Personal Log #5 - But I Want To

The struggle between inspiration and exertion

This post is an extra offering to my paid subscribers — a more personal, behind the scenes diary revealing aspects of my life that I hope you might find interesting. I only publish them occasionally; the rest of my posts are always free. If you’d like to read this one, upgrading is designed to be an optional, low-cost, easy way to support my work and protect my livelihood, but if you’re unable to afford this for any reason and would still like access, please just let me know. No one needs to be left behind. ❤️

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There is an open scrapbook on the table beside me, dozens of stuck-in photographs of leaves and lichen, patterns of driveways, pavement and stone. Another scrapbook is waiting for me to add photos of works of art by Rachel Whiteread. I’ve been studying her strange casts of houses and stairs, nudging at my obsession with buildings acting like containers (containers of what? I scribble). There is an overflowing sewing basket nearby, too. Old strips of cloth wait to be added to the long scroll-like experiment I started piecing together at the weekend inspired by urban patterns I’ve seen. I’m planning to dye it with rust and so a margarine tub sits next to it full of things I have bent down and scooped off the street on my slow morning walks — rusty washers, bottle tops, cans and scraps — my dark eyes scanning the kerbs like a blackbird. Underneath the sewn scroll lies a folded, pinned sheet that holds an emerging scene of sea and mountain, moss-like and frayed. A book lies with its pages splayed and a highlighter resting ready in its crease. The open tabs on my laptop hold my novel-in-progress, a story of magic, hope and pain, and the characters wait frozen, mid thought, mid choice, for me to feed them with a few more seen-in-my-head pictures, a few more fizzing words. My email pings. I want to reply right away. I want to do all of it.

The problem with being wholeheartedly excited by the world — and I am, unashamedly so — is that there is a whole lot of world and not much of me. It’s the twist in my tale that flies under many people’s radar: the thing I'm always praised for, the fact that I pore over every wonder, every detail, is also the thing that runs the risk of leaving me forever, perpetually exhausted, perhaps forever unwell. I don’t talk about my creativity today to boast. I do so to show its shadow. It is dark and crawling and maybe not what you think.