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Listen.

21st April 2020 · Leave a Comment

There’s a lot of talk about the birdsong, and how it can be heard now, along with the blueness of the sky, and the silences that descend at night. We all listen and look, and then listen harder because we like the idea that there is good coming from ‘all this’. My wise friend Dawn said of the clear, supposedly fish-filled canals of Venice, that the water clarity was because the mud had settled, with no boats to churn it up, rather than it being a reversal in environmental quality. She’s no expert, but for sure, there is something to be said for settling. And listening. And when the most pleasing of the available choices of daily activity is walking, it’s no wonder we can all hear the birdsong. Even in the city.

Going to the city seems like a distant thing now, let alone leaving the country. The island-ness of living on a island feels more acute. Whilst I can’t travel to the city, I do surreptitiously take myself to the water ‘s edge look at the sea, after a bike ride or on a walk. All the locals do, I dare say, and I wonder what will happen when the weather really heats up and there will be the lure of swimming.

So instead, there is reading and watching. I finished Joan Didion’s ‘The White Album’, a series of social commentary essays written in the late 60’s/early 70’s. I have been mildly obsessed with her since watching the Netflix documentary ‘The Centre Will Not Hold‘ which I have written of before. I have a tendency to loop back to writers. The essays speak the truth, and I suppose this is the best thing for an essay to do. On the same day, I binge-watch ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ with my daughter, and feel smutty afterwards. But the exposure of modern life in these two mediums is the same; things must be recorded as representative of the time in which we live. This is the high/low referred to in the title of the best podcast for chat. Dolly and Pandora talk with such surety and cleverness that it makes me wonder if that is the product of a good education or genetics or societal conditioning. I remain as fascinated by Millenials as I am by teenagers. The truth of the generational divide never more evident in the response to this adversity.

I have turned my notifications off on WhatsApp as the noise of a hundred emptied out lives had become deafening. And ordinarily I love WhatsApp; I’d live for its inclusion in daily life. I am selective now, and only dip in and out of the good stuff. On rare journeys out in the car the radio is blasting, disturbing the peace, in what I see as a small act of anarchy, and it’s Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding and I am taken back back in time.

At dinner in the evenings, we sift through the Spotify playlists; my children know to skip certain songs, but then, in recent weeks, I find, I can actually listen to some. There is a gradual resetting of being able to hear music that triggers old emotions, or old habits, but we persevere and I notice they check my face for signs of response, and acceptance. Later on, I strain to discern my son’s nocturnal footsteps on the landing, in the middle of the night, as his teenage body clock has shifted to adjust. None of us are sleeping well, but for all sorts of different reasons.

What follows, of course, is the morning waking, an overnight inventory of sleep, and the messages from others who can’t either, and instagram posts from Australia, from those who have faced the day already, and turns out: it’s ok. Being tired matters less, but surely matters a lot more for those who are working through this, and I feel guilty for my inactivity. But, I can hear the birds and the weather is holding, and that feels like reaching the ground after a long fall.

Photo by Unsplash

Reckoning

28th March 2020 · Leave a Comment

Well, we didn’t see that one coming. For all the build up, the conjecture, the awareness that something was going on, somewhere a long way from here, it now seems impossible to recall a time when this virus, this lockdown wasn’t a thing. Now, for eternity it seems, I remain in our rural bubble. When I venture into town for a run or to get food am I reminded that the whole country is at home (or should be). I worry about the NHS, I worry about their staff who don’t have a choice, I worry that they will think we are all killing time baking, playing board games, watching Netflix and complaining, whilst they do what is grim and necessary.

Latterly, I consider myself adept at managing sweeping life changes, well-versed in that unique sense of disquiet that comes from knowing that nothing will ever be the same again. It revisits daily – actually hourly – now, even when I have a moment when my thoughts turn to something normal, routine, standard, they are whipped back to reality. It’s a peculiar time, and we talk of nothing else. My children and I wander around the house making exclamations of things we might do in this enforced time at home. Or at least my daughter does. Presently she’s considering how well-conditioned our hair will be, or whether there will be time to learn to do the splits, or perfect Beyoncé’s dances in ‘Homecoming’. My son says less and makes fewer productive plans; for a fourteen year old boy, being stuck at home with his mother and sister is about as bad as it gets.

The reality of our family circumstance has been starkly illuminated, made glaringly bright, and looking at that truth is a bit like staring at the sun. There is no escape, not that there ever was, but now we know.

