Category: writing

Undecided

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The last few years I’ve felt a familiar push and pull. Sometimes week by week, sometimes day by day, often swifter. A push and a pull urging me forward and holding me back. It takes on forms that have shaped lives over centuries – should I stay or should I go? In this job? City? Relationship? But has also taken unique form, my own inner voice, worming deep into my subsconscious and my contemplations. How are you, Samwise, going to deal with this? What do you, Samwise, want your future to be? How can you get there? Why is it not working out? Why is it so hard?

Small decisions are easy aren’t they? I think they are for me, at least. I don’t find it difficult to decide what to do with an evening, or to just go for it and book those concert tickets. I don’t find it hard to organise my inbox or buy groceries. I think if anything I can rush into these small decisions too quickly. Somewhat impulsively, I decided to try out a new style of underwear recently. Suffice to say, I should have trod more cautiously toward that particular decision. Pants aside, as a teacher, there is much talk about decision fatigue – the idea that after a day of making hundreds of decisions for small people, you find yourself incapable of making any further choices. I can see the truth in this – a recent period of living with my parents has been lovely in part because they often decide what’s for dinner for me! But on the whole, I don’t feel burdened by choice in the day to day.

When it comes to bigger than that, I’ve found my decision-making grinding to a halt. Decisions seem to take on a weight previously absent. Taking that job, making that choice, even going on that date, can seem like choosing a path with no way back if it goes wrong. Year after year, with jobs in particular, it has seemed recently like I am in a constant cycle of applying for jobs, second-guessing those opportunities, and then ending up rejecting interviews or offers out of fear or confusion. Yet the prospect of being job-less is also scary, especially while trying to secure a mortgage (more big decisions for me to spiral about…)

It has all felt like a slow car crash of paralysis. Sometimes I have felt, I do feel, like I’m vividly stuck; unable to move forward or make choices, out of fear that like pruning a limb from a tree, all those other green shoots and hopes will fall if I choose just one direction. Othertimes, I feel more deliberate, practical, considering choices rationally. But then this seam of bright emotion and fear cuts through me – What have I done? Have I missed the boat? What have you done?

It’s almost like I have some kind of fetish for flexibility. Maybe that’s a bit strong. But I certainly aspire after an idealised 2025 life of working from home. The idea of being able to do my washing on a weekday is certainly exciting. Of not having to balance health concerns with fears about upsetting the balance of work. As a teacher, it is a unimaginable dream to have that kind of work life. Often finding time for the loo is difficult enough.

I am increasingly aware that my jealousies and frustrations are focused on the things I envy and desire the most – one of those, at the moment, is the flicker of anger when I see or hear about other’s work schedules. After teaching primary children for almost fifteen years, the fear and desire intertwined in a ‘grass is greener’ way when considering other forms of employment is visceral for me. Not to mention debilitating when it comes to considering a way forward.

I don’t want to be fuelled by frustration or envy, but to find the next positive step myself, even if that feels hard to imagine at the moment. While discussing this with a friend recently, he decided to just ask ChatGPT (something I confess I have never done) and in listing my experience and qualifications to a freakily human computer generated voice, made me feel like this could be possible perhaps. That maybe I am not stuck, but just at a natural transition point. Suffice to say, ChatGPT had many useful suggestions and directions in which I could go. I need to strategise, with or without AI, to make some of those ideas work.

In that echoing place we find ourselves in sometimes, often when we can’t sleep or at the end of a long day, with different voices urging us on and holding us back, it can be so hard to navigate a way forward. But that is what we must, what I must, try and do. The vivid emotions of frustration and stress can burn us out; are reminders that something about the place we find ourselves in is unsustainable. I hope that in this fog of uncertainty, I can navigate a way forward.

My Bookshelf

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It’s been a long time since I shared some of the books I’ve read and loved. For the last few years, I’ve made a point of noting down, just on my phone’s notes app, the books I’ve read with a brief review.

There have been too many times when people ask me – what are you reading? Any recommendations? My response used to be a stunned silence while I was racking my brain for the names and authors, but now I can share my ideas and tips with confidence. I’d recommend you give it a go! I’ve also been noting down films, theatre and gigs but I’ll save those for another post.

So here are a few recommended titles for your perusal.

