Emma Writer pics_Nov 2017_M Spadafora (27).jpg

Blog

I send occasional newsletter with blog posts or news to peoples inboxes (not very often). If you’d like to be on my mailing list then sign up here.

Sketch Friday 20th August 2021

I was thinking - who do I write this for?

I read an article by Emma Beddington in the Guardian this week about her blogging past. In it she says “It was 2008, the heyday of blogging... It felt like a special moment and, looking back, I am even more conscious of how particular and short-lived, it was.”

Short lived?

No one blogs any more?

No one told me.

I’ve decided to style it out.

It’s like, I have a leather jacket that I’ve had since around 2003 and it just goes in and out of fashion. I don’t know why. I like it. So I keep wearing it. And some years people say ‘hey! I love that jacket’ and then some years go by and people forget about the jacket. Or maybe hate the jacket, but are too polite to say ‘I hate that jacket’. And then a year pops up and people love it again.

It’s weird.

People are weird.

I’m a person.

I’m weird.

I’m avoiding answering my own question.

I don’t know who I’m writing this for. But I like how its a handhold in my week. A marker in a world that moves too fast.

Maybe it’s just a talisman. Like the lucky things I always carry in my pocket.

A special penny - be lucky.

A tiny penknife - be sharp.

A little crystal rose heart (given to me by a member of the awesome group I worked with in London when I was writing ‘home sweet home’) - be loving to yourself and others.

Anyway.

I’ve been hit hard this week with the (non covid) virus I got last week. I mean. I’ve had hives on my hands. I’m not kidding. Hives. Horrible.

So I’ve not done much, other than lie in bed with our cat Lara Darling. Or (in the last day or so) potter into the garden to look at the tomatoes that Janey has been growing. I’ve not drawn very much. But I did a little bit. I had a conversation with my friend Pauline, which was good. Apart from the bit where I had to cancel seeing her (because of the horrid non covid virus). Whatelse? I checked in with Matthew about the work he’s doing on his #APerfectWorld project and managed to be a bit coherent. I did a tiny bit more on a new project idea I’m working on. It felt good to be flexing that muscle but frustrating too. I wanted to do more but I couldn’t think.

How frustrating it is to be stopped from doing.

The frustration of being stopped.

That made me think about Afghanistan. All of those lives in motion. Stopped from moving in the directions they were going. For what? I thought about the women and LGBTQ folk there who can no longer share who they are. The waste of that.

I thought about thinking. And how useless simply thinking about these things feels. Trying to work out the things we don’t know the answers too. But also, equally, avoiding the things we do know.

I thought about how we know so many things but then choose not to act. The gun man in Plymouth knew he was afraid of the disappointment of his own life, so decided to hate women for daring to live their’s. We know there are so many men in this world who control, kill and maim for this same reason. But we don’t want to know. What about the good guy. Not every guy. We know the world is racist but we want to pretend it isn’t, so we say it isn’t. Hey. Every life matters. We say. Everyone matters. While we mean. I’d like you to have a fine life, as long as it doesn’t affect my life, because its my (white) ass that really matters. And we want our families and kids to have a future. But we don’t want to do the things that would make that possible, because holidays and fear of change and prepackaged shit is cool (it is) and meat burgers are better (they are) and cars, no really, cars are nice, and money, fear of losing money, and who can afford it really, and seriously could you ever shut up about fucking depressing shit because, we say, because, there’s nothing we can do, we say, there’s nothing. Nothing we can do about climate change. What about China we say. What about the USA. What about.

We say.

It’s not like we’re cheating anyone other than ourselves.

It’s not as if it’s a strangers grandchild. It’s our own. And it’s not in the future. It’s now. The actual ludicrous proximity of all of this. And still we say. What about China. What about the USA.

Regret is dreadful.

Take it from a woman who only dared to came out at 32. People asked me, how could it have taken you so long to realise? I said I didn’t know. They said. How could you possibly not have known? And I said I didn’t know. And they thought (too polite/ scared to say it) you’re a liar. You must have known. Fucking liar. What a cunt. How could you do that to your husband. And I. I’m thinking all of this now. Years later. I think. You’re right. I did know. I just didn’t know I knew. I had always known but also I did not know. I did not want to know. So I told myself I didn’t know until I didn’t know. Probably. I’m imagining. Thinking. Making sense of what is impossible to truly pick apart now. But anyway. You probably don’t want to know why I think I didn’t want to know. It’s to do with growing up in a world which hated people like me. It’s easy to not want to be something when you know you’re hated. It’s easy to start hating yourself. But back to the point. The shock of realising you always knew but didn’t know. Concurrent realities. That your actions might have been different if you had listened to yourself better. I’ve been thinking about that. It’s not just that I’m weird. Which I am. It’s that you are too. If you’re reading. Still reading. It’s me. But also. Sadly. Also. It’s you too. We can know things we don’t want to know, and not know that we know them, all at the same time.

We are beautiful but dangerous, deranged creatures, in charge of a planet we have no idea how to steer.

I’ve been thinking about what to do about that.

Did you ever play that game, where you get a pen, then imagine picking it up, but you don’t. Then you do the exact same thing again, but this time you do pick the pen up? And you try to work out which parts of your thinking changed, allowing you to really move?

I’m not saying its the best game ever. But it’ a legitimate game. And I do like pens.

The thing is. I can’t pin point the moment where thinking a thought about action changes into doing an action.

I mean, try it.

Try going and getting a pen and looking at it and really going through the motions of thinking ‘I’m picking up that pen’ but not picking it up. And then try thinking ‘I’m picking up that pen’ and doing it.

Now try working out what it is that is different. I can’t work it out.. But obviously something massive changes. But also, obviously the shift between thought and action is not as huge as we often think it must be. It must be a tiny shift.

A friend of mine, Lucy, who is also a yoga teacher, but primarily right now, I’m talking about her because she’s my friend. Though to be fair, this relates to a moment when she was teaching yoga. To a group of people. And I was one of those people. So it turns out I’ve become someone who quotes their yoga teacher.

Look, you got this far.

Lucy said that if you struggle to do a pose, that imagining doing it fires up the parts of your brain that actually do the doing of it. And that by imagining doing it, you can help yourself build the strength to actually start doing the pose or movement. Ie, thinking about an action neurologically builds one’s capacity to do the action.

Thought. She said. Is powerful.

So, I’ve been thinking about all of that. I’m thinking about the stuff I want to change. Thinking about how thinking is not nothing. To own a thought and take the time to work out what one really thinks. That is something. Even if it doesn’t feel enough. It counts. And perhaps that propels us into action?

Oh and I found a life class to enrol onto. Which I thought would be exciting. Until I realised it was running on dates I couldn’t do. I was frustrated. But then I thought. ‘I know! I’ll just take a nude photo of myself in the mirror and draw myself from that. It will be just like doing a life class.’

It seemed an excellent solution.

But in hindsight, it wasn’t really very good for the ego.

So, be warned, not every thought we have should be acted upon.

But it was a start. And starting is the point I guess.

And I’m writing that for myself and for anyone else who finds it useful.

OK.

That’s the news. Love to all x

Nurse Lara Darling.jpg
Sick bed long.jpg
Jane's Tom's 2.jpg
trowel and toms.jpg
Nude me with paint brush.jpg
Emma Adams