I am listening to Joan Didion’s essay collection ‘The White Album‘ on Audible, and she writes of the late 1960’s when Sharon Tate was murdered, the Black Panthers agitated, and society shifted. She writes of that defining moment of time, of it being ’emblematic’ to an era. I realise that this virus will be the emblematic to our era, a thing we didn’t take seriously enough, can’t see, and don’t really understand.

Ashamedly, I find myself idly fretting about beauty, and the outward regime. Hair roots, bare nails, face and body as nature intended, and I suspect many feel the same, but don’t really want to say. It’s not important right now, but then, actually these smaller rituals had formed the punctuation marks to life, and we must all examine what our rituals were. What propped us up. That might be freshly coloured hair, or the ‘right’ clothes, or the knowledge, when you fall into bed at night, that you have ‘achieved’ something in any given day. Achievement has become something different overnight. I wonder about FOMO, and find that I have surprising moments of contentment in lockdown, I’m sure because I know everyone else is in lockdown too. How messed up is that? How telling.

What we are to others is changing. There’s a fresh sense, don’t you think, of refined social appropriateness? What was OK, tolerated, subject to a blind eye, is no longer, and there’s a new method of being courteous when in public, of giving space and denoting respect. So many curious outcomes will develop in coming weeks and months; I wonder who and what will herald a ‘return to normal’? I think of all the lockdown books that will be written during this time, and it propels a fresh wave of panic that I might not use the time wisely enough. Productively. And there is that FOMO again, rearing its head as reliable as envy or guilt.

Before this, there had been a quickness to my life, which I was enjoying I’ll admit, but which I was secretly wondering about. I felt as if something was coming, or at least that something had to give. I sensed it, but couldn’t place it. A friend of mine calls this a ‘fuckening’, rather than a reckoning. The cosmic universe toying with me. Now, there is a necessary pause. A slowing down which many of us could have taken beforehand, but were in fact incapable of.

Instead, a sudden proliferation of FaceTime calls, ones which I historically would not have chosen to pick up, as I was never ready for a full frontal with anyone, unplanned. Now I do pick up, and we smile and laugh and feel self-conscious and I wonder why they designed it so that you are never gazing directly into the camera, but always in a shifty downcast way. For most of us too, there is the shocking realisation that selfies are brutal, regardless, and it makes me want to shy away and return to the old fashioned method of speaking on the phone. I walked on the beach at sunset and it was so empty and so beautiful that it felt like a privilege I had never experienced before. To be in nature but without all the people. Yet it is the people that I miss. Emblematic of an era.

Photo by Filip Kominik on Unsplash

In between

9th March 2020 · Leave a Comment

Writing is such a strange and introverted pursuit, you might be surprised at how much I think about what I produce before I produce it. It’s like the wordy equivalent of massaging kale before putting it in a complex salad, which let’s face it, is quite pretentious in design. Who wants kale in a salad? Suffice to say there is mulling over and considering what I might write about, and then when the instinct takes me, it spills out. All this whilst I am meant to be finishing a book which feels to me like a polemic. I never intended to write a polemic, and am dubious about that.

I was advised early on, when I started writing seriously, that spending anything more than a year on a first book was a mistake. Get it done and then move on. Any writer will plunder their own experience (those who say they don’t are lying) and so spending years sloshing around in the waters of your own life will not be years well spent. Better to take only what you need from it and get out. I remind myself of this often, and yet continue to paddle, such is the root of my intrigue about my own circumstances and past.

However, as things stand my circumstances have a unique set of nuances that only apply to me, and so sharing that can feel jarring and indelicate. I think a lot about processing thoughts and feelings and work hard to distill any view I have down to something palatable for others. What I have learned is that even when you think something is processed, distilled, considered, measured, it probably isn’t. Not until time has passed and taken off the edges, like a riverbed pebble made smooth by friction. There is always an analogy in nature which will illuminate my point. Nature and the seasons, and the weather.

Each morning at daybreak I scan the sky for clouds, check the forecast for rain, adjust my choice of coat according to the temperature. I intimately know the growth status of the wisteria outside my bedroom window, of which I have written many times. Local friends whose houses are on the water – a bearing which is the epitome of privilege in Sussex life – know the weather, and they know the tides. Both are relevant when the paint on your back door risks peeling from salt spray. I like to keep the tides a surprise; I like to arrive at the waterside and be struck with the beauty of a high tide, to feel it is a sign, a circumstance relevant to my mood. High tide means full up, maximum, a swollen version of itself, compared to the lacklustre opposite of low tide. Who wants low tide? Same as kale in salad.

