The very *state* of things

If you’ve been paying any sort of attention to world events in the last week-plus-change then you might be feeling a little heavy right now. You might feel other things too. 

Ragey. 

Inadequate. 

Despondent. 

Writing might feel like you’re wading through mud right now, up to your waist and rising fast. 

I’ve spent a week feeling numb, and then cross and then raging. 

And I’m not even in the countries or states where people are most affected by things like the overturning of Roe v. Wade, or war in Ukraine or the freaking flooding of the east coast of Australia (AGAIN!!) but I can’t pretend to not be affected.

Friends in the USA. Family and friends in Eastern Europe. Family and friends in NSW.  

Also, in the tradition of every expert everywhere, I have ignored my own advice. 

I’ve stared out the window, daydreaming. But not nice ones where you imagine picnics and fun – horrid nightmarish daydreams about how we’re all doomed. 

What’s my usual advice for this sort of feeling? I know, I know: write, write whatever wants to come. Write horribly and clunkily and in great heaving shouts into the void. 

And I didn’t, for what feels like a whole lot of time. 

But now I am and it feels SO MUCH BETTER. 

That, plus spending as much of the weekend in the garden as I possibly could. I pruned three fruit trees and I pruned them hard. (It’s Winter where I am so pruning season.) 

I even took my cup of tea out there, along with my secateurs, loppers and pruning saw, just like my Dad does when he gardens. 

And I know you’re expecting me to say that time outside, with the Winter sun on my face and my hands busy doing practical things sorted me out and made me get some perspective to know that we’ll be ok. That it somehow healed something inside me and gave me faith again. 

Well it didn’t. 

Because the world isn’t actually like that right now. It’s “hell in a handbasket” time for a whole load of people out there, and we shouldn’t look away. 

It’s a position of incredible privilege to not be cross or worried or raging at this moment in time. Unimaginable privilege to mouth platitudes and try to soothe those who aren’t ok. 

So if you’re not ok right now, I get that. I understand. 

Writing is helping me not sink. Gardening too. It’s not fixing anything, but it’s keeping me afloat. 

And I’ll also be contacting my elected representatives, looking for how to support organisations who advocate for change and trying to keep my teenagers from getting despondent. 

This is an unedited post from me. You’re welcome.