Waiting

When emails start with 'unfortunately'

It rains. Sideways rain. Summer is refusing to show up in any summer-sun capacity these last few weeks. I’ll admit, I’ve not been so good this year at keeping up the policy that ‘there’s no bad weather, only bad clothes’. This year, I’m falling into the ‘bad weather’ camp (though I swear I’m trying to leave it!). I’m disheartened by the rain, the wind, the cold temperatures. Sometimes you’ll find me looking up at the sky with a jaded expression, muttering, Where the hell is summer?

I’ve had the pleasure of writing a lot of this with a cat on my lap. A very lovely experience. I’m catsitting at the moment, enjoying evenings with a cat for company, enjoying watching her funny little dashes and expressions when she spots a fly in the kitchen or a bat outside the window at night. She occasionally brings me alive gifts. I’ll admit, I much prefer when she just runs in for a head scratch without a plump mouse between her teeth.

Lately, I feel like I’ve hit a dead end. Finding freelance work has been painfully slow this year, very little seems to bite. I’ve applied for some part-time positions that would be ideal but even those have led to nothing.

I’ve been feeling burdensome lately. My positivity wavering in the face of rejection. My attitude becoming soured, my energy sapped, my face seeking sunlight and finding only neverending showers. Distraction tactics work. Not writing. Not reading. Not spending time with the blank page, with my thoughts. It’s why this newsletter has sat festering in the corner of the room like a rotting stone fruit, why I’ve got a million unread messages, why I’ve been terrible at sending birthday cards on time or wearing anything other than the same pair of jeans and blue sweater. Setback after setback, rejection after rejection, and I’ll admit, I’d rather bury myself into my bedsheets than see another email containing the words unfortunately or on this occasion.

I work at a restaurant part-time-ish and I’ve heard legends of the bioluminescent night swims after a sweaty shift from other colleagues. I’ve yet to go on one myself - I prefer the morning ones, where my body is shocked awake by the cold water and I feel like I’ve achieved something amidst days of unfortunately emails. These stories of bioluminescent swims have plagued my conscious though, imagining how such sights must’ve struck sailors many years ago, must’ve been such a curious sight. A seal swimming through the dark waves leaving a neon trail could’ve certainly looked like a mermaid, a jellyfish a spirit.

In times like these, I tend to shrivel a little. I shrink inwards. Be kind to yourself, I tell friends going through similar frustrations, lives tipped upside down, also staring into the endless uncertainty of waiting for something to shift. I’m terrible at being kind to myself. I’m frustrated by my vulnerability, by my sleepiness, by my desire to avoid social occasions and to cocoon myself in the walls of a duvet.

Yesterday, I spoke to an old educator of mine, seeking a reference as I go through the process of applying to different things. My terror at sending off work for him to read so he could familiarise himself with my writing once more was hilarious to me. Mental states of fragility leave me seeking validation in my work, lacking confidence in my writing, my voice. I’m embarrassingly grateful for validation from writers better than me.

I don’t feel like I’ve failed but I do find myself pushing forward ever so slowly, grateful for physical work, for chores, for distractions. A cake to bake. A gift to wrap. It’s easier to exist in the doing than in the knowing.

Admist all my worries and frustrations, I’m still moving. I’m swimming in treacle. I’m ranting and then laughing. I’m crying then grinning. I’m pitying myself all while kicking my backside to keep moving. But, as bad as I am at it, I’m also trying to be kind to my little brain, my little heart, my little soul. To little Beth, who used to make stop-motion animations with her Sylvanian families, who had a pretend spider as a pet, who needs just a little more time to adjust to a change of plans.

I can never lie when I write. It’s an honesty like no other, the work of being stripped bare. My truths can’t be hidden when words are laid naked on the page.

When other writers talk about ‘why they write’ they say things like:

“What I am trying to do for myself, always, is honor the delicacy of complication—the idea that people are not really one thing or the other, that there is this amalgamation of all sorts of nerve endings and truths . . .” - Hilton Als, author of White Girls

“I started to sense that I was avoiding something about where I came from and who I was . . . And I realized that the best way to respond to this growing awareness was just to be still about it and to see what happened. And at some point, I started to turn and look over my shoulder—metaphorically speaking—to see what I had been running from. And at that point, there was this burst of creativity.. . .” Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies

“Ambiguity is pretty important to me. I think that’s what I’m attracted to in writing. A clear ambiguity.” Patty Yumi Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

“Why do you think people need stories? We are stories. Even our names are stories.” Natalie Diaz, author of Postcolonial Love Poem:

I think that’s the truth. I write to be myself. To make sense of things. I write to get closer to who I am. And when things aren’t easy, admittedly, it’s harder to write, because it requires an honesty and inner closeness that sometimes is easier to avoid.

Then, when I finally do sit, quiet, with the page, a favourite album on, I’m me. I can’t hide from that. I keep saying that I want to get better, that I want my work to be the best it can be. Sometimes, I worry I’m waiting for my life to start - that I’m waiting for some accomplishment to be the Be All, End All. That maybe, I need a new ethos. That my writing doesn’t need to be the best it can be. It just needs to be true.

It just needs to be honest. To be me.

TO READ: I’ve not done a vast amount of reading of late. Bits here and there. Re-reads. Partial-reads. So, maybe you can recommend something to me!

TO LISTEN: I just had the joy of seeing Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats live in Glasgow and, oh man, what an excellent show. So, their new album is out. It’s truly worth a listen.

TO WATCH: I watched Billy Elliot a week or so ago for the possibly tenth time in my life. I cried like a baby at the end. Maybe you, too, need a good kind of cry.

Strangely in between, waiting-room type times.

Thank you for being here and sharing this time with me. I’m always endlessly grateful to hear from anyone who takes the time to read this. I can’t promise I’ll be on track with next month’s - it seems I may have a new irregular rhythm - but, I’ll always return to the page. Whether it looks like this or vastly different. Here’s to the ups and downs and taking everything as it comes.

Thank you, as always.