Each time I write, I comment on the season, this interminable winter which wears on and on and on. No need to wash the car (it’s still winter), no need to wear silk (it’s still winter), no need to plan for anything other than the cold and mud (it’s still winter). But I know it will end, one day. It is – and I am – seasonally, in between.

There is no rushing loss, there is no way to get through it, to understand its impact other than to live it. I read about bereavement and grief, and compare and contrast. I feel the clutch of panic in my chest when it revisits, months after the initial truth became clear. It’s nearly been a year. How long will this take? If there was a guide, that is what I would ask.Of course there is progress, and things which were unimaginable then are commonplace now, but still, but still…

It’s still winter.

They say (and I pay attention to these platitudes, as discussed), that change comes in the alteration of small habits. It’s not the big things, but the small. This provides comfort as I find myself in a daily routine which I would not have recognised as my own had someone given me to glimpse a year ago. Within the chrysalis of change, there are new routines, new people, a new normal. It was suggested to me that I should not become too attached to new habits, as they too will change, and my reliance upon them could become a hindrance. Isn’t that how I got myself into this mess in the first place? Too reliant on a status quo? I now spend my time observing others who think their status quo will stay, and I catch myself feeling a sickening sympathy for them which I try hard to banish. Who am I? It’s not as if I have the monopoly on the topic.

In the mornings, in the coffee shop I visit, I find myself eavesdropping on a couple whom I can only assume are an ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ sponsor and charge. They discuss temptation and being able to see it clearly; triggers and sensibilities. When they are talking one confesses to the other that she misplaced her thread, that her mind wandered, and whilst I am sitting with my back to them, I imagine her eyes rolling back and her companion noticing that she has lost her way. I wonder whether I do that when I am being told what to do by friends, family and well-wishers who want to talk about my progress. Never before has the question ‘how are you?’ been accompanied with such weightiness. The AA couple get back on track and drain their coffees, that froth at the bottom which is nauseatingly chill, but they drink anyway. I don’t feel too bad for listening in, as I am fairly certain that in my own endeavours to describe my predicament, coffee shop strangers have gleaned salacious detail about me. Tit for tat.

But the small habits are the glue. The coffees, the cooking; chopping and seasoning, the pensive nightly baths, the lyrics, the turn of the tides. Some days melancholy, but to be honest many are not, and the sense that when dwelling in this in between space, there is respite. I am learning not to trust the respite, it doesn’t mean it’s over, it just means that my mind can only do so much thinking, and then there must be time spent swaddled in unreality. This is the same as the summer’s day, when early on in this, my friend told me I needed to be sure to wear a scarf, so that my amygdala, at the back of my neck was comforted. I had to google what my amygdala was, and what it did (it processes emotion). And she was right.

The in between won’t last forever.

Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash

Hate

4th February 2020 · Leave a Comment

I’ve been watching the ‘Goop Lab‘ on Netflix. Gwyneth Paltrow, who has been on my awareness radar since forever – as we are the same age – heads this series of programmes about self-betterment. Goop is the domain of privilege and moneyed responses to life’s challenges, and employs what seems to be an army of staff. They check stuff out on everyone’s behalf, and make unsolicited recommendations. Concepts like micro-dosing psychoactive drugs, or how to best achieve orgasm (this episode is hands down the Goopiest; the most out there). I try to imagine what emails fly around the ether in their achingly cool Californian office. I try to imagine Gwyneth, as CEO, directing an overrunning meeting, or a wayward agenda, wearing good dresses, with good hair.

The show has been met with a torrent of judgement, nay-saying and what can really only be described as hate. I am interested in the emotion of hate and often say to people who express it: ‘hate is a strong word.’ It is, and I know it, I sometimes carry it around with me, slip it under my tongue to dissolve, but I don’t succumb to it. The hate for Gwyneth and her peers is curious because it borders on hysterical. Perhaps people don’t like what they don’t fully understand. Or what goes against accepted wisdom. Of course life won’t be that much better, day to day, just because of vaginal steaming, but what I find fascinating about those who hate Goop is that they feel it so very keenly. My view on watching, was that Gwyneth comes across as more likeable than expected, that she is evidently self-aware, that she is actually similar to a lot of women I encounter, who in their midlife grapple their way through a myriad of challenges. Ageing, bodily changes, diet, health, relationships, self-analysis. There is nothing new here, it’s just that it’s packaged in a sublimely galling way for those who don’t share her money or her opinions or her preoccupations. And perhaps, she does not acknowledge that what is being presented by Goop is, in effect, the highest form of frippery.

