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Being human
This week, like everyone else, I watched the astronauts. And there was something weird, something I couldn’t put my finger on for a while. I felt an absence, with every news item I saw about these 4 incredible people in a little rocket box far, far away from earth. Then I realised what it was. It was the absence of dread.
And not only that, it was joy. This weird light feeling, it was joy from the news! Just an absolute antidote to god knows how many years of doom and stress and the constant idiocy of dullards battering our ears and brains. Just lightness! And celebration! Intelligence and achievement and a cute fluffy moon floating around in the background along with a jar of Nutella. I forgot that news could be good. Along with millions, it opened my eyes to hope again.
And wow, being a human. Awe! Joy! Adventures! All these things we can feel and create and make for others. Imagination and problem solving, peace and collaboration and things in common. All things that are dampened by constant negativity of news cycles. We end up feeling that everything is bad, all the time. Because everything we hear is bad, all the time. Imagine if the news was based on hope? Imagine going to the moon all the time! Imagine the joy of the NASA/Hail Mary crossover. Amaze amaze amaze!
Watching these amazing people, not just in the little space rocket box thing but at the controls, in NASA, people loving what they do and working hard at it, for the love of it. I felt this weird lightness, an inspiration and a realisation. I work hard at what I do and guess what, I’m not bad at it. This week I sat and actually believed I was pretty cool, actually. Research, finding stuff out no-one has found out before? Being endlessly curious, just like humans are supposed to be. Expanding into that curiosity and letting it fill every little cell in your body. We can do so much. We collaborate and cooperate and build together. And we feel joy and sadness and regret and grief and awe and something inexplicable about being conscious and not even knowing what that really is. All on this little planet, all together.
What if this was the news. Well I think it will be my news. What have we found out this week? How were we amazed? What took our breath away? What made us cry, what made us draw a breath in wonder, what made us stop and pause and be in absolute wonder of the joy of being human?
Let’s make this the normal. It’s time.
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Rambling Sunday thoughts
Its easter sunday and everything is calming down after a raging storm last night. Shops are shut, mostly, and there is that kind of freedom where you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything and life is just nice. Having had a living room easter egg hunt, eaten an epic hot cross bun, and saved a bumblebee from Storm Dave, we’re now just having one of those days with no plans, listening to the remnants of the gale and sharing memes. Occasionally, hail will appear from nowhere, then disappear just as quickly. The wind is still gusty but no longer howling down the chimney or rattling the window panes. There’s another day of the long weekend left and everything is good. We even found a toad yesterday in the garden.
It’s nice, just existing. Uni is having one of those frustrating times, trying to finish things, start things, plan things. There’s a lot of waiting, which isn’t my strong point. It’s nice just to let it go for the 4 days of the long weekend, and immerse myself in little bits of life: breakfast out, coffees, finishing my pile of half-read books, getting through a few saved substacks. Duct-taping the greenhouse in advance of the storm. Moving plant pots and garden chairs out of the wind. Feeling smug at the lack of chaos the next day.
I get very caught up in uni at the moment. I am a very all or nothing person and forget to make time to just exist, sometimes. I have great enthusiasm for immersing myself entirely in things that are so urgent and need to be done immediately, apart from they aren’t and don’t. I’m trying to relax more and calm down. Find time for things that are fun. But I love academia at the moment. I love the relentless grind and freedom to choose what and when and why, and I know I have huge capacity for massive amounts of work when it’s fun and interesting to me. I’m sure that changes when you actually get employed. But I’m happy working at a super intense level. I forget that not everyone is the same as me. I fall into a focus hole and it’s hard to see outside of it. I’m trying to chill out a little, but embrace the love of it. Not balance, but maybe a little more recognition of what’s needed to maintain the capacity. Stopping, sometimes at least. Walks. Trying to remember to do some hobbies. Pulling myself out the focus-hole!
Another thing on my mind is the hosting renewal for this blog. Every year, I tell myself if I haven’t done much then I’ll let it go. But every year, when it comes around, I just can’t. Right now, I don’t have much brainpower to add to this space, save a few odd thoughts that occur to me sporadically. But the plans I had for it haven’t gone anywhere. I still think small, quiet corners of the internet are needed. I’d like to keep a small space for myself and my brain and for other people to drop in now and then and feel the same. But there is some thinking to do. It’s not cheap, and I’m not making the most of it. But maybe it’s worth it for potential. For algorithm freedom. For pottering.