Chernobyl – Serhii Plokhy

Like many this year, I watched and enjoyed the TV series about the Chernobyl disaster. Diving much more deeply into the event itself, the people involved, and the short and long-term effects, this absorbing read comes highly recommended. A Ukrainian who lived in Minsk at the time of the accident, Plokhy makes a more or less chronological account of the events both technically accurate and gripping. I couldn’t finish quickly enough.

A Game of Thrones – George R. R. Martin

Another TV series I have enjoyed over the last few years (as have many people…) is the epic Game of Thrones saga. I decided to finally read the original books this summer, hoping for an engrossing holiday read. I was not disappointed. I read the first four volumes over the course of my summer travels and loved every moment. The depth, complexity and thematic richness of Martin’s text is remarkable. Also, I enjoyed how the violence and other naughtiness was much less distracting when in book form. You just know the ending is going to be better in the book…

The Testaments – Margaret Atwood

I read the original Handmaid’s Tale some years ago and was in equal parts riveted and disturbed by the dystopian classic. I was therefore eager to read the newly Booker Prize winning follow-up. I enjoyed how the story was an unashamedly hopeful fable, a gripping escape tale, and a family saga. Highly recommended, though make sure you read the original first.

Dreamers – Snigdha Poonam

I was lucky enough to visit my sister in India earlier this year. I was recommended this fascinating read to help me understand something of the quandaries facing young Indians – the world’s largest generation. Poonam captures their hopes, fears and frustrations effectively through this non-fiction account of various lives across India. I would encourage anyone to read this to understand India today, including the rise of Hindu nationalism and Modi. Yet it is also a very human story of individuals, making their personal struggles very real.

Notes on a Nervous Planet – Matt Haig

I’m an unashamed Haig fan, enjoying both his fiction and non-fiction work (and his social media presence). This book of short essays, poems and thoughts is a wonderful book to read and to share. Talking about anxiety is so needed in our lives and Haig does a great job of making clear things we’ve all experienced, as well as offering wise and common sense advice.

Factfulness – Hans Rosling

Another book looking to counter some of the anxiety we’re facing as a society at the moment is Rosling’s fascinating non-fiction book ‘Factfulness’. Rosling breaks down many of the negative and counter-productive assumptions we make about human progress and development, showing us we have reasons to be hopeful about the future. The book is excellent at making clear where the big problems still are and what progress has been made. A must read!

What to Write When You Don’t Know

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I enjoy writing. I really do. I like the way that we can weave these artificially constructed letters and words together to make something fun, moving, entertaining or beautiful.

That’s why I started this blog. I just wanted some incentive to write. I didn’t really know what I wanted to write about; I just thought I’d try it and see what happened.

On the whole, I have enjoyed writing about travelling and ‘growing up’ and just life. Yet recently, just having the page hasn’t been much of an incentive to write. The last post was almost six months ago.

Why haven’t I written anything in a while? Well, busyness and laziness both play their part. It’s hard to make time for something like this when life is so full that extra time feels like it has to be downtime. But I think I’ve been forgetting something I’ve written about here before – writing is restful.

Yes, being creative with words is restful for me. Creativity is vital for us all to rest, in whatever form that takes.

It’s all too easy to ‘switch-off’ and binge. Whether on food, TV or even sleep. Rest like this doesn’t reach all the way down into my centre. Doesn’t calm those stormy depths of my soul which can lead to me feeling so exhausted.

Choosing to spend an entire weekend in PJs with the TV remote is sometimes needed, but doesn’t help me to process or make-sense of all the things that are inevitably playing on my mind.

Big things like ‘where am I going?’ or ‘how can I be more fulfilled?’ and smaller things like ‘what do I need to say to them?’ or even ‘what am I going to cook this week?’

So here I am.  At my keyboard. Typing. Attempting to turn letters into something that makes sense. Trying to help my swirling thoughts attain some kind of coherence.

I need to keep reminding myself that I have a reason to write. I have thoughts that won’t leave me alone. Hurts big and small which need to be faced. Things that need to be addressed, even if it feels like chipping away at an Everest of uncertainty.

I know that writing about these things, whether publicly or privately, can help. So I’m reminding myself to try. To pick up the pen, to make time, to marshal my thoughts and my words into something that might just make sense. That might just help me to calm those stormy waters.

So if I haven’t posted anything in a while, ask me why. Remind me to try. Ask me what I’m thinking about. If I say ‘oh, I’m OK’ then press on, because I’m probably just putting off something. Aren’t we all?