But back to hate. There is a conflict, an ongoing tension between our new ‘woke’ tendency to feel tolerance for all facets of society, and the polarity of hate. Hate towards those who injure us, or hate towards those who exhibit values which are at odds with our own. Or towards those who don’t take responsibility for their actions. Part of being woke is not only developing an awareness, but it is also understanding one’s own place in the world, and taking ownership of it. This is something I think a lot about as I have been forced to carefully consider my own actions in recent months. I don’t act without consideration, even in what I write here. What could be called overthinking translates into deliberateness, acting with diligence in what I do, say, and write. The irony is not lost on me also, that Gwyneth is the founding proponent of ‘conscious uncoupling’, a methodology now embedded in our appreciation of what it is to leave a marriage with your sense of family intact. For all that we may judge this term as ludicrous and impossible to replicate, what it appears to have achieved for she and her ex-husband is a way in which to live in harmony after divorce.

Meanwhile, a sojourn into the world of TikTok (the app where people post short lip-synched videos) is worth noting, purely to see how hate is being metabolised by the younger generation. The emotion is being taken up, owned and repurposed in a way that is almost incomprehensible to those of us in midlife. There’s something about living with and being around teenagers that keeps me abreast of their cultural development. Their generation’s ability to adopt new methods and to exceed expectation is unsurpassed. Although conversely, I note they only get dressed when they are actually leaving the house. In between time, they stay horizontal, in bed or on the sofa, with their phones or a laptop. They do not subscribe to accepted times of the day at which to eat; cereal for lunch (Crunchy Nut), lunch at 3pm (carbs), dinner, snacks, more cereal. They live for their friends. But their lens on the world is worth considering. Caring what people think of me is increasingly less important as this phase of my life wears on. This is not uncommon amongst my cohort but nonetheless I care startlingly less than I used to. But whilst all of us may care what people think, my children are simultaneously open and accepting of new concepts. And they are willing to poke fun at themselves. I can not see them objecting to their own version of Gwyneth in twenty years time. Live and let live, they’ll say.

TikTok is, to the uninitiated, a terrifying, liberating, sensory overload of what the young truly think. It is an exposé into the inner workings, the private thoughts, the eye-wateringly candid truth. My overriding feeling is one of incredulity, but also of quiet awe because it takes bravery to say what you think. And to post it. Nothing on the forum is private. It is open to anyone, and of course this provokes hate in some, adoration in others.

Take Beyoncé (because all roads lead back to her in the end). The hate she felt when she wrote her ‘Lemonade’ album was channeled positively, reframed, taken forward like a jettison of feeling. She knows. And when you know, you know. But my point is, it is deliberate, it is not a strewn garment, it is not haphazard. I guess it’s a matter of deciding whether you want to hate or not. Resist or not. Accept or not. Give thought and consideration, or not. See the bigger, longer-term picture, or not. As she’d say, eyes narrowed and looking forward: ‘think about it’.

Photo by Wilfried Santer on Unsplash

Patreon

21st January 2020 · Leave a Comment

There are many preoccupations which, in the quiet hours, bother those who publish their work on the web. These range from influencer guilt (did I properly declare my allegiance to that brand?), to over-exposure (pondering if my kids’ teacher might be reading my innermost thoughts, or that person I don’t know very well, but met for coffee?), to downright white-knuckled fear (am I the only one on earth who thinks this way?). Over the years I have got used to it, and to the way in which people know my business without my having told them face to face. My mum is a particular lurker on Instagram and this blog, and will often be ahead of the ‘what is Louise thinking?’ curve, because she has read along.

A panacea to this is the write more privately for a separate group of readers, and that is why a couple of months ago I set up Patreon page. I saw other writers using this medium and was intrigued. It ensures a readership who are invested and once I launched, I learned they were readers who’ve supported me as I’ve written over time. The two currencies of following and commenting are important to writers, as we really don’t have any idea how our words are being received. Mainstream publishers have lessened their feedback mechanisms and take fewer unsolicited submissions of work, so to understand the gatekeepers of ‘what people want to read’, there isn’t much direction.

