A few months ago, I got a gnawing feeling. It felt like the slow rising of a wave of overwhelm, and that the little boat I called my life was floating somewhere in its path.
I was behind on edits working with my wonderful mentor, Mark Macleod, on my children’s novel. I was attending a series of workshops developing a brand new project for a local theatre company. I had just returned from an international holiday, and I had a job application to complete and a stack of creative writing folios to mark, not to mention all of the emails I had to answer. My house was in disarray (never a good sign), and I was recovering from a knee injury that was making running difficult. I was a busy boy, and it felt like everything that had once been a blessing had suddenly become just one more thing to constantly be worrying about.
I sat down on the couch with my head in my hands. What was I going to do?
After a moment (and a big sleep), I thought about everything a little more. What was I really doing? I was writing a children’s book, and in a month’s time I would have the opportunity to pitch its concept to some of Australia’s best publishers. I was creating an original play in an environment where I had an enormous amount of creative support, and it was growing every day. I had been to Japan, where I had driven a go-kart around the streets of Tokyo, undertaken a traditional tea ceremony, and visited the world of Harry Potter at the Universal Studios theme park. I had almost cracked a twenty-minute five km personal best in my running, and I was working at my favourite school, teaching my favourite subject and had a new leadership position. I was co-President of one of Tasmania’s largest literary festivals.
It was a lot to sift through. But, I reflected, Lyndon at 24 would have killed for the problems that I had now. For all of my challenges, I was living the dream of a younger version of me. I am living the dream of a younger version of me, even now.
Much has stayed the same for me in 2023. I wake up in my little house, largely following the same routine in which the clock might be set by coffees in the morning, green teas in the afternoon, and a cup of earl grey in the evening. Some things have changed, though. For the first time in more than a decade, I will be acting in April, in the Launceston Players’ 2024 Production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, a darkly funny comedy about a writer living in a totalitarian state being interrogated about the grisly content of his stories. Georgie and I, as co-presidents of the Tamar Valley Writers Festival, will be heading up our first fully-fledged event this year in October, bringing local and national storytellers to our hometown. After six years teaching English 3, this year I will be taking my first Philosophy class, and will spend at least some of my time unpacking the big concepts of the good life, ethics, and the mind/body problem.
I have been so very spoilt on my arrival at thirty-four. There were messages that my phone buzzed with all day that spoke of me in the kind of way that seemed perhaps to indicate a person I wish I was, rather than the way that I am, but which nevertheless made me feel that I might be doing something right. There was cake, and decorations, and presents that were as thoughtful as they were generous. There were enthusiastic happy birthday declarations at school, a family member who cancelled their plans that night to be able to spend more time with me, and food… food… so much food.
I live the kind of life now where I have almost an entire year laid out before me at every turn. The school calendar ticks forward from day one to exams with a frighteningly predictable progression that always gradually increases in speed and intensity. Trips, activities, performances and adventures start filling in the gaps long before the diary has officially turned from one year to the next. It is a gift, certainly, on some days, to be busy. There isn’t time to worry about the sorts of things that used to turn over in my mind for hours: the things said and unsaid, heard and not heard, the mistakes made and the undeserved successes. There is only time to hold on tight.
Most days, when I wake up, I feel lucky. I used to think of each new day, and each new year, as a blank page, but perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it is a door… not necessarily something that I get to write for myself, but something that waits for me, and that I only need enter to discover. There are times when it all feels really, really hard. Of course there are. But through all of the challenges I’ve faced, I haven’t yet had a year where I regretted where I’ve found myself. I have learnt and grown so much. I think Lyndon of ten years ago, and twenty years ago, would be proud of me. I think he’d be excited that one day he would get to be me, and open Door 34 for himself.
If you’re reading this, the chances are that somewhere behind that door you are waiting. Today, as I step through and turn the lights on to face the surprises of the year ahead, I feel so grateful to be here, and so grateful that you are too.
Whatever happens, this place is home now. And as the way back closes behind me, knowing that you are in here somewhere beside me, I am excited to see, and embrace, whatever lies ahead.
Narrative structures in fiction have traditionally been fairly straightforward: give your audience stakes, the higher the better. If the entire world (or even universe) isn’t in peril, you’re probably not trying hard enough.