So with pottering in mind, I’m off for some more sunday rambling. Some soup. And maybe a creme egg 🙂
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British Summer Time
Having spent the morning raging against the powers that be for liberating an extra hour from me, I am slightly mollified by the fact that it is actually almost lunch time, a pleasant surprise and a slight bonus of the interference with the way time works that sends me into week-long jetlag every single year. Honestly, I hate when the clocks change, especially when an hour is missing and somehow I’m already behind even more than usual. But the lure of an early lunch is potentially making up for it. Slightly.
Of course, this first day of BST is full of torrential rain, gales, and that UK slate-grey sky. I’m inside, with a hat, and a blanket, and a coffee, and the heater angled so that the blanket makes a little warm bubble in which I’m luxuriating. There is relaxing Sunday music on the speaker that I can’t really hear over the hammering raindrops on the roof. A true early spring Sunday.
Bonuses of the season are starting to abound, though. My collection of acorns found in various pockets throughout the winter and planted into a herd of cottage cheese pots have started to grow. A tiny forest of oak trees, filled with potential. Bee seeds found in the bottom of the seed box and optimistically sprinkled into some mud have actually sprouted. Forced hyacinths, of which only one came out at Yule, have decided that spring is definitely a better option and are resplendent on the garden table, flinging heady scent into the air and glowing with colour. Tiny blossoms frill and flit on the cherry tree. Bees bumble and hum in the willow. And with the shifting of the entirety of time itself, it may even stretch to being slightly light on the horizon come 9pm. All good things.
We went to see ‘Ryan Gosling in space’ this week, and I went in entirely blind, not knowing that the film was also a book and having seen zero trailers. Safe to say we had a great time and now can’t stop saying “amaze amaze amaze” and thumbs-downing everything. We got those seats that recline, had a coffee, and felt very boujie. Would recommend.
Last week was one of those weeks where the outlook calendar is full of different coloured blocks and weaving in between them all is like playing Tetris. But I still managed to get outside and do a pokemon go route each day, which I’ve been trying to do for about 3 months straight at this point. Consistency isn’t my strong point. However, it is now done, and the bonus being one more level up, so am feeling a bit happy about that. Almost 10 years in to this game and I think am just playing out of spite at this point, but got to take the wins! Also the relentless university grind continues, but I managed to add a few thousand words to another few thousand words, have many meetings, and interspersed all that with breakfasts and noodles with friends and a look round a refurbished building, so all in all a good week.
This week’s calendar is deliciously and suspiciously empty. I am intending to fill it with spring things in between the relentless word count grinding. For now though, it is hour-early lunch time and some cold leftover noodles await. Happy spring!
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The rush
Oh my goodness the sun. Actual warmth. Birdsong and flowers and sky stretching relentless blue. Casting off the winter coat with trepidation. And then the absolute joy of realising that feeling, that it is warm enough to continue ambling on with that coat slung over your arm, even sleeves rolled up with pale forearms drinking in the rays. The dizzy lightheadedness as blood fizzes and pops with something weird, something unexplainable, but then you put your finger on it, it’s happiness, and the pure simple joy of being alive in the spring. Breathing deep lungfuls of air that tastes like possibility. Smelling hints of those longer days, light into the night, deliciously close now. The deep buzz of a bumblebee and you realise how you missed the insect cacophony through the winter, that one joyous moment satisfying a yearning you didn’t even realise. Colour bursts from dormant bulbs and your eyes relax and settle into the season, instead of straining for a hint of anything other than grey. You feel light. The best months are coming.
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Reawakening
Birdsong sweetly finds its way into my dreams, on a breeze through the window left ajar through the night. Half closed eyes and that hint of spring in my nostrils. Flowers opening. Bees sleepily visiting, waking from long winter hibernations, a lone buzz on a cool sunny morning. Stepping outside, feet bare on freezing flags, but squinting against the sun and feeling hope on the wind.
This spring is pulling me forward, one step in front of the other, quickening from the doldrums of last year. I broke connection with the land and space around me over those months. Retreat, stillness, languishing in some unknown torpor. I stayed in and didn’t walk the land. Rhythms of water and moorland beat unheard. I slowed, silenced, stayed away. I drew into myself, and didn’t know why. But now this spring unfurls me, and I feel like stretching to the sky.
It was observation, watching, waiting for the future to pull me forward. Time weaver, tired from straddling the past and present, the raging ocean, the dark whirlpool of memory. But after the storm there is calm. In the moment we may not know why. But last year I finally trusted the process. My world shrank and helpless, I let it. In that surrender there is healing.