Patreon is not everyone’s cup of tea though; some have baulked at the subscription method; you have to pay a couple of pounds to read. Some might be irritated by the ‘selling’ of my work, as most of us expect to consume the thoughts of others for free and have done so for years. Why pay? For those readers who have decided to become my patrons, it’s already formed a lovely community whom I trust, and have in mind when I write. Some writers don’t envisage an audience, I always have, despite myself, and am almost surprised when I learn that readers aren’t always the demographic I expect.

It’s been illuminating to write for a smaller audience, there’s a candour I can’t display here, and I can cover a broader spectrum of topics because I need less self-censorship. It also makes me write more often, because there is an unspoken contract with the subscribers that I will bring the words and the thoughts.

I have realised, fairly recently, that I am ridiculously honest in what I write and what I say to people. I don’t often edit out, but I do skirt round bigger issues if I think they are contentious. Years of writing here has taught me the narrow path to tread between sharing and preaching. Or over-sharing. As such it becomes a vanilla environment and that is no good. If you want to become a subscriber, go to my Patreon (or search ‘Lou Bradford writes’ if you go to the main Patreon page) and join.

Photo by Pauline Loroy on Unsplash

Youth

12th January 2020 · Leave a Comment

I take my daughter to yoga. She is eighteen and momentarily bored on her year-out; FOMO’ing her way through her Instagram feed (surely 1500 accounts is 1000 too many?) waiting for life to really get started. She hasn’t worked out that when she’s thirty and neck deep in a job and/or a family, and/or both, she will look back on this year as a precious drop of unsullied and carefree youth. She accompanies me, somewhat reluctantly, to an early morning class for which I have to drag her from her bed.

We do yoga with an array of ages; she lowers the average considerably. A man called Geoff tells us how much he enjoyed his Christmas break. We lapse into silence as the class starts, her mat next to mine, we lay flat, hands splayed, palms up. I feel her next to me. Such a curious thing to have had a baby, who is then a child, who is then a woman. I find myself reasserting her age when I speak of her, as at eighteen, there is a presumption that she is adult. But to me she is still young. Does that ever end for a mother? Things change and life reforms to a new normal, my children grow up and we swear in front of each other, and stare unflinchingly at inappropriate TV because we are used to being grown ups together now. The perfect family unit has had its shine taken off, there’s a tarnish, but we are owning it and it’s OK.

She and I spend time (days) talking about her future, rolling possibilities along the floor like a game of ball between us. Her going away to university and living away from home rears up, and we both take a breath and hide our trepidation because we know that after day one, she’ll be fine. More than fine. She will rule the world.

In yoga, she slays, because she is young. Geoff pretends not to notice as he utilises blocks to help him reach the floor from a back bend. I feel a flush of pride because a daughter is a gift, and she is so beautiful that it makes my heart ache. I think to share this sentiment with her father, as he loves her as much as me, we are in this together. She and I get back in the car after, and play Billie Eilish.

The parental competitiveness that applied for previous academic milestones, exams and school entrance, is alive and well for the pre-university year-out. I can report that I get asked daily what she is doing, and register how it fares as a response on a sliding scale of year-out activities. Back-packing, volunteering, swimming with sting rays, trekking rural China, eco-warrior-ing in South America. Watching Netflix is not high on the scale. But we don’t mind. Time will come and the world will open itself up for her when she is ready. Meanwhile we bend and stretch and endure the wintery mud, longing for days when it is summer again.

Photo by Strahinja Vujičić on Unsplash

January 2nd

2nd January 2020 · Leave a Comment

Happy 2nd January.

One thing with social media, I note, is the extrapolation of the ‘me too’ thing. I don’t mean the hashtag movement, I mean the sense of solidarity, you’re not alone. This has become increasingly prevalent, and as such we start, as the the habit forms and strengthens, to look for it. When you are feeling alone, know this: you are not alone. Instagram says so. Celebrities say so. If you are miserable, do not worry! Others are too. Misery can be shared! We have learned to accept that although it looks like everyone is having a great time, they are not. Not always, anyway. Happiness is a moment, not a permanent state. #motivationalquote.