That said, as we reach the winter months here in Australia, like a lot of people I have begun to wonder if there isn’t demand for worlds in which the intensity level is set a little lower. During the lockdowns of Covid I sought solace from my fears in the world of the Nintendo videogame Animal Crossing, in which players are thrust into a new life on an idyllic tropical island, making friends with the creatures that live there and gradually improving the infrastructure of the town around them. Those who ask how to “win” the game have to be content with a non-committal shrug: Animal Crossing offers things to do and achieve, certainly, but the concept of ultimate victory is at odds with its essential nature. It is a safe place—all of the pressure of outcome washing away on a gentle tide. Similarly, for years the concept of “escapism” in literature has been a term of derision: a label that implies that both reader and writer are sharing a delusion in order to hide from their own realities. It is intriguing, then, that the genres of science fiction and fantasy—most commonly attacked with this charge—have embraced a recent turn towards an intensified version of this feeling. In “cosy” fiction, the danger is dramatically lowered, the tone is introspective and internally transformative, rather than externally so, and there is a focus on comfort: heart, hearth, armchair and hot beverage.
Cosy novels are cottagecore. They are the kinds of books you might read upon waking from a nightmare, the literary equivalent of a hot drink by the fire on a cold night.
I would love to introduce two of my favourites to you.
A Cup of Tea:
Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Becky Chambers’ glorious science fiction story (winner of the Hugo Award for Best novella) is the story of Dex, a non-binary tea monk who travels from town to town, composing bespoke blends and listening to the problems of the citizens that live in the places they visit. Dex always feels that something is missing, and one day they decide to brave the forbidden wilderness surrounding the urban areas. The wild is home to the world’s robots, who generations ago gained sentience and requested release from human society. One of them, Mosscap, finds and greets Dex. Together they continue their exploration and shared mission of helping soothe the ills of the troubled while finding purpose in their own lives.
Chamber’s book can be read in only a couple of hours, but its effect is longer-lasting. It is a tale that reminds us that acts of kindness may seem small, but their impact has echoes. Tea is the perfect symbol and metaphor for Psalm for the Wild-Built, a novella that is by turns soothing, meditative, and which never fails to warm some small forgotten corner of the human soul.
A Cup of Coffee: Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree
Travis Baldree’s offering to the genre of cosy fiction takes readers to a very different landscape: the fantasy city of Thune. Here we meet Viv, an orc swordswoman and mercenary who has become weary of a life of violence and is captivated by an obsessive new vision: the possibility of starting a coffee shop. Her first hurdle, of course, is that no-one even knows what coffee is, but that is the least of her problems… her old life insists on trying to find a way to squeeze back in and drag her back to battle.
Like coffee, Legends and Lattes is similarly thawing but with a little more intensity of energy and a slightly sharper edge. Baldree creates a sense of community that is perhaps the book’s greatest asset, and both Viv and the reader form deep and enthusiastic connections with the novel’s diverse cast of characters: the hob Cal, the succubus Tandri, Thimble the baker, Pendry the bard and Amity the dire-cat. Watching Viv’s coffee-house gradually develop its menu, popularity and personality is a joy to behold. Quite simply, it allows for the reader to inhabit the part of living in a fantasy world that is lost to so many distant quests for forgotten treasures: community. If in most fantasy novels the reader finds a band of companion warriors, in Legends & Lattes they find friends: the kind that will sit with you quietly by the fire in an armchair, talking about nothing, with a freshly-baked cinnamon scroll to share between you. It is a story about friendship, love, and also about the fact that often in life it is the simplest of dreams that bring us the most satisfaction.
I love cosy fiction. As I explore the genre more, cosy books remind me, fundamentally, that it is okay for a story to just make us happy. We do not owe it to ourselves or anyone else that our literature is always an instrument and metaphor for struggle, personal improvement or academic deconstruction. What books can do—just as importantly—is give us a haven of respite from a chaotic world. A book can alleviate a small moment of human suffering. A book can heal a wound that you can’t see.
Many of us go to a cup of tea or coffee for a brief retreat and a touch of warmth in our bones.
If that’s the direction that fiction is heading in, pour me another.
I can’t believe that I am writing this. It is too soon.
Shockingly and suddenly, four-and-a-half years into caring for her, my dear friend Robyn discovered recently that Ellie the greyhound had become very sick. Sadly, the vet confirmed that she was not going to get better.
