Hello again…

It’s been a minute. More than two years, since I’ve updated this blog in fact, and yet I keep the link to it at the end of all my emails because I want people to understand who I am now. I started this website to be a portfolio of sorts of all the things I do, so that no matter what is said or written about me by anyone else, there is a space here where I can express myself exactly as I am. And I have to ask myself if I insist on keeping the link to this website live, what exactly am I trying to express? The answer for the past couple years is nothing. I’m saying nothing.

In recent times I’ve drawn way back from public life in a very passionate, intentional way. I feel a surge of anger when people prompt me to leave my bubble, and pleasure when I tell them with a furious kind of zeal that I don’t want to. I’m so angry so much of the time. And sad, really sad. My shaman Catherine always says that anger is a cover emotion, so maybe I am just sad. Without going into detail, the past couple years have been emotionally rough. I often feel like I’m living in an upside down world, that the environment flipped one day without warning. Where I used to go places and people would be warm, welcoming and pleased, now wherever I go I am goaded to speak about the most triggering and divisive topics. And anything -a sigh, a grimace, a frantic gesture and an exclamation of ‘I don’t want to talk about this’ - are all interpreted as ignorant, apathetic or ‘inciting violence’. So I’ve been keeping myself to myself. I’m not an antagonistic or confrontational person. I don’t get energised and charged up by public opprobrium. It doesn’t make me yield either and change my mind. It just makes me curl inwards. It makes me want to put on my big black ‘fuck off world’ coat and give everyone the finger. It makes me retreat to my sanctuary of books and cats, where I am perfectly content. Where things are peaceful and calm and intellectually stimulating. Where I can’t hurt anyone and nobody can hurt me.

That’s where I’ve been. In my sanctuary, reading, learning to knit and crochet, sewing, embroidering, thinking, planting, watering, cooking, painting, designing, building. I do still go out because I have to walk the dog and make a living and I’m certainly not about to let all the back muscles I’ve developed for aerial hoop just melt away. So life has actually been very busy and creative, but on a much more private scale. When I think about my career and my relationship to the public, I feel flummoxed, and it takes me a few moments to notice the way my fingernails are digging into the flesh of my palms, or the tension I am holding as I press my lips together, stressed.

But lately things have been shifting. I’ve gone to two public events in the past week. People were generally warm. I wore some nice dresses and met interesting strangers. I had probably an hour long conversation with a lovely vegetarian man had denounced meat as a 9 year old on account of what he witnessed on his family’s farm, and the whole interaction was a pleasure. I’d forgotten conversations with strangers aren’t always, as a rule, awkward. I was goaded to speak about something controversial and I vaguely bumbled my way through an answer and I sat back down at my seat, raging with myself. ‘Say “no comment. No comment!'“ It could be that simple’. I fumed with myself for several minutes knowing full well that, once again, I’d kicked the hornet’s nest I’ve been so carefully sidestepping. ‘Why can’t you just say ‘no comment’?’ I honestly asked myself. Because I have things to say, was the answer that came, ringing clearly in my mind. I have things to say.

This is the internal conflict from which I’m trying to free myself. I don’t want drama and consternation and controversy and conflict in my life. I don’t want to cause damage or harm. I’m a peaceful person. I don’t crave or believe in conflict, but I have so many thoughts, I have big feelings and strong opinions and it’s getting increasingly uncomfortable to muzzle myself for the sake of comfort when I have so much to say.

My mum called me last week and told me she misses my posts on social media, that she no longer feels very connected to me. It made me so sad to hear that, but I tried to explain to her, that it is partly out of a - probably sensible - desire for increased privacy, to protect things that are fragile, and partly because I am hurt, and now I expect blame and vitriol wherever I go, and I don’t want to subject myself to it. She understood my reasons, but pointed out what a pity it was. Then she said something that I’ve been reflecting on all week: ‘It’s just, you were always so enterprising and it’s a shame to see you’re not that way lately’.

Enterprising. The word has so much energy. It took me aback entirely to hear myself described that way, as someone with zest and ideas and an optimistic type of resourcefulness. This word has given me a good hard shake, like a bucket of cold water dumped over me, waking up and reinvigorating my cells. I was enterprising. I am enterprising. I had ideas and dreams and a burning desire to execute them to my specifications, to make beautiful things and get everyone in the room to look.

I think I am ready to come out of my shell, I think. I think I have to accept that to live and breathe as a woman with dreams and desires is to accept that I will do damage somewhere, that it is impossible to live without causing offence or disturbance unless I want to continue living feeling like I’ve wriggled my way into a tightly bound straitjacket. I think I need to breathe and expect to fuck up more. And I need to learn to navigate life by my own inner compass.

The thing about my dark outlook of recent times, is that it’s mine, it’s not the objective truth of what reality has presented me lately. I’ve been to so many countries and rooms and cafes lately where people are smiling and warm and welcoming as they’ve always been. I think my mind got mired in darkness again so I started looking for it everywhere, and it was easy to find. I’m so grateful to everyone I’ve met recently who reminded me that people are kind and compassionate and joyful. I’m grateful to everyone who has extended love during a time when I’ve been very shut down and reluctant to accept it. Thank you for the proof that there are always people who are a pure joy to connect with, for whom it’s worth reaching out.

I’m going to start posting on this blog regularly going forward. I’ve always got lots to share and I’d like to make it a habit. I’m writing a novel at the moment and feeling very vulnerable and ill-equipped for this mission, but I’m determined to push through. The nice thing about having written a book is you can say to yourself in moments of utter despair in front of the blank page, ‘I’ve done this before’. Thank you, past-self, for your ridiculous optimism and bullheaded drive! I would also like to share some craft projects and the joy of making things by hand! And I think in time, when I have worked up more strength and a thicker skin, I will speak my mind more and not continue to cede to the oppressive inner voice that only aims to please.

This post has been very navel-gazey but that’s the truth of where I’ve been; internal, sad, curling inwards, so I’m fine to level that criticism at myself. I hope I can break this cycle now and look up and out more, with hope and hunger. More next week…