A Hopeful Perspective

No reblogging or posting things I didn't create (other than quotes which inspired a response, which will always be credited). This will be a reflective space and an encouragement for me to stay creative.

No rants here: I'll try to stick to critical reflections with a through-line of hope.

It still feels odd to not have anyone checking in on me. To easily go a day without speaking out loud to another person. I know that this is just what the liminal spaces feel like. It won't be forever.

Slowly, I am starting to find my fire again. I'm writing again, working on a creative brief for a job application feels fulfilling and interesting, instead of depleting and exhausting.

Things are getting done, sort of. They are getting done slowly, gently. And if they don't get done well then that's okay because this is a hard time in my life you know?

I think I am forgetting him, forgetting us, or both. There is this knowledge that he is a different person now. No longer the person who came with me to Tuscany, nor the person who proposed on Christmas day. Even less so the person who slammed doors and punched walls because of his medication and because I could never give him what he needed. He is a stranger now. Perhaps even more of a stranger than he was before we met.

There's something peculiar about that. The way that you can feel like you know someone inside out because you share every single day with them and then, just like that, they are a person who is in love with someone else, who you used to know and who still has their name on the mortgage, but who doesn't live here anymore.

Brighter mornings

Dopamine dressing

Emerging new friendships

An opportunity for a fresh start

The Green Party candidate for Gorton & Denton (big up Hannah Spencer!)

The lightness that comes with shedding a version of yourself

Books! Specifically, the amazing Little Free Library near my house. I'm 90% sure there's a philosophy student nearby because the things I have found in that box!!

A zero waste shop within walking distance (albeit several miles). Bonus points for it being a gorgeous environment to be in and not just a crammed hippie shop (which I also have a soft spot for, no shade)

A lawn full of crocuses at a nearby house

A local greengrocer

Well made coffee and the ubiquity of non-dairy milk

Hamnet (2025) breathed life into the beautiful, vulnerable, human desire to leave something beautiful behind us. To let the beautiful out of you, even as the darkness pours in. 

In times of great darkness, some give in to it. They allow it to swallow them whole, absorb them and walk through the world as if it was them. They personify the darkness, and through their pain acted out upon the world, it spreads. Others hold a spark, invisible by all accounts, until darkness comes into their life or their world. Like the light of Eärendil, it burns brighter than the brightest star, precisely in the darkest places when it is needed most. 

We don’t know if Shakespeare’s son truly died of the plague; it is even more unlikely that he 'tricked' death into taking him over his sister. I don’t think that is the point of the story. For me, Hamnet is about what it means to be human. What it means to remain part of nature when all the ‘modern’ world wants is for you to bear the pain and grief of existence ever more quietly. What it means to contain whole worlds, even other galaxies, inside you, and for pain and grief to create the cracks through which they pour. 

Life is hard, unbearable even. And yet we bear it. Humans have been bearing unthinkable pain since long before we had the words to convey or record it. 

What is it to be human, you ask? War, violence, suffering, cruelty? Perhaps.

'A life of hurry can become superficial. When we rush, we skim the surface, and fail to make real connections with the world or other people.'