Ellie, I am very sorry to say, is gone.
Ellie was a special creature. Like a lot of greyhounds, she had at least fifty percent more nose and leg than should have been reasonably allowed by law, and she had a way of looking into your eyes that sometimes made you think she knew absolutely all of the secrets of the universe, and sometimes made you think she knew almost nothing at all. When we filled the main hall at Launceston College with hundreds of people to launch the book we had created about her and she stood on stage looking out at the crowd, I always wondered… did she know that it was all for her? It seemed to me like she had just dropped down to Earth from another planet, and she was trying to work out what it meant to live here. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I half-expected to catch her sitting up in an armchair and covertly flicking through the pages of a book called How to Dog.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, a couple of weekend ago, as the early mists rose over the high suburbs around Launceston, I was lucky enough to take Ellie for one last walk with the two of us together. It was certainly memorable. It was a Sunday morning, and from where Ellie and I wandered we could see the city and the river in the distance: a whole world below us to explore. As I returned back to the house and tried to drink my cup of tea, Ellie persisted in squeezing her head under the palm of my hand.
I went home with my jeans covered in slobber and tea splashes. I went home happy.
One thing that never quite came through in our picture book was what Ellie taught me about running. Reading Becoming Ellie, you might have thought that part of the story’s message is that Ellie will never run again. But Ellie was the master of what dog-people call “the zoomies.” Whenever the mood took her, the screen door would swing open and down the concrete ramp she would fly, onto the grass and around the backyard, running in circles and spinning at the same time, impossibly making the square of grass seem endless. She would freeze, launch, freeze again, and then bound this way and that, chasing some invisible wonder in a dance that was all her own.
Ellie ran again, she just ran differently. She ran chaotically. She ran without purpose. She discovered the simple truth that so many of us who turn our passions into vocation or competition need to learn: winning is one thing, but the best part of life is simply finding joy in the act itself.
Dogs like Ellie remind us of who we should be. To them, every opportunity to explore the world is a miracle, and every interaction with others is the best thing that has ever happened. Dogs like Ellie show the world that all of those carefully-curated layers of artifice that we drape over our lives in order to try and make them more reasonable, more sensical, or work more in our favour are an illusion: the only way to true joy is to embrace life with all its flaws and all four paws.
I hope that Ellie is free now. I hope she dreams of a field that goes on forever, where she can run and run and run and never reach the other side. I hope that she can rest somewhere with stolen socks and smelly old toys, and a thousand corners in which she can flip upside down, her four ridiculous legs poking up in the air like the skyward-reaching masts of a big furry pirate ship. I hope she knows that tonight someone is reading her story, and that she is remembered. We are lucky to have known her.
I feel sad for my friend Robyn, who has lost her mate and companion. I find it hard to look at the smiling dog on the front cover of our book, or to walk past the artwork of her that hangs on the walls of my house, and know that the star of the show is no longer going to come prancing into the room when I visit, looking for that just-right spot to have a lie down in, where she can get herself perfectly in the way of everyone’s feet and ankles. The sky seems a little dimmer today because Ellie isn’t here.
We are going to miss you, Ellie-dog. Thank you for being part of our story, and thank you for letting us be part of yours.
In Sydney at Van Gogh Alive. Photo by Georgie Todman.
Yesterday, on the 30th of January, I returned to school for another year. While it seems reasonable to consider the 1st of January as the day upon which everything “ticks over,” as I pick-up the baton for another round of teaching it is this moment that really feels like the fresh start, accompanied, of course, by the reality of growing another year older.
I am thirty-three now. How quickly we start to reach an age that we once thought was impossibly distant. 2022 has been a whirlwind of adventures and runs, teaching and reading, foster care and festivals. I am flat out all the time these days, but I am flat out with everything that makes me happy. As I awaken from a holiday of hibernation and dialing life back, it is exciting for my eyes to burst open in the morning with this swirling thought behind them: there are so many good things I need to do.
