False starts & new ones, too

I wanted to begin by showing you a screenshot of letters I’d begun writing and then, for some reason stopped:

The paid option was a default that was toggled for posts when I did have the option for paid subscribers. It didn’t seem quite so reasonable to keep that going, especially because my presence has been sporadic. Yes, there were things in my life both interior and exterior that had been plaguing my :) sense :) of :) expression, but that didn’t mean I should really offer subscriptions to essentially the same free content I’d been writing, especially when I couldn’t even be super regular with it.

Anyway, here’s an attempt at regularity. Two letters per month, as promised.

It didn’t seem really lofty at the time, but obviously, life gets in the way. And, like, I didn’t really want to keep regurgitating the same offering of “hello, I’m still here!”

The truth is, I’ve just not been “feeding myself” as many creative practitioners like to call going to galleries, museums, watching theatres, and so on and so forth. I have been in the middle of reading books that are not from The Wheel of Time — so, a bit premature to write about them — and I have been working on just putting things that are a) still what I would have written anyway, but b) adds some sort (any sort!) of value into people’s lives. Especially when everything else is kind of a little bit crazy, and when there is so much noise in the world.

The fact that this meme from ten years ago is still resonant and accurate makes me feel kind of miserable.

The comic is by artist, KC Green, and if you didn’t know or knew but forgot, it actually extends to four more panels.

If you follow my on Instagram (which, I feel like is how most of you have found this place anyway), you’ve probably noticed that I’ve really leaned into still yapping, but perhaps with a bit more direction. And helpful things to offer.

Maybe it’s a bit icky or cringey — I’ve actually asked a few people close to me if it is, lol — but this is actually sort of me warming myself up to some dreams I’ve had of teaching. I think I have had the impression that if something doesn’t provide a skill that’s actionable, and truthfully, financially viable in the future, then it’s not really worth exploring. But the better part of me knows that that’s simply not true.

When I first moved to London, I took so many courses. A lot of them were so I could learn stuff: bookbinding, Japanese woodblock printing, darning and visible mending, risograph printing, black and white film development, letterpress printing, bundle-dyeing, etc. etc. However, I do remember now that one of the first classes I signed up for was Sophia Kosmaoglou’s Art & Critique course. This was essentially an extension of the MRes I was taking at the time, but slightly more obviously applied to the realm of art.

I know not everyone does, but I do love learning, and I’ve always felt like I should have been a teacher. Most of my charts (natal chart, saju, MBTI, etc. etc.) kind of already point to that direction.

When I was asked as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, I never said writer (even though I kept writing stories and my autobiography, lol) or artist (even though I grew up pretty much fated to take this path). I had said I wanted to be a teacher.

I have taught a few times in my life: Sunday School (for real), a lecturer at my university (for real, and also I was not asked back), some workshops here and there for bookmaking. I’ve been asked by people to teach them stuff, and I’m not trying to qualify myself for this new direction I’m very slowly going into. I’m really not. I think I’m writing these out to allow myself to see this future for me in a way. Not a complete pivot, but just a pretty much natural extension of my practice that addresses a lot of the things I feel like I could build upon more.

I’ve really been thinking about how to make my social media usage make more sense and be more aligned with what I believe in as a person and as someone who makes things, sort of as a compulsion on necessity, to be honest. I know not everyone is creatively-inclined (or so they think!), but learning to truly look at something, to pay it more than enough attention, and to alchemise some sort of dialogue or something can be so powerful. In the midst of all of… this.

I’m definitely guilty of seeing art as something that is not “necessary” and like, if you want to look at it granularly and start comparing it obviously doesn’t serve the same function as medicine or public service. But it does make life better, whatever shape “art” takes for you.

I’ve always shared aspects of my life ever since I found out what a blog was. Some may say, at times, I’ve overshared. But I guess I wanted to recalibrate that as a more directional and relational sharing, rather than continuing on this thread of (I want to say, occasional) navel-gazing, overly interior, inward-facing word vomit. You know?

So that’s where I’m at.

I’ve been trying to write more regularly, and edit, even, rather than opening up this window of a blank page, making sense of my thoughts and feelings in a way that is somewhat more processed when these letters come out to you. Although, admittedly, I am just writing on the Substack platform as we speak.

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In the spirit of value-sharing and to thank you if you’ve read this far into it, here are some things I’ve enjoyed in the last few weeks:

• Widow’s Bay

  I’ve missed Matthew Rhys so much, and he is just so good in this. It’s set in a small island town where creepy shit happens, but it’s also so fucking funny. We recently watched The Wicker Man (1973!) and a lot of elements and situations reminded me of it (compliment).
  

• Battle of Fates
  I’ve never really succeeded in convincing my husband to watch Korean dramas with me, but he loves a Korean survival show. Battle of Fates has the absurd premise of making tarot readers, saju readers, shamans (!), and yes, even a foot reader, duke it out to be named the best fate reader. I went away from it, looking for a saju reading for my birth chart, and I’m still reeling from just how wildly specific and accurate it is.

• Survivor 50
  Filed under things that aren’t art but feel like art. I’ve caught up, and I’m upset, but this was genuinely one of the more enjoyable “new era” Survivor seasons. The celebrity “cameos” and insertions are super random and funny, but ASIDE FROM ALL OF THAT, wow. I’ve actually changed my opinion about some of the older players in that I hated them a lot and now I really love them. (To Survivor fans, any guesses who?)
  

• Below Deck Down Under and Summer House
  I mean, you can’t be reality T.V. trash and not be tuning into at least one of these shows. For BDDU, it has been really nice to see Daisy be competent and authoritative in a way that I never felt like I saw she was on Below Deck Sailing Yacht. Cons: incompetent social media plants, genuinely strange dynamics across the board, hearing Chef Ben’s laugh. For Summer House, it’s been nice to see Carl’s sober journey (!), the Mia-KJ-Ciara trifecta, and Kyle’s hilling journey. Cons: hearing West’s infantilisation of the English language, seeing Amanda cosplay as West, Ciara’s lack of self-love.

  A caveat: I have flown in a rage during both shows. For BDDU, mostly because of Mike and early Alesia. For Summer House, just from watching the episodes in tandem with news sources (i.e. TikTok and Instagram reels).

• making my little carousels
  I’ve often written long-form where it didn’t need to be long-form, so this has been a really lovely creative exercise for me, both in distilling what I want to say (unlike here), and arranging them in a structure that is easier to digest and refer back to.

  

  And, obviously ~external validation~ is never the goal for these things, but I’m taking all the saves and shares as proof that they’ve been helpful for a number of people, which really makes me glad.

• My Traveler’s Company Notebooks
  So one of the things that I’ve been doing in the morning is sitting down and taking online classes. After a strange period where I had a hard time reincorporating the regular size TN notebook into my system, it finally clicked for me and that’s where most of my course notes go. Which is amazing and cool because I’ve had this black standard TN for 10 (!) years (proof, lol) and it’s still lovely and really held up.

  
  I have a post here from the end of last year about my writing stack, but a mid-year update of how I actually have been using them is in the works.
  

• Simon Critchley, Mysticism

  I needed a break from The Wheel of Time and picked up a different fiction book that I was mostly enjoying and then sort of stopped enjoying, and so now here we are. What I like about Mysticism is that Critchley approaches this notion of the sublime and devotion often associated with religion in an everyday sort of philosophical way. I’m only about a quarter through, so I’ll check back in, but so far, it’s making my brain work in a way that has been enjoyable rather than taxing.

Not to put the cart before the horse (or as my freshman uni professor put it “put Descartes before the horse”), but she (i.e. me!) is so back.