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Hey Reader,

You know those dreams where you’re running away from something, only everything is in slow motion and you can’t scream and nothing works and then you wake up just before the monster eats you?

That’s how writing has felt for me this year.

I have had absolutely nothing to say for myself.

I was reading through a bunch of newsletters from one of my favourite writers (Ash Ambirge) and just… wilted.

It’s not that I didn’t have the writing chops. I do. But skill is secondary, anyway.

It’s that I didn’t have the STORIES.

I feel like I used to, but then suddenly I didn’t.

Maybe when we’re deep into house renovations again, I’ll be able to pull stories from that. Maybe we shouldn’t be waiting until next year for the big building project and I should just pull down the porch and rebuild it now. That might be the answer.

It’ll certainly give me something to write about, anyway.

That time we took the entire front of the house off was very much a talking point.

And the other time when we could stand on the ground floor and look allllll the way up through the gaping chasm of the entire height of the house, past the doorway opening onto nothing, and out through the hole in the roof was another talking point.

Let’s not revisit poopocalypse. (I might at some point when the trauma has faded.)

This year I’ve started gymastics and I’ve learned to do somersaults. Aged 46.

We built a sheep-proof fence for our vegetable garden from hazel from our own woods with our own hands.

I successfully grew cherry tomatoes for the first time EVER.

And I’ve also decided to make surfing my entire personality.

For goodness’ sake, I’ve been doing stand-up comedy coaching. Why am I not writing about that?

That’s a very good question. Why am I NOT writing about that?

It’s not like I’m not doing stuff. So what’s going on?

I think I was forgetting to notice. It all became mundane, humdrum, everyday, because it’s my life and it’s familiar. And I’m tired.

(Who’s not, right? I mean, look around.)

There’s a lot of cool stuff going on in my life that I appear to be drifting through. I still carry notebooks everywhere but they’re a bit dusty and moths have taken up residence and my brain decided to believe it didn’t have anything interesting to say.

But it’s not about being interesting. It’s about noticing stuff and making connections and having an opinion and telling stories and then figuring out what we might be able to do with them.

Getting those notes and ideas and thoughts down is the first step, even if it does happen in slow motion and there’s a monster just around the corner.

Take a pause and take a big deep breath, then notice what’s around you.

Notice your life.

Pick up a pen and scribble a thought about it.

Ta da! You’re writing.

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

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