Some new challenges face me this year. My co-president Georgie Todman and I have taken on the role of coordinating the Tamar Valley Writers Festival, following the incredible legacy of previous president Mary Machen. Alongside classes, I have a new role facilitating an updated English course and helping to promote reading and the library at my school. I am currently undergoing an Arts Tasmania mentorship with the assistance of the Australian Society of Authors and my mentor, Tasmanian writer Mark Macleod, to continue working on the development of my novel Wombat Overland, and I have some personal goals of my own to chase: I am flat out on the treadmill at the moment trying to get my 5km time to under twenty minutes, and I am hoping to repeat one of my achievements of 2022 and read a hundred books this year (at sixteen so far I think I’m off to a good start!). Those are just the things that I know are coming. If this year is to be anything like the ones that have come before, I have no doubt that there are just as many surprises ahead as well.
So far, even in a school of 1400 students and ninety staff, I have managed to dodge Covid for nearly three years. Nevertheless, my life as a 33-year-old enters strange new realms regardless. Artificial Intelligence has reached a level of sophistication that I suspect will change our lives enormously, and teaching will have to be one of the first areas to adapt, with the implications for writers similarly frightening. The world of the next couple of years will look very different. It’s exciting, but it’s scary, too.
I concluded my holidays with an interstate trip accompanied by family and friends, zipping over to Sydney to see Michael Sheen at the Opera House in a spectacular performance of Amadeus, then to Melbourne for escape rooms and a re-watch of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (we had to make sure nothing too drastic had changed in the shorter version). The teenagers that accompanied us surprised me by echoing my own feelings (which I had always felt were probably mine alone) about how disorientating the big city is for people like us who are so used to our small island. We reflected on how much sadness there is on the faces that pass by, how it can make a person feel so very very small. Starting a new year sometimes feels like that: like there is a tide against you, and that it will become too much, and that there is so much hurt in the world that it is hardly a drop in the ocean to offer a small amount of kindness, or to feel awe, or to achieve something.
Oh, I am getting older. My body doesn’t feel it much yet, but it is undeniable. I am more aware with every day how small I am and how the power of my celebrated youth is fading. Nevertheless, I believe I still have a lot to offer. I am here to do what all of us must do: believe that tiny stones create enormous ripples, and that it is our job to help try to cure the curse of loneliness with our actions and our art, clinging to each other in the crowd like survivors in a life raft. As I reach this new beginning, at 33, I am sure you will be pleased to know that I am happy. I am small, certainly, but I am here, and I am glad to be.
I write this blog with a cup of coffee, on my birthday, looking out over the city as the streets begin to fill with people and another day—another year—begins.
The world is waking to greet me. The world is waking to greet all of us.
I remember the night before my family had the internet connected really clearly. I was lying in bed, awake, thinking about the fact that tomorrow my world was going to open up in an entirely new way (I was also thinking quite a lot about the website Neopets, but I have no further comment on this at this time). I was pretty accurate in my assertion, but hours and hours spent playing on computers at Dad’s work, at school, and at my friend Bill’s house had set me up well for the brave new world. The power of being connected to cyberspace had crept up on me. A few weeks ago, I had a similar feeling, but this time it hit fast and hard. I saw something so world-altering that I had to wheel my chair back from the desk, as if my computer might be about to attack me. I could feel my heart racing in my chest. Everything that I thought I knew was going to have to change: teaching, writing and creativity would never be the same. It was exciting, but it was also terrifying.
Mum is disappointed. “You didn’t write a birthday blog this year,” she tells me.
There must be some mistake. I don’t just “not write” a birthday blog. I have consistently posted something—on my birthday or just after it—for the last decade. In my mission to prove her wrong, however, it doesn’t take too much scrolling to bounce straight back to the post where I turned thirty-one.
There is only one way to fix such a deficit. So here I am, halfway through thirty-two, trying to make sense of what came before.
In 2021, the message was “hold on”. Tasmania got very lucky with coronavirus—in the sense that it quickly and unflinchingly shut up shop to the outside world—but there was also a sense of foreboding: we were always waiting for the fall, floating in a state of uncertainty.
There were some victories. In our bubble, we got to hold each other close. The thing that I was perhaps most grateful for was that I got to walk into classes full of students and teach, almost completely without fear. Ninety-percent of the time school felt normal. It seemed to me that I was like a bird being released into and out of its cage each morning. Covid crept closer to me, with a number of lucky escapes, but I made it, yet again, without the dreaded virus catching me.