Have you noticed the distinction between the Instagram grid and Instagram stories? The grid is for beauty and curation; a ‘this is me at my best’ truth, for gratitude, contentment and favourable camera angles. Stories, which fleetingly disappear after a day, are more for reality; ‘this is me, for real’. The same applies to teenagers, whose behaviour I am fascinated by. They have their ‘main’ account, and then their ‘private’. The main is the public show. The private – well, the mind boggles. It’s a space they have carved out that is away from prying eyes, and where they can be themselves in all their hormonal glory. Anyway, don’t worry, most of them have graduated over to ‘TikTok’, where we will be in a year’s time, thinking we invented the place. Regardless though, we have become adept at understanding that we are being fed different glimpses, different vistas of the same happy/sad/multitudinous life.

This was never, ever more obvious than at Christmas. During the festive season we present life in all of its false magnitude. Scrolling over the last month has, on the whole, made me feel utterly alone. Christmas, when everything is fine, is fine. When it is not, it is torturous. The truth – that life is not all that much fun all the time – is systematically smothered in a smiley, perfection-laced basting. It is remarkable. On Christmas Day, I saw goodness projected on the grid, to then receive a message from the very same individual, to be told that they were having a downright miserable time. Uncanny. Yet we all press ‘like’ and comment gleefully ‘Happy Christmas’! Santa emoji.

Layered on top is the perception that to call bullshit on Christmas is to resemble Scrooge; thank you Charles Dickens with furnishing us all with a lifelong fear of behaving like Jacob Marley, the miserly nay-sayer. This fear is so rooted in our Western social conscience that there is no escape from the merriment. The world becomes Mr Fezziwig himself; along with a spray of champagne mist, and loving kiss under the mistletoe. And this is counterbalanced with a nod to charity for those less fortunate, and to taking stock as we approach New Year’s Eve, made even more potent for being the end of a decade, yay, a ten year review! It is literal madness.

My personal subscription to madness was to do the same thing but to expect different results. Road to insanity, apparently. In many ways this Christmas was the same as ever; we were at home, there were traditions observed, a set of festive routines and regularities that gave the comforting air of repetition and surety. Yet underneath, it was a seething, emotional mess with a gaping hole in it. My overriding feeling come daybreak on Christmas Day: we should have fled, done something totally different, gone to the Outer Hebrides, another hemisphere, the moon, literally anywhere but here. But there was no escape – even in the Outer Hebrides – one must go through the motions, despite the pain or loss or confusion. The requirement to ‘do’ Christmas is so ensconced in us, in our childhood selves, in our societal constructs, in our obligation to our own children, that we succumb, and participate, even though it is an endurance like no other.

So happy 2nd January. Thank f**k that’s over. For those who loved it and had a social media presence to match, I applaud you. I have been there! It’s fabulous isn’t it? But know that one day the paper crown might slip. It’ll be OK when it does, you will learn new things, you will broaden and welcome its lessons, despite yourself. These milestones, these markers, they are necessary in human life however you come to experience them. Then, you may be like me, welcoming in the new year sat in your dark garden by candlelight, with your surly fourteen year old son and two dogs (one of whom was wearing the cone of shame because he has a warty tail). You’ll be in your pyjamas and a big coat, hood up, cheap Prosecco in hand (because you won’t wanna waste the good stuff on this shit show), and as midnight strikes, you’ll look at the stars, and the fireworks bursting on the horizon and you’ll know (hope?), despite all evidence to the contrary: you are not alone.

It’ll be OK. Welcome 2020, I’ve got high hopes for you.

Photo by Stanislav Kondratiev on Unsplash

Inertia

18th December 2019 · Leave a Comment

Last minute decisions are a good idea. It seems, with seismic life change, that things which used to be insurmountable, are less so. I now look back on what I’ll call ‘The Years of Inertia’. I’d trace this from the point I left my corporate job/turned forty/had teenagers, and spent the best part of five years trying to figure my shit out. There are subtleties to each of those elements; not working gave ample time for reflection, and ceased a monthly salary which had, until then, defined me. Turning forty was a blizzard of feelings about life, myself and what it all meant. Do you know what it all means? Having teenagers is a profound shift to the all-consuming role of mother; children start to emerge as fledging adults, they are their own people, part of your work is done.

These three preoccupations, along with a long, long term marriage, conspired to form a mucky, opaque entanglement which led to inertia. Literally speaking, I could not move quickly in any direction for fear. I was sloth-like, hanging on, willing the world to stop changing around me. I now recognise this affliction in many others I observe, I see it all over, especially in my cohort of educated women. There is a sense that we have everything we always wanted, don’t we? Why mess with it? Yet, with inertia comes stagnation and frustration. Inertia is, by definition, not good long term. Meanwhile fear, which had dressed up in all sorts of guises, was a guest persistently lurking in the corner. An external force needs to come along to challenge the existing state.

