Some thoughts from this week. Much love x
Saturday
After an amazing holiday I was braced for a crash. It didn’t come – a small miracle.
Sunday
I signed up to a gym and have somehow found a nice routine with it that has so far worked for me. Ask me again next week! But for now, it’s made my days remarkably lighter.
Monday
My kSafe which I ordered on holiday arrived and I’ve been putting my phone in it for one to two hour long stretches at a time which has quite honestly done wonders for my ability to focus on work. Something about it helps me to break up the day rather like a school timetable. It’s comforting, and the day feels a little less like a sprawling nebulous scary thing to endure. And that compulsive twitch of my hand reaching to check my phone every 5 minutes only lasts for the first half hour without it!
Tuesday
I’m currently getting my head back into a play I’ve been working on – a musical adaptation of a novel actually – and I’m doing that by revisiting the novel and digging up some research about the topic and the form of musicals. I’m enjoying it so much that tonight, I went to bed and couldn’t wait for the next day so I could get back to reading. A rare, treasured and much pursued feeling of loving the process, and not worrying about the results.
Wednesday
Despite not crashing, and the gym, I’ve been nodding off during the day with frightening regularity. I’m trying to just let myself doze without shame. It’s hard, but also concerning because sleep was a thing I did a lot to escape in the particularly dark days.
Thursday
I bumped into an acquaintance in the park who asked me if I’ve had any plays on lately. I told him about The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs. He asked what it was about, and I filled him in: lesbian community and lesbian invisibility. He began to vociferously argue that lesbians were not invisible at all. In an attempt to distil the nuanced and complex issues, I started by saying that the few lesbians out there with a public profile are desexualised and ridiculed, using a pretty famous example. He replied saying that person was desexualised not because she’s a lesbian but because she’s unattractive. I attempted to interrogate his subjectivity of attractive, but he wasn’t having any of it. Thankfully I neared my turn off to head home and escaped that conversation. He then proceeded to text me to say how nice it was to see me followed by another diatribe about why I was wrong about lesbian invisibility. He wasn’t just telling me I was wrong. He was angry I’d even suggest such a thing. The anger is interesting. I remembered how on the final night of Ministry a group of Jack-the-lads on the pull first hit on, and then realising we weren’t interested, angrily abused us outside the theatre. The bar staff and security from the theatre eventually intervened. Male bullshit and violence against queer women alive and well, in case you were wondering, and also men’s refusal to see it is just as upsetting.
Friday
I’ve started on Johann Hari’s book about depression. Not very far into it so not sure what to make of it yet, but I was moved by the opening anecdote. He talks about having terrible food poising in Vietnam and begging a doctor for a pill to stop the nausea. This was translated by his driver to the Doctor, who replied – No. You need your nausea. Your nausea is a message. He goes on to explore how perhaps depression is an emissary of its own, trying to deliver a message about our lives. This might not ring true for a lot of people, but it certainly rang true for me. I’m not entirely sure what that message is yet, but I have some ideas and I’m starting to listen.
Postscript
My amazing computer programmer brother helped me out with a subscribe box on my sad little WordPress site. So you can now get these blogs straight into your email if you sign up! One a week, I promise, and no more.