vicariously in the world Youssef and the cast created. And then, yesterday, I finished the show, and was stopped in my tracks by this line:
I don’t really think I know who I am anymore. I used to try not to think about who I was, I just wanted to think about who I wanted to be. Like, I wanted to be this really good person… and I did everything to do that, but every time I tried to be good I was just worse, because I was never me. I was just being who I thought I was supposed to be. And now I’m… probably a bad person.
The quote doesn’t track to my life one to one, but I see myself so much in him. Especially because, even though I’m not religious (or a fuckboy, for that matter) (I hope?) I followed him through his religious investigations and attempts at piety and salvation with a sort of sad knowing. I guess every time life is hard (which, idk if you’ve noticed from your own experience of human life, is not, like, rare) I start to think about the future. The ideal future. Or perhaps the ideal future self. Who is healthier, sure- but also just better, you know? Wiser and more emotionally intelligent and strong. A better daughter and niece and girlfriend and friend- a better global citizen, a better human person. I recalibrate, I refocus, I make a new path between me and her.
If I practice my meditations and stuff I can be sunny and strong like Hitomi or Thich Nhat Hamh or my aunt Paula (shout out); if I read everything i can be smart enough to write really good books, if I eat well and rest and do everything right all the time I can be a little closer to an able-bodied person and… it goes on. It all just equals being better.
So anyway, yesterday, I woke myself up from my Ramy-hibernation by dragging my sleepy ass to a local cafe and bringing my journal. But I didn’t plan how I was going to “improve” this year- I didn’t make a plan at all. Instead, I wrote about the past five years. I wrote about my memories and all the weird stuff I’ve done and I reflected on when I was happy and what was fun and what was hard and what was sweet. And it almost hurt, to look at it all. But it also felt… intimate. Like I knew myself. Not in a spiritual know-thyself way- but like, that I was someone I knew, like if I saw msyelf on the metro I’d wave. I’d feel safe.
*
For a long time I think I’ve had this fear of “going backwards”. At the beginning of January I was afraid to be sick in my parents house. I love visiting them and staying here-I miss them so much the rest of the year- but being sick here is a different thing. I wanted to frame it as being lucky enough to have a safe, tender place to fall apart for a bit- but it all felt a little… close to the bone. Back when I was deeply unwell and housebound for months and months- that was a dark time. I wanted to get out, to regain the self i felt I’d lost, to be free. I guess a part of me is always afraid of going back to that place.
It’s something underwritten in the vision board doctrine- this sense of shedding old skin, leaving the dark times behind. And don’t get me wrong- of course I don’t want to be that sick for that long ever again. That was awful. But I think there’s a shame component that I have really reconsidered this month. I think I have judged myself for how overwhelmed I was here when I was sick. It sounds wild now to write this down but I think I was pissed at my past self for not being present enough or processing enough… i was annoyed at myself for not self-improving during that time, for not having a spiritual breakthrough- I was annoyed at myself for wintering for so long. But this January I felt more compassionate with that past self. And I showed compassion to my current self. No, not current. Myself. The only one that’s real.
Listen. Unpopular opinion but you ca’t fall in love with a vision board. I am flesh and blood and emotion and tenderness and I am here in the now and I am absolutely fucking fine.
Today I got out of bed and met someone for coffee and then I still had some energy so I went to see my mum in her studio. On the way I sent voice notes to a stranger on the internet who has reached out because she wants to talk about her chronic health stuff with someone who gets it (she has seen my videos). When I got to my mums studio she made me a ginger tea and I helped her with her proposal to the arts council and then I amused us both with a rant that went something like this:
“I’m always aiming for ecstasy, every day!!! I’m always aiming to be at a 10!!! A 10 happiness, a peace 10, a health 10. But you know what ? 2024 is gonna be hard!!! And I’m aiming for a solid 4!!! I’ll take that fucking win!!! I’m going to be FINE this year. A solid FINE. I’ll have really nice coffees. I’ll laugh. I might write something. I’ll make a friend (ONE)!!! if ecstasy finds me, great!!! but that’s none of my fucking business!!!”
