let’s start in the middle
I don’t really do new year resolutions. But at some point I decided that in 2024 I would try to find out who I am. Something that is equal parts exciting and depressing. I turned 50 last year. I have lived longer than I’ll live now, most likely. I am middle-aged and menopausal and I am tired and I have a chronic illness. My body has changed shape and size and it hurts all the time. My brain has got slower and foggier. I don’t really recognise myself, but I also can’t remember when I last could have told you who I actually was. There are elements of myself that I mourn, but I also wonder if they were really me at all.
One of the things that has consistently been with me though, since I was a child, is writing. As a child, I thought I would be an author. I read voraciously and loved creative writing. I wrote letters all the time. As a young adult, I wrote a lot - poems, mostly, and some short stories. In my early thirties, I started to take it a bit more seriously. I wrote a lot of short stories. I entered a lot of competitions. I won one. I placed in others. I loved writing. I did NaNoWriMo, twice. I lugged my heavy laptop around the place, writing in cafes as if for all intents and purposes, that was what I did.
And then, I stopped. I don’t know why. I always say ‘life got in the way’ but I wonder what life that was. I know that I can’t have been too busy to write some words on a page. I guess at some level, I chose not to. And then, after a while, I couldn’t remember how to. I started to wonder if I’d ever been any good at it. Whenever I tried, it seemed that I had, in fact, not been very good at it at all. I wondered if perhaps I’d been delusional.
In recent years I had slowly started to gravitate back towards writing. I did a Masters in Gender Studies and for half of my dissertation I wrote the start of a novel. I started making zines about my life. One January, I wrote a poem a day. None of it was terrible. But nothing really seemed to stick. I felt like I was rummaging around in a dimly lit cubby hole, higgledy-piggledy with boxes and junk and a tiny promise of potential buried somewhere in amongst it all. I was reaching and squinting and feeling my way but I just couldn’t find the right box or the right notebook or the right pen or the right… what was it? I didn’t even know.
Then just over a year ago, I asked my partner for a writing course for Christmas, and it really changed my mindset about writing. I took the second course and I went on a writing retreat and I met some truly wonderful people, one of whom I’ve made a writing witch substack pact with. (I’ll link to hers once I have the proof. Proof acquired - go subscribe!)
Nothing really has changed - I’m still not a published writer, I still haven’t achieved what I think I should have achieved (my life is packed with shoulds). But I can sit with people who write and say I’m working on a novel (and a short story and some poetry and creative non-fiction and and and…) and not feel embarrassed. I can say I’m also a writer without cringing (as much). I feel almost as if I belong in this space as much as anyone else. Madness, I know.
That first course taught me that writing is self-care. That if you write, you’re a writer. That first drafts are you telling the story to yourself. And all of this has meant that - on and off - I’ve written more in the last year than in the last decade. Small, simple mindshifts.
These tiny shifts dovetailed with something else I did last year. For the 100 days project (Scotland), I collected 100 glimmers, or small joys, and logged them and embroidered them and shared them on Instagram. My nervous system is broken and I’m trying to fix it (that’s a whole other post you can look forward to). Glimmers help. I couldn’t keep embroidering a glimmer a day because… well just because. But I’m still collecting them. And I’ll share them here too. Perhaps they will sparkle for you too.
One of the things that has consistently been with me, a glimmer since I was a child, is writing. And so, here I am. Doing a thing I enjoy hugely, a thing that brings me joy, a thing that glimmers and never dims. It’s a tiny thing but it’s also huge, it’s nothing and it’s a really scary something.
I’m finding my way and I don’t know how it will go. I’m not sure what I’ll even be writing about, but if you’re interested in some half-baked thoughts on themes such as identity, chronic illness, creativity, dogs, nature, birds, bodies, death, loss, age, the sea, books, telly, things that keep me awake at night and why I can never be vegan because butter is life, then stick yer email in the subscribe box and call it a lucky lucky dip.
I hope this will become a habit, I hope that my future posts are more interesting and funny and I hope that someone will read them and find something among the words I scatter. And sometimes I think hope is all we need.
Today’s glimmer: a coal black crow on the beach on a dreich Edinburgh day. The tide was creeping out, leaving gifts on the glistening sand. My dream is to make friends with crows, but I only ever have stale dog treats in my pockets. I threw him one anyway. He accepted it. He hung around for a bit and he made me smile.
Oh my goodness Caro, I cannot tell you how happy I am to read this- you’re beautifully clear, honest, thoughtful and glimmer-edged writing needs to be out there in the world. THANK YOU for going for it, for being being bold and jumping on that writing witch broomstick with wonderful Amy and I can’t wait to read more of your writing 🧡🧡🧡✨✨✨