I Became an Audience to My Own Life

I’ve been living my life offline.

It is so easy to forget that the online slice we experience of someone is a tiny, curated, intentionally expressed part of them. Meanwhile, whole lives are going on.

Our house has had scaffolding up all summer. The long-awaited big job of painting the outside is done. Yay.

New stock fencing is up at the front of the house. The back fencing is half complete but the fencing team will, hopefully, return.

The disintegrating vintage summerhouse was demolished, and the new year-round cabin bought. It took me a while to source the exact identical paint Swedish cabins are painted with but I did it in the end. That was a mission!

The stage we’re at now: cabin on a pallet in the drive, paint boxes in the drawing room, and me waiting to hear when Steve and team can get what will eventually be a writing cabin up. This plan has been in the making for at least three years so it feels big!

Oh, and we bought a boat to play about in rivers in.

But then the car broke.

So we’ve not used it.

Isn’t that just how life goes? Five steps forward, eight back. I tell myself and the kids there’s next year because, folks, it looks like the peak of this UK summer has crested.

Next.

I’ve been feeling intensely switched off by Substack. The actual place Substack, and my own Substack.

It’s mostly about the way Substack seems to mirror the early days of post-often fervour, part Insta, part old Twitter, with a side of FB. The more I was on Substack, the more I was beginning to lose my grip on what life is truly about.

For me it isn’t about the amount of subscribers, how many likes any comment, essay or Note gets. I’m not pursuing viral posts.

I’m relentless about living a vibrant, multifaceted day to day. That’s about loving and caring and expressing and learning and daring.

Being online is just not real enough to me, as much as I truly do enjoy it.

But there’s a tipping point and I’d tipped over into it. I’d lost enough clarity to make me step back and rethink my relationship to scrolling Notes, commenting on people’s work, checking what’s happening here, etc etc.

Whereas trying to train the sheep in the front field to ask for apples and then fetch them feels vivid and tangible.

And designing some new immersive leadership days for senior teams is honestly an utter blast. Wanging on about them online, not so much.

By the way, I’ve got seven fresh bangers.

One called THE HERD involves twenty sheep, organising said sheep, and mirrors corporate competition in what can only be described as a silly yet deeply impactful day.

Another, THE BRIEF, sounds naughtily simple. Friends, it exposes every nook and cranny of team dynamic possible. But it’s delicious fun too.

Anyway, I’m starting to wang on.

Thing is, I’m incredibly excited by these leadership days.

When we sit thinking about what our readers might like to hear from us, we kinda manufacture a version for them. Or we narrate everything in order to build the like, trust, buy cycle. Either way, we still have to helicopter above our own life in order to choose what to share, what might present us in a decent light, what could be brand cohesive, emotionally resonant, professionally safe.

At this point, do I for instance share that one of my battles at the moment is riding the beast that is triplet teenhood?

I have had to “go to my room” to steady myself more in the last two months than I can remember.

Oh wait.

It was probably when I last was mothering teen daughters.

This batch it’s two boys, one girl, and that dynamic matters. There’s less emotional violence, more physical testosterone know-it-all energy involved. Which naturally my inner feminist is railing at.

Should I simultaneously be present to my own menopausal exhaustion and rage, this teenage boundary-shoving and individuality outbreaking, AND entertain you with witty or cultural critique?

It’s a no can do.

I’m earning the bacon, being present with all the madness, living it full and, when possible, being in touch.

That’s the permission I’m giving myself.

Several Substack educators declare this the number one sin

Before I reoriented myself back to what matters right in front of me offline, I’d been playing about with the BTS of the PWT Substack here.

I had an initial flurry of wowee-this-is-exciting enthusiasm for switching things up. I did all the thinking and planning and then, being human, really, really couldn’t engage with another thing to do with it.

Till now.

I’d like you to imagine the tiniest little drumroll coming from my slice-of-heaven valley on the edge of Exmoor.

Here we go. 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

PWT is about to get redecorated.1

At some point I might drop you a few emails about what’s coming. Like, I’ve never ever sold online courses despite being asked and poked and asked some more to do so.

Now there are two coming out.

MATRIARCH.

THE ME SYSTEM.

I’m not wanting to make myself vomit so I’m not about to write a snappy description of each that is supposed to make you run like the wind to buy them both.

I will just say they’re ridiculously cheap for the flip-the-script thinking and actual practical impact they bring. They interrupt some of the shit women and mothers ingest about how we must be.

I guess they’re a bottled injection of me.

That’s enough of that.

Back to life in front of me.

I’m praying the MOT on our car goes from the big fat FAIL to PASS this week, hoping I can stop deducting £5 per swear word from one triplet3, and secretly imagining just one more sweltering day.

Universe, please.

One more day where we can throw off absolutely everything and soak in the sea.

Well, maybe not everything. I was thinking work stuff and hoovering rather than clothes!

I’ll almost certainly bring you Sue Reed of RIPE in the last-for-now gorgeous Parents Who Create interview. That should drop Wednesday.

Unless that scorcher of a day lands.

In which case I’ll be at the beach trying yet again to hammer the windbreak in and almost certainly chucking it back in the boot of the car because, for whatever reason, that’s just not in my skillbase.

Whatever you get up to this week, I hope your heart sings.

Love,

Danusia x

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