I blink in the bright light, and true, 12 months mostly indoors will do that. I feel a pull to the land once more, walking my old paths, following the old ways back to something that is me but newer. With the rising sun comes a relentless possibility, and small smile to the sky, that first ray of light after a long winter. I feel the awakening in my cells, in my soul. I breathe in and fill my lungs with that fresh, timid air of the first days of the changing season.
The darkness was needed, the months away from the land, the breaking of a connection so it can grow anew. Isolation, time away, space to process and trust and surrender to the turn of the earth. But there was no nourishment, no soul-searching, no rest. I ran myself down, working too hard, losing myself in scrolling, spending agonising hours inside my mind in spirals and twists and turns. It taught me what I didn’t want. And in turn, all the truth remains. The storm retreats. Everything is shiny and new, ready and waiting.
I raise my arms and welcome in the spring.
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Stepping forward
It’s somewhat of a introspective time of year, maybe fuelled by the endless grey clouds and rain we’ve been having here in the UK. It sort of sends you inwards, when there’s not much changing outside. I feel as though something is ending and something else is waiting to start, but I’m not too sure what. Coming to the end of my studies, my mind is on the future, some sort of gainful employment maybe, at least some sort of way to make a living that’s fulfilling, fun and interesting.
I’ve been looking back at the cycles in my life over these last 4 decades, and it all seems a little like start and dead end. Re-start and another dead end. Switch and start and dead end again. I’ve felt myself viewing my working life as a series of endless failures over the years, even looking at myself as an endless failure. I couldn’t work out why I couldn’t follow the perfect progression of those around me.
I couldn’t stick with one job, one trajectory. I admit, being in my 40’s now and looking at careers of those around me, there’s some regret that I didn’t ‘stick it out’ in one of those jobs I hated, follow the promotion trail. I sometimes find it hard comparing myself to others, feeling I should be a head of something, a director of something else, a manager of somewhere by now. But I left everything I started. Over the last few years though, I have recognised some kind of pattern. I’ve found in these pattern there are clues. And in these clues are answers. And in answers, there is positivity.
With each of those inevitable, wry aftershocks that come with late-diagnosed neurodiversity, a few more crusty layers fall away, revealing a kind of tentative truth underneath. A hint of gold shining in the rubble. It just takes a bit of digging.
Everything reaches an end, where somehow, I have to change. I’ve felt like it’s just a dead end over and over, to be honest. Why couldn’t I stick with one thing? But I’ve started to realise, dead ends are my phoenix.
I start, and then after a while, it is time to end. Looking at it with the knowledge I have now, of course it works like this. I feel now like it couldn’t work any other way. There’s quite a bit of comfort in that. Having an explanation is the first step of a new plan, I feel. This plan also sounds like a challenge. And that is fun in itself…
After a few years doing something the same, every day, the dopamine runs out, the fun is over, the achievement is achieved. I have been ‘good enough’. The chapter closes, and a new one begins. My brain wants to break free and follow excitement. So is the way. Small cycles, and longer ones. They run concurrently, always looping, always starting and ending.
Society values predictability, stable linear trajectories. When you show up with a CV with a good chunk of semi-successful-but-not-quite jobs listed, with no coherent thread of promotions running through it, it’s met with a grimace and offers to tailor it into something more palatable. I saw myself as a failure that kept hitting a brick wall. But of course I did.
I straighten up a little and look back with clear eyes. I fought and fought and pushed myself past the natural end of everything I ever did. I got burnt out, I got ill, I got depressed. I couldn’t understand why I was so good and then suddenly, I wasn’t. Everything has ended in some sort of burnout and I couldn’t see why. I thought I just wasn’t cut out for success, as I defined it then.
But, and I whisper it, because it is still a new revelation and kind of precious, I can suddenly see it. I got bored. The dopamine ran out. For me, it truly explains why I’ve gone down in flames so many times. Pushing to stay consistent when every part of my brain has given up and just wants difference, excitement and novelty. High stress, low reward, no freedom, many rules, rigid time, hardly any praise. Monotony. No opportunity for ideas or creation. The surefire, 100% successful ingredients for burnout. Of course!
The slog to the top isn’t interesting to me. The reward at the end of a long, long task? I just don’t care. Is the thing I’m doing fun? Then I’ll be amazing at it. As soon as it stops being fun, or challenging, or interesting – I’m right out. It could be a billion pound job at the end of it and nothing on earth would get me there. It could be a career trajectory to be the strategic director of actual Earth, but if there wasn’t a fun path to getting there, I’d say see you later mate. I think I’m making peace with that.
