Here is the audio version of this post if you need, or would prefer me to read it to you:
Darling hearts, let’s check-in.
How is your heart? How is your mind? How is your body?
My heart feels…calm. I’ve had a really slow start to the year and it’s been a bit boring actually, and that, my dears, has been a welcome state to be in. Last year was one of chaos, upheaval and crying so to be slow and bored i’m relishing and really trying to rest. Nothing really worked out the way I thought it might at the end of 2023, so financially these last few months things have been beyond tight. I’m grateful that I have a supportive partner, and family who have helped me navigate it. Usually I’d try and hustle a solve, and create quick fixes or launches from places of lack and anxiety, but I haven’t this time. I haven’t had the energy or resolve, so, i’m choosing gratitude and frugality knowing that in a few weeks when work is back things will turn around, but, also wanted to acknowledge that stress. If you are feeling that stress in your body, I see you, love, it’s a petulant niggle, that’s consuming and constant. It’s hard. One day at a time, loves, one day at a time. And when we can, we help to ease the burden of others, that’s an action step for future Claire and that feels good to think about.
So, my body feels a little stressy as a result. It’s also a little achey…I did some weight training the other day and am a little sore as a result. More joyful movement is one of my commitments this year; more swimming, more delight walks, more dancing. More embodiment in this body and more gratitude for getting to be in this body, because this body is alive and that is the best thing a body can be.
My brain feels calm and chaotic all at once, but that’s its usual state. STILL is my word for this year. More stillness, more presence and less disassociation. I’ve been journaling, crafting, and reading and this not only makes my brain happy but my heart and spirit too. I’ve also been doing Gabby Bernstein’s January manifestation challenge which has had me mediating and musing on what I want and what I appreciate, and that’s been delightful. I’ve also been reading and writing letters to love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Substack. I commented for the first time the other day, with my letter from love, and Liz herself commented back - so, now I can rest with joy in abounds that she has read words I wrote. Stop it.
HOLY MOTHER FUCKING SHIT BALLS. THAT’S MY NAME IN HER FINGERS ON THE SCREEN RIGHT THERE. HELL YES.
What I’ve been reading…I read Rebecca Kuang’s Yellow Face and thoroughly enjoyed its searing satire it’s comments on the absurdity of publishing, and white lady privilege. It made me think about the balance of likeable and unlikeable characters, their insecurities and public and private selves. I also read a bunch of Emily Henry books for the first time, and I get the deep love. Book Lovers was my favourite. I’ve also been reading Andrea Gibson poems and they’re just fucking delightful.
What I’ve been watching…I loved Rustin on Netflix. I was deeply moved by it. It made me think a lot about integrity and the stories we tell. It made me think of this Sally Rose Wagner quote…History isn’t what happened its who tells the story.
Gosh, I love our inherent desire to tell stories, the power of stories, that we don’t know what we don’t know, but our capacity for empathy helps us know more, or better, and when we know better we do better.
What I’ve been writing…I’ve been very haphazardly, when I feel the desire, been working on a young adult idea i’ve had for a few years. I wrote a big chunk of it in 2020 and then life exploded and it lost its sparkle a bit…so, i’ve come back to that with new eyes and energy and it feels good. I’ve also been day dreaming and fleshing out a new contemporary fiction which is in it’s very early seeding phase. But a few spots of inspiration have seemingly woven together into a patchwork of a new idea that feels ready for some attention. I’m also working on a couple of slow collaborations with two other writers, an inter-generational romance, and a middle grades concept. My loves, there’s always ideas. Something i’m committing to this year is the joy of the words on the page, the impulse to do it in my way…in the heart-led or soul-led way, not the capitalistic brain-led hustle way. I don’t want to turn the thing that I love, that I feel hardwired to do, into something that feels laboursome.
I think of this Jason Reynolds quote:
“I think about the letters of the English alphabet as the tools for alchemy. All we really have as writers, beside spirit and imagination, are twenty-six letters to somehow rearrange in sequence that could potentially change how the way a person moves through the world. It’s the wildest thing. I take it so seriously because I find it to be so magical.”
I started working with group of fifteen writers on the weekend, and it was delicious. Writing can be so isolating and sometimes we need the accountability, to be facilitated and high-fived. I told everyone in the group to bring a quote with them that related to their creativity and included them in a quote deck i’ve created. I have a box of quotes I love on my desk, and this is an extension from that. We’re going to pull a card at the beginning of each workshop and trust that the muses are speaking directly to us.
I pulled two cards for you, my loves, so hopefully they’ll resonate.
They read:
It is never overreacting to ask for what you want and need.
- Amy Poehler.
And…
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
- Rumi
Okay, that’s my check-in. How are you, love? How are you really?
Love.
Claire.
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Things You Should Know…
If you’re in Meanjin, I have an event at Springfield Library on Valentines Day, also known as Library Lovers Day, called Guilty Pleasures. You know how I feel about the word ‘guilty’ being placed in front of the word pleasure, so there’ll be big romance chats. I’ll be speaking with Kylie Scott and Melanie Saward and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s free, but you have to book. Booking link here.
Pearler is written and created on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin, and I pay my deep respect to First Nation Elders past and present. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
I also want to acknowledge the atrocity and genocide we’re seeing play out in Palestine right now. I don’t believe I can wholeheartedly support sovereignty of this land I live on without honouring the impacts of colonisation of Indigenous people everywhere else. We need ongoing and final ceasefire.