Then, I can report, all bets are off.

I used to read and reread a book called ‘Feel Your Fear but Do it Anyway‘ (I did love a self help book or two – or fifty – when I was living ‘The Years of Inertia’). Self help books provided the kind of theoretical forward motion that inaction hides in its folds. The premise of the book was, as described in the title, to do it anyway and to keep doing it. That, the author said, was the answer.

But when the fear is a lurking presence, and not an obvious trigger (like spiders, or heights), it’s hard to know whether you’re facing it. It’s too easy to turn your back on it, or pretend it’s not there. I have a blonde-haired friend who is a no-nonsense kind of person. One could describe her as fearless as she doesn’t manifest the usual kind of trepidation that is common in women. In a way she behaves more like a man. She doesn’t question her occupancy in the world and is a proponent of ‘getting on with it’. She also doesn’t ‘do’ guilt, considers it as a bit pointless and even self-indulgent. Don’t feel guilty; do something more useful. I have huge admiration for this friend for that very reason. She is one of the most attractive women I have ever met. Fear is not an attractive trait. Whilst it can lead to better decisions in a long, drawn-out sense, it is unsexy in its application. If there is a crisis, we want a leader, someone who inspires. Maybe this is why the ubiquitous ‘mid life crisis’ is lauded as an existential mess, it’s rooted in fear and there can be no leader to take you out of it, other than yourself.

I think a lot about this.

Here are some good things to do when you feel fear or intertia, or both.

Go for a run. Book a trip to a place where nothing is the same as where you are from. I have had the good fortune to do this repeatedly and it works. Sell stuff on Ebay, even the good stuff that you are attached to. Sell more. Completely alter your routine. Inertia loves sameness. Make your sleep a priority; all sleep is good sleep. But the kind of sleep which guides you through change is restorative, purifying, worth every second. Watch those around you. Identify inertia in the faces of others. Question and challenge them. Stop giving a f*ck what people think. What people think is one of the biggest prohibiting factors in everyone’s minds. Why does it matter so very much? I smell a conspiracy. Clash leopard print with florals. Smile at every person who serves you in public; and ask them how they are. They will be shocked to have been asked and then they will ask you back and you will have a conversation and be reminded that the world is big. There is more. It does not begin and end with the narrative you are telling yourself, on repeat, in your head. Identify those friends who don’t do fear and guilt and watch what happens. How do they live? Get good wifi, speed is of the essence. Practice kindness – throw that stuff around like confetti, as the saying goes – give even to those who really, truly don’t deserve it. Listen more, speak less. Have a place, be it a journal you write in, or if you’re me, a Patreon page where you publish, and speak your own truth. Savour the liberation. Watch Beyoncé’s ‘Homecoming‘ on Netflix because seriously, it’s like liquid gold, mercurial, the opposite of inertia. Make a last minute decision. Go on.

Photo by Sylvie Tittel on Unsplash

Reading, listening, thinking…

1st December 2019 · Leave a Comment

I listen to audiobooks now more than I read in the static, sit with a book kind of way, purely because it can be done during parts of the day when I am otherwise engaged. This means I have to concentrate really hard on the language when I am driving, or ironing, or walking. On certain routes of my morning run, come pivotal parts of stories, and now when I revisit those places, the words of those writers still ring in my ears.

I listened to the audiobook of ‘Three Women’ by Lisa Taddeo, a complex work written after the author spent eight years immersed in the stories of three women in America, exploring the complexities of their sexual desires, and their relationships. It’s not aways what it seems, the myriad factors of female sexual desire are presented in an almost-too-much manner, mirroring that exact moment when something feels almost too much. The way in which this book saunters between the tales of the women works particularly well for audio, notably because Mena Suvuri reads one part so evocatively. The idea that women are open about what they want is a fallacy; it exposes a hidden inner life to the one women present to the world, because so many female sensibilities have been suggested, through decades, generations, centuries of societal behaviour. By the way, I have written more in depth about this on my Patreon page, for those readers who wish to subscribe.

The flip side of this is that I am also reading ‘The Descent of Man’ by Grayson Perry, which I am doing in old fashioned form. This is short, densely clever polemic on the concept of masculinity. Grayson Perry, who is known for being an artist, for cross-dressing and I suppose, for being married to Philippa Perry the psychologist. So rarely are men known for the woman they are married to – more often the other way around. This book is something I dip into, usually when I am killing time on the train or in a coffee shop, and it houses concepts which again, are almost too much to take. He unpicks with deft and clarity the ways in which we accept gender principles in society that have been passed down for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Blew my mind.