And of course there were moments to celebrate. There were the students facing what, for many, would be insurmountable odds who nevertheless achieved amazing things: my overall results for school were the best that I have ever had. There was my own achievement in completing the process to qualify me as a respite foster carer. Although thirty-one did not see me leaving the state, there were all of the memories that I created here, running and hiking (with a return to the Overland Track) and exploring its small towns and strange corners with my friends. There was the great thawing of our local arts scene as the years of cancelled shows and events finally came back to life. We still live in an unprecedented time, there is no doubt about it, but at the heart of it we can always find good people.
Now that the borders are open between Tasmania and the rest of the country (and world), the opportunities to travel further are inbound. For now (despite the fears about what coronavirus might do to this island), the trickling in of people I have been without—all returning for the summer months—is a surprise and a delight. I have missed my friends and it is good to have them back. In the meantime, though, I have made a life here that makes me very happy. My definition of family has widened and I have found myself surrounded by individuals who have held me close in a time in which it often felt like people needed to be pushed away.
I am so lucky. I am okay.
The new school year is one of mandated mask-wearing and uncertainty, but I choose to face it bravely. In a time in which so much of the fabric of our lives is threaded with fear, it is my sincere wish for all of us that we find strands of hope to cling to. 2022 will not be an easy year (and as someone who is merely pretending not to be halfway through it, I can feel fairly confident in my prophecy here), but the anchors that have always kept us from floating adrift remain available to us: time in the outdoors, good books, family, friends, cups of tea and quiet nights curled up on the couch.
I am pleased to announce that in 32 years I have become more relaxed. I am so much less afraid of what other people think of me, and while I still have things to do, and learn, and grow into, I have settled into a life that I love. More awaits, and I am excited for it.
To all of you who have shared the journey with me so far, thank you. As I step through this new doorway into another strange time, I feel confident that, whatever faces me on the other side, if I fall, there will be hands to hold me up, helping me back to my feet.
For all of us, I believe there are better days ahead.
A few months ago, I met with the artistic director of the Tamar Valley Writers Festival, Georgie Todman, and the artist Grace Roberts. Alongside the festival president Mary Machen, Georgie had a very exciting idea: a picture book set in the Tamar Valley that could be shared with children that lived there in their schools and homes.
And that wasn’t even the best bit. The best bit was that they wanted to give it away for free!
In that meeting, we threw around some ideas. Grace told me that she liked drawing birds. I said that I wanted to write a story that was a little bit more human than my last picture book… to give the animals in it clothes and houses and little lives and hobbies all of their own. We ran away back to our burrows to see what we could come up with. Soon, Grace was sending me images that made it clear that she knew exactly how to bring the main character and her world to life. And once I saw how human the creatures that she had drawn looked… I knew exactly where the story went.
The result is Tamar the Thief, the tale of a magpie. Tamar lives by the banks of the River Tamar (kanamaluka) (and yes, it is technically an estuary!). She is alone, stubborn, and defiantly self-sufficient, but beneath it all she knows that she is unhappy. One day she sees something pretty, and she takes it. Surprised at how easy this turns out to be, and how much better it makes her feel for a moment, she quickly falls into a life of crime, and before she knows it she is stealing everywhere she goes! It takes a kookaburra called Luka and a whole lot of patience to get Tamar back on track, and all the while her nest is getting more and more full of all of the things that she has taken, gradually threatening to push her out of the place she once called home…
At its heart, Tamar the Thief is a story about what really matters. Tamar can have anything that she wants in the world, but she discovers in the end that none of it makes up for the feeling she has that something else is missing. Sometimes, it takes moving past the idea of getting what we want in order to find out what we actually need.
I’m really proud of Tamar the Thief and I’m excited to share it with you. I think it’s the kind of story that can remind children and grown-ups about the things that are important, and it gives me no end of joy to see Grace’s illustrations bring it to life, along with iconic locations of the Tamar Valley and even some extra little characters to keep your eyes out for! My huge thanks to everyone who has discovered, read and shared the book already, and to Georgie, Grace and Mary for helping to make it happen.
Tamar and Luka can’t wait to meet you.
You can read all of Tamar the Thief, for free, by visiting the Tamar Valley Writers Festival website here.