I’m motivated by praise, problem solving, new things, connections. Things where I can win, things where I achieved, where I want to push myself and have freedom to put new ideas in place, to create things, to just do stuff fast. It’s true, praise lights up my dopamine connections like nothing else. I love stuff that is challenging, and finding a way through the challenge and feeling like I’ve won. I love interesting things. I can jump about between unrelated tasks endlessly and get them done incredibly well in record time, if there’s a bit of panic, chaos and freedom attached. Little cycles, within bigger ones.
As for the bigger ones, the ones that stretch over years, well. They come to an end, too, if there is not enough variety, not enough incentive, not enough freedom to stretch out and go full galaxy brain. It’s ok. For me, it’s natural. It’s inevitable. I think of the environments I worked in previously, and that ‘aha’ moment is almost delicious.
So, 7 years into my foray into academia, I’m feeling a little apprehensive. A year before I hand in my thesis, I’m running on fumes and spite like most final year doctoral students, determined to try and finish one damn thing in my life, but slightly worried about what comes next. Do I want to fit myself into that academic structure? Just how much room is there to create something that is sustainably interesting? Is there a trajectory with enough momentum and space to keep me going? Is there glory on tap?
I would love to carry on learning, discovering, researching. The freedom of academia is something I’ve never seen in any other job, yet at the same time the entrenchment of structure is deep and very resistant to change. But there has been space to spin an entire dinner service of plates, follow research rabbit holes, push myself to do more than I ever thought. I’ve actually thrived here.
If I choose to try and carry on, at least my eyes are open to how my brain thrives – and I know that if the cycle ends, it is a natural end, and not because I have failed. Having compassion for all those past endings gives me strength to face the possibility potential of a new one, and the courage to change things that aren’t working to things that do. A recent conversation described it as lily-pad working. Hopping happily from lily to lily, all within a pond. I love that.
So I know if it doesn’t work out, I can make peace with thriving non-linearly, and hop and shimmy sideways into whatever else is on the horizon, head over heels.
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Unsettlement
Do you ever feel that something is shifting? Like you are on one side of a veil, about to step through, but to what, you don’t know. A subtle shift in the wind, a smell hinting on the breeze, a sudden illumination that suddenly highlights a whole different path. Like a diver tiptoeing to the edge of the high board. Toes curled over the edge, arms stretched above. That perfect moment of stillness. The held breath, the clear exhale. That infinitesimal pause, the pinpoint before, and then…
The pause amplifies. It wraps around me in its stillness, the infinite and the instant, endless depth and the deep black potential, waiting for an atom to shift the balance. What I saw as stagnation is instead a building, a deer gathering energy before taut muscles spring forward in a leap. The tightening of an elastic band before a snap. Feeling the pause, feeling the ache, the yearning for movement that is almost painful. I want to know what is on the other side. I want clarity, explanation, boxes, linearity. Instead, I teeter on the liminal.
I look back at cycles repeating themselves over and over and finally realise I need to let go. I feel the constant strive for something that fits in that neat box, for something tactile, solid, defined. The endless wish for that definition to fit in. But the realisation is I’m not made for linearity. I didn’t trust my tangentiality, but I think that’s what is on the other side. A linear road leading me to this veil. Through that doorway, the final freedom to bend and change and whisper on the winds. The expectation of completement, of one track progression, all the things I’ve bent and fit myself into over 4 decades. You do this, then this, then this, then this. Tick, tick, tick.
tick.
tick.
Standing on that high board, I open my eyes. Ready to dive.
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Imbolc, momentum and the clearing of the grey
It’s Imbolc and the 784 days of January are finally over. The flu has finally departed, aided by copious amounts of sleep, paracetamol and wonderful care packages from lovely friends. The endless blanket of grey cloud, damp, miserable and all-pervading has started to shift, with the wan sun peeking through and hope on the horizon.
Sleep, my goodness I have slept. But in winter, this hibernation, I tried not to fight it this year and am averaging a good 10 hours per night. I need it. Healing darkness, slow recovery, and expanding out into the January gloom. And as I slept, the world quietly moves on under my feet. The first sunny day for weeks and we finally ventured outside to the moors, faces turned to sunlight and surprise at bulbs breaking the surface. Whilst we’re still and resting, the world still turns.