I don’t know how to phrase this but like… I feel like trying to be a peace&joy 10 is making me stressed and making me constantly self evaluate, and like… I could enjoy being a four. I could just relax and let it hang.
Let me just love my people and have nice snacks and GET BY, you know?
Anyway, we laughed about this a lot and my mum more or less said she felt the same way. And then I was walking through the sleet in the 4pm darkness in my fabulous coat and all I could think was- why am I always so scared of going backwards? I don’t live in Dublin full time anymore, but I LOVE that winter comes around every year and I get to walk around in the January sleet and get coffees with my family.
And different things are beautiful in different ways. Winter in Ireland is beautiful because the city is cold and I have these nice, real chats, and I isolate myself from my friends our of sheer overwhelm and I get into my cosy bed and I drink too many mochas and I get really sick because of the cold and the mould and I go to bed and I worry and I confront all of those demons but then I see the people i love and the good days come and I feel like I know EVERYBODY and I feel more whole and at home and like i exists and I am okay than ever!
And life in Spain is beautiful in a different way. My health gets better and I can move and I make friends and I can work on the things I care about and I can think about my career and I can drink vermouth- and I feel scared, and I’m an outsider, and I know nobody, and I stumble over the most basic sentences, and I know what it feels like to really be a stranger- and I don’t spend that much time in bed and things happen every day, and sometimes I get sick and I have to ask directions to the hospital, and nobody there knows which of my names is my first name, and I’m very very far from home but I get to recuperate in the sun, and the sun makes it go away faster.
And I used to think every time I drank a mocha in Dublin and it made me high that I would never be sick again. And I used to think when I woke up well in Spain that I would never be tired again. And it was all always “a step in the right direction”, you know? It was always about where I was GOING. But Today as i bounded around Dublin, I knew that the mocha would wear off and that I would go back to bed, and then I would go back to the cafe, and back to bed, and then back to Spain, and then back to January, forever.
And I felt…. More than 4. I felt like I wouldn’t want to progress forever, to cast off everything, to become perfect, to never come back here. To this feeling, to this person, to this weather. I want to always be coming back home to myself.
(barf barf barf- I actually do kinda like this little life)
I guess my goal for this year is…. Well, survive lol. But in a bigger sense, I want to stop trying to become who I think I should be in order to be able to go through life unharmed, and instead just love being who I am, accept the flaws and weakness and like… let it all rock me. Whatever, isn’t that what we’re here for?
This was a really inspiring read, thank you! I love your writing and I really resonated with this flow of thoughts - so beautifully said. I'm often caught up in preparations for the future, I feel such an urgency, to do 'better' etc. I sometimes forget where I am in the present and that being at 4 is ok sometimes, we don't have to operate at full steam all the time. Ye, wow. Lotsa realisations! :)
There are so many ideas here that I want to respond to! First of all re: quitting vision board grind and pathological cheerfulness - yes. You are absolutely fucking fine. I see myself in this, too - I just feel like the default has been to push against a stone for no reason, like push for the most happiness and the best opportunities and the most most most all the time, and that is no way to live life. "Let life rock me" is such a cool way to put it. I read somewhere that in order to write about something significant in life, you have to put up with living through it, and that's been easing my fear of a) big change and b) not living the perfect most peaceful joyful life. I fell prey to pathological cheeriness for so long that I now want to undo the compulsion to "be nice" and to backbend to keep things sunny, so I am all for rants and quitting at this point in time. It's a little scary to see how much I blinded myself to by cutting anything negative out of my attention (especially in my teen years). Now I'm just letting my attention wander where it does and thinking about how to embrace the darkness when I'm pulled there instead of fighting it with every ounce of my being.
And second, re: people on the internet being MEAN and evil eyes - yeah, they are. Ideas of substance get a rise out of people. I haven't experienced this overmuch because I'm a literal mouse and have protected myself by saying nothing at all, but I imagine that I would feel it if I spoke louder (which I want to do). For what it's worth, though, I've enjoyed your reflections and your perspective. I value your writing and the way you express the things you care about. Just wanted to share that there's a friendly eye over here 👋 🧿 instead of an evil eye, since sometimes it's helpful to know there are so many people in your corner. Thanks always for writing!