If I ever needed reminding about just how absurd a figure a billion is, somewhere in this year following my 31st birthday I am told that I will reach the point where I have been alive for a billion seconds. Oddly, I feel that I can somehow picture my life in these tiny flashes that swirl in the pools of memory and forgetfulness: a billion tumbling, turning moments: of reading, of writing, of learning, of eating, of teaching, of driving, of playing, of dancing, of loving. I have heard it said that if you ask a broad spectrum of adults how old they feel inside themselves, the most common answer is 31, and for me there is certainly a calm comfort in today—perhaps because of the resonance the number has with my birthday on the 31st of January, perhaps simply because of the contentment I have currently found with the place where I live, the people I am surrounded by, and the vocational and artistic lives I have forged for myself.
My thirtieth year might be described as the beginning of the “roaring twenties” only in the sense that it was categorised by the blare of news bulletins and the squealing of sirens. At this time last year, smoke still circled my city from close and distant infernos of flame, and we had to entertain the frightening possibility that the trend of the apocalyptic Australian Summer might be a recurring new reality. A colleague once promised me that every year of teaching got easier, and for the first five weeks of 2020 I felt the satisfied joy of finally feeling a steady command of my profession, with a year’s internship and another full year’s teaching behind me. Then, before I knew it, I was tumbling into a world of chaotic phone calls, of paranoia and aching eyes forced to host classes on Zoom and email at absurd rates. On a global scale, I know, my own challenges are not significant, but that didn’t mean that I was safe from frustration, exhaustion, doubt and despair. The first Monday morning when I finally walked into my Line 1 English classroom and found it full of students again I barely contained my emotion, and as I wait to meet this year’s students I am trying to remember that promise of gratitude in the moments that are so exhausting and so easily taken for granted. There are certainly achievements to celebrate in 2020: my involvement in the Tamar Valley Writers Festival, hosting their podcast alongside Annie Warburton, and the continuing evolution of my own writing, which ticks away (usually) secretly but with deep contentment, as well as friendships and adventures and beautiful moments spent in the wild.
A billion seconds might seem like an absurdly long time, but I know that time moves faster the more of it you have tailing you. I try not to obsess over the memories that swirl in the pool and follow me now, nor the rhythmic, constant ticking of the clock above my desk where I write. A billion good seconds are behind me, and hopefully there are at least a billion more ahead. I’ve got work to do, and work that will hopefully make good use of the years and minutes and moments in front of me.
The trick—it seems to me—is not to count that steady passage of time, but to make it count, and I feel lucky on this day for the seconds for the time that I have had. In all the ways that matter the most, it is undeniable: I am a billionaire.
And so we reach the coming of age of our new millennium. It is hard to imagine on this still morning that brings in 2021 the horror we faced at this time a year ago, gasping helplessly as an inferno rolled across the country, an event that felt apocalyptic and earth-shattering but which we told ourselves was undoubtedly the year’s tragedy—perhaps one that would be back as we adjusted to life with the global air-con on the fritz, but nevertheless something endurable and ending, at least in the short term. Yet it only took a couple of months before 2020 dealt another punch, however, and the year was suddenly epitomised by the image of a mask, the word “lockdown,” by measurements of 1.5 metres and by free-standing hand santitiser dispensers that stood in every doorway like some kind of traditional decoration for a festival celebrating cleanliness. One of my colleagues made a habit of asking everyone about their “new normal,” and yet none of this felt “normal” at all… Most of us had only one wish when it came to that word, and that was for things to return, as soon as possible, to the way that they were before.
And still, somehow, we endured. Last night as the clock struck midnight I watched the world from a balcony above the ocean, seeing the fireworks in the distance rise into the sky like promises of light, the moon standing high and hopeful and casting a warm glow over the bay as the teenagers at the shack a few doors down the road danced and cheered and kissed in silhouettes around the window. I know that life does not divide itself into neat, clear-cut sections, but there is something calming about the number one as I watch the calendar tick over, like a fresh exercise book on the first day of school or some glorious moment of raw discovery and potential: like seeing an animal you never knew existed. Everything can be new on the first day of a new year. Everything can be normal, just for a moment.