The Hellebore is tentatively out, a few small flowers blooming amongst the stiff brown twigs of winter. Goldfinches pick through the mass of teasels. Teeny shoots of green poke up in random flowerpots. I can’t remember what grows in any of them and spring always brings a nice surprise! I can’t wait for that huge, heady, energetic rush of late spring. But for now, I sense that tipping point approaching. It’s still a season for rest. But seeds can be planted, physical or metaphorical. There is movement on the horizon, finally. And soon, summer!
There’s a sense of a shift as we potter about our daily lives. We’ve taken electricals to the local repair café to be fixed, we’ve painted and moved furniture and I’ve even started some university work I’ve been stuck on for 3 months. A bit of momentum building, maybe, after a year adrift. I’m not sure if 2025 was like that for everyone, speeding by so quickly it hardly registered as a full year. I think that pandemic processing is catching up. Things aren’t quite right yet, but there is hope they will be again.
The clouds reveal a glimpse of blue sky above. Spring is in the air!
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Enforced rest and smells of spring
This week I caught flu for the first time ever and have spent the week in some sort of virus-fuelled parallel universe. Kind of here, but not quite. Wrapped in blankets and accompanied by an emotional-support loo roll to blow my ever-streaming nose. Muscle aches and fatigue reminiscent of the worst days of ME/CFS, a place I never want to go back to. Now, it’s 9 days later and I feel a lot better, but am still totally wiped out, although I managed a very short blim down 50 metres of the canal today (via coffee of course) and also spotted my first ever Gooseanders, so worth the payback of the rest of the day on the sofa.
The new university term started this month and having had robust intentions of sectioning uni time and home time to give my brain some sort of a break, I started the new academic year by returning spectacularly and immediately to the overwork mindset and entirely forgetting any sort of clarity that I gained over the yuletide holiday regarding thinking, processing and general ‘making time for life’ enjoyment. Nope, I was straight back in to that all-consuming, relentless push to do absolutely everything at once, immediately, with no barrier or section in between. But this flu, now I’m somewhat back on this planet, gave me a bit of a break again to remember what I decided to try for myself just a few weeks ago.
So, now I’m feeling slightly better and aiming to get back into the swing of things next week (gently), I breathe out and try again. Stop working at a certain time, unless my brain is on a roll. Have a few little transitions to move from work to home – take my makeup off, have a shower, change clothes, sit outside. Compartmentalising work hours seems to be something I really need to do. I spend all evening picking up uni emails. I don’t need to do that. I’m not even employed. Academia takes a notoriously long time to get anything done, so why am I pushing myself to be always available?
I hate having things waiting that I can just get done quickly. I really, really hate having tasks hanging over me when I can clear them quickly. Even a few hours, trying to prioritise, there’s a push to just deal immediately with everything that I know is quick. Get it out of the way, then I don’t have to spend energy and brain trying to remember multiple things later on. I don’t have to re-gain that momentum a few hours afterwards. I don’t have to re-think about stuff, if I do it in the moment. So that’s why. But I’m tired of it. I forget to live. I forget to exist outside of academia. So maybe there’s another way. There needs to be something softer. The importance needs to be outside of it, not within it.
There is warmth in the sun, a little, this week. A reminder of those things that exist outside of that self-induced panic mode, and a slight warming of my virus-depleted soul, standing liquidly in a sunbeam, eyes closed, hand gripping the doorframe to keep upright. The birdsong is crisper, louder, and a slight scent of spring in the air. Although we have weeks to go yet, there’s a nudge towards brighter days. A pastel orange and pale green on the horizon at 5pm instead of all-consuming darkness. Catkins dangling joyously from hazel branches. Birch seeds pattering on the conservatory roof, loosened by goldfinches, falling to the thick, damp earth.
Today, though, a raincloud covers the valley, pattering fat drops to saturated ground, wrapping thick blankets of cloud around windows, branches and soul, cloying and grey. Houses disappear and that damp stillness pervades. A time of stillness. A time to rest and heal.
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Edges
There is a storm, raging wildly in the south. But here, we are tucked out of the way, sheltered by Pennines and just waiting on the fringes of the swirling cloud of the weather maps. Fat, soft, wet snow is falling quietly, not sticking enough to dull the sound of the main road, but enough to make a solid snowball, scooped from the ground in the dark before the temperature rises.
The breeze is calm, and those flakes heavy around the streetlights. I spot one or two people, who, like me, are framed in yellow window light, wrapped in a blanket, watching, just watching. Snow brings something magical, something primal, if only for a few hours. I watch the flakes fall and fall and fall.