My writing has been split into weighty (gender politics and memoir), and light (the book with ‘fuck’ in the title) and I love the contrast. After oh-so-many-years of procrastinating about what to write, it’s becoming more clear, and I see it’s true what every motivational Instagram site says in quotes: some shit has to go down in your life before you sort yourself out. Get forward propulsion. Learn. Open yourself up. Trust the cosmic universe. Whatever the hell it is. I note that for me, it’s coming together in words, as I suppose I always suspected, or hoped it might.

I also note that the influence of podcasts is becoming pervasive. People now talk, referring to what they have heard in podcasts, or at least I find that amongst conversations I overhear. The candour with which podcast guests speak when in conversation is the key; it’s not the same as being interviewed for TV or radio. It is a medium entirely different and as such, it gives a perspective which feels shared, and willing, rather than forced or monitored. Favourites for revelation are How to Fail, The High Low, Happy Place, Esther Perel, So Lucky by Dawn O’Porter (newly launched).

I guess with podcasts you need never be entirely alone, there is always someone to listen to and be ‘with’. But for me it’s about the openness. When writing, it is that route into consciousness that matters. For reader (or listeners) to either learn something new, or to recognise something known.

Otherwise life is spent in a series of days working it out, and gently avoiding the prospect of Christmas which looms large every year, but this year in particular. I already have a slight longing to be half way through January, or in next June, or even next December, when maybe life might have regulated. But then, with that regulation may come the procrastination again, so I should make the best of the decisiveness that exists now.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Truth, and a Patreon Page

29th November 2019 · Leave a Comment

I have been writing on the web since 2010. Now, after nearly ten years, I wanted a shift, or a pivot, if you will. There’s been a whole lot of shift in my world, and it’s time to write more openly about it. This is, in part, why I have decided to set up a Patreon page and publish some of my work there. (Patreon, for those who aren’t familiar is a patronage model which aims to ensure creatives such as writers get paid something, even a little thing for their toil. It works on a subscription basis.)

This blog, which has had some iterations and phases over the years, has been a source of stability and solace to me. Despite various changes in my life, I kept writing it year after year, quietly – covertly even – as I went through my late thirties and into my early forties. I’ve made some amazing friends through it, and the output was a solid portfolio of work which got me accepted to a Masters degree. After I graduated, I went on to lecture on blogging, and how writers can develop an online portfolio. So I came to feel it was serendipitous that I pressed ‘publish’ one gloomy winter’s night all those years ago.

I have long acknowledged my inclination to share my innermost thoughts to a mass audience. Isn’t that what all writers do? Overshare? Although, if I am honest, lately I haven’t really shared my innermost thoughts. They have been a sanctioned, public version. There are complicated reasons for this, to do with events in my life, and the privacy of my family, who may not want to see themselves reflected on screen. The net of it is I have held myself back, and I am – in the interests of openness – so over that. Plus, I have never monetised my work before, so after some consideration, I figured it was time I did. In a friendly, crowd-funding sort of manner. So here we are.

Everything has come into focus in a fresh and raw way, personally, professionally and intellectually, and now there’s scope to explore this new landscape. I would like to do that with like-minded people, those who are invested in my work. When I write the blog, readers often contact me and say they love my words, the way I write, that it’s like talking to a friend, or being told something in confidence. They express frustration that I don’t post more often, and they comment that I write to a press quality; why am I not published in magazines?! Maybe it’s just how it goes; I am an online dweller and always have been, so it has consistently made sense to me to publish here, instead of in print form. But most of all, my readers tell me there’s a desire for more words, for more to be said, for more truth.

So that is what I intend to do. I will post on this blog in the same way as I always did, but I will also write long-form essays, opinion pieces, candid thoughts, musings, what is in my head on my Patreon page. To join you will be asked if you wish to pay a small subscription – about the cost of a cup of tea, or half a day’s parking, or a sandwich – to read my words. No biggie if you chose not to, but for those who want to support, it’s really easy and I promise you’ll get juicier, more fulsome version of the blog! In return, I am hoping you will be happy to pledge to read it.

My page can be found here, or if you search ‘Lou Bradford Writes’ on Patreon. I hope you’ll want to come along.