And so, to my wish for this year. I hope that in 2021 we find ourselves a new normal—maybe even a beautiful one. I hope that the lessons of 2020 are not ignored or forgotten, and that we remember that we remain in a fragile balancing act with this planet that sustains us, and in a fragile balancing act with each other. I hope that we continue to recognise that a hug or a coffee or a walk in the outside world is a simple thing when it is free but can come at great cost, that stories fight loneliness, and that ultimately to be human is merely (and hugely) to create tiny threads of connection in the lives of others. Our fears and challenges in the world of 2020 are not over, and the greatest danger of a new normal is of course that it never exists in the first place, and that we stumble violently and defiantly along our old patterns of behaviour, pretending that there are no consequences to doing so. I hope instead that we follow a different path and take the world as it is, finding little ways to make it more endurable, more hopeful, and better.
The great lesson for me in the darkest hours of this year was that fear and sadness are not easily borne alone, and that even small instances of kind voices on the phone or a shared experience can save a day, which can save a month, and save a year. Thank you to all of you who have been there for me in 2020. I have learnt to be more grateful for my friends than ever before, and to cherish those moments of shared love, sadness and laughter, when the rest of the world falls away and disregarding whatever chaos swirls in the storm outside there is a little moment of normality.
I hope this round brings joy and beauty. Happy New Year to all of you, and happy new normal.
One of the fascinating things about writing is that it captures a moment that sometimes cannot be understood to exist outside of the context that it was created in. As I scroll back through my posts commemorating the beginning of this new decade at the end of last year, it is almost laughable how naïvely they look towards 2020 as another year that might be a blank slate, on which might I could write anything if I were to show enough diligence and perseverance to my goals and dreams. These thoughts seem, on reflection, less like a promise and more like a hopeless wish for deliverance screamed into an uncaring avalanche. And yet, here we are.
I can remember the first five weeks of the school year, as well as the excitement and confidence with which I embraced them, feeling finally that I had some self-assurance in the classroom and that things really would be easier this time. I can remember the early whispers of coronavirus—an intriguing development from a far-away place that gradually, then quickly, spread like a growing coffee stain across a map of the world. I work with colleagues who have never—in decades of teaching—seen a school closed down for any extended period of time, and yet suddenly we all faced a reality that could not be denied. I taught sections of this year over YouTube, Zoom, across Canvas and through phone and email. I scrambled to catch up those who fell off the radar or who struggled with the challenges of isolation and supporting their family, staying healthy and being creative—the same challenges that I faced, too. There have been tears, and nights and days of panic, but there have also been moments unexpected hope, growth, and strength. I begged my fifty English 3 students to sit their exams, and my greatest moment of optimism this year was watching every single one of them enter that exam hall. I feel like I have been cheated out of a large chunk of the all-important time I would usually get to spend with them, and yet somehow I look back on 2020 with the same intense joy and pride that I always have. Some of my students may think that I rescued them this year, but the truth is that they rescued me.
I am late with everything this Christmas. The lights were put up outside a week ago, the tree was frantically assembled a few days ago, the presents scrambled into piles out of the corners of cupboards and finally wrapped last night. I am increasingly skeptical that the world will ever be able to go back to the way it was, but perhaps this sharp interlude, this change to our way of life, reminds us of a few things that are so easily forgotten: that we rely on the kindness of strangers, that we must find joy in even the darkest times, that we inhabit this planet as guests, and that hand sanitiser is liquid gold. 2020 threw up its fair share of challenges, but it also provided opportunities—I joined Annie Warburton as host of the Tamar Valley Writers’ Festival Podcast, I began a series of new projects of my own, and I read more than I have for perhaps a decade. I stayed connected or re-connected to old friends, and I even somehow managed to make some beautiful and surprising new ones. It is another year in which my life is richer at its conclusion than it was at the beginning, and that is something I don’t take for granted.
My thoughts in this moment are with those for whom Christmas will be unrecognisable from previous years—isolated, cut-off, or mourning. I know that I am one of the lucky ones, and if this frantic year has taught me anything it is a healthy respect of gratitude. This might have been ten years for all of the memories and challenges that it managed to hold in a simple twelve months, or it might have been a blink of an eye, but I am here, and Christmas is coming, and in the darkness of the night the pulsing globes on my path and the tree in my window shine like a beacon that calls me back home, as if to say: Up here. Up here. I know it’s been hard but the light is still alive.
All my love to you and yours. Merry Christmas.
(The gorgeous image that headlines this blog post is from Ben Lambert, who I collaborate with on a comic-in-development titled Tangled Pines. Ben is working so hard on it, and I’m so excited by his progress. Stay tuned.)
