If people truly can outlive their physical lives through their writing then thank goodness for Mike’s writing. It’s really the only way I knew him, having only met him a handful of times but having talked extensively over Facebook chat. Continue reading “Things Mike said”
First question. Why would a person desire to kill a beautiful, majestic creature like this. Why would they spend £32,000 in order to be able to kill it. Why would skinning it and taking its head be important. How can we even begin to understand such behaviour from our own species. As so often in life, I want to try to turn David Attenborough (valuing all life and its behaviours) on the peculiar species to which I so often feel I only tenuously belong. Continue reading “Cecil”
Some of the most annoyingly cliched advice that people prone to depressive thinking receive is to “think positively”; “just be positive”; “look on the bright side”. As if optimism could be artifically made; as if you could somehow fake or whitewash your experiences and feelings; as if pretending would make things better. Continue reading “Double negative”
Read more about the challenge and about my reasons for taking it on.
Below is my food diary that I updated all week – comments and thoughts are at the end.
Day 1 – exactly £1 Continue reading “Priorities – taking stock after Live Below the Line”
Click to read my diary and conclusions after Live Below The Line.
I’m regularly troubled by my own privilege compared to people living on dramatically less. Continue reading “Live Below The Line 2014”
The #nomakeupselfie trend is in the news – here’s coverage by the Independent and here’s The Guardian, for a little background. I donated £10 to Breast Cancer Care yesterday, and since it’s been troubling me, I decided to try to examine my own thought process. Continue reading “The #nomakeupselfie: femininity, altruism and community”
Attentive followers will have seen that I previously had two websites, a personal blog using my name, and a professional blog talking about my freelancing. Continue reading “Writing and existing”
An open letter to James Rhodes, pianist (in reply to his article).
James, on the off-chance you do read this (since I’m going to tweet you a link to it!) I don’t know you at all, of course, and please forgive my direct way of addressing you here – it just feels more comfortable, and easy, and inspiring to write straightforwardly in the second person rather than making an abstract response into the void – but it’s more a response to ideas I read between your lines rather than any specific commentary on your own life or experiences.
I’m going to stop being afraid of writing.
Neil Gaiman, Rainer Maria Rilke and Gustav Holst are the specific heavyweight inspirations for this burst of courage. But explaining the initial reticence which has silenced me for more than a few months is a complicated one and comes down to several wildly different things in my personal life. Continue reading “Writing”
