A New Year Spark
What a difference a year can make
A post to celebrate a year since I wrote my first Substack post and how far I have come since then.
Over the Christmas break I put my PhD work aside, to give my brain a much needed break and instead immersed myself in
‘s Winter Writing Sanctuary. A lovely gentle way to see one year out and another one in and to do some writing just for myself, without any purpose other than joy.It was a year ago I first discovered Beth’s work and embarked on my first Writing Sanctuary. That dedicated writing time lit a spark in me and led me to set an intention to make my writing a priority; to somehow find a way of making real space for it in my life. I felt an urgency to really open up to my creativity and give myself a chance to see where it could take me. I didn’t dream then that a year later I would be three months into a Creative Writing PhD and would have a summer of writing funded by a bursary. Even writing it down now, it still seems unreal.
In a spirit of reflection I’ve been re-reading my diaries for the early part of last year. It’s clear that once Christmas was over and I returned to my job as a mediator, I found myself in a dark place. I hadn’t realised how low I was then, writing about anxiety and worries almost every day, frightened about working, frightened about not working, financial concerns a constant background noise. I wrote at one point that I felt I was a ‘shell’ and had faded from my own life. It shocks me now to read those words, to see how much of myself I had lost.
I’d known for a long time that working at a job I didn’t enjoy over many years had been bad for me. I didn’t realise how bad. It happens gradually doesn’t it? There are good days, days when you tell yourself it’s all fine, that everyone gets fed up with their job now and then. You keep going because that’s what we do and really what’s the alternative? And slowly your sense of yourself is washed away, the waves lapping at the base of the rock eroding a little more each day, each month, each year.
I knew things weren’t OK but I had become so used to feeling sad on a Sunday night, of being afraid of opening my emails on a Monday morning, of living for the weekends and the holidays that it seemed normal. Didn’t everyone feel like that? And what was the alternative?
I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t been awarded the St Hugh’s bursary. As important as the money which gave me four months away from work it gave me the validation I needed to believe in my writing.
Then I had the courage to press send on my PhD application. And to accept the offer of a place when it came. I still feel like an imposter. I still don’t know what I’m doing and am sure I’ll fall at every hurdle. But I have LOVED the last three months. I have loved learning and being stretched and having conversations about writing and landscape and about concepts I barely understand. If the journey ended tomorrow then it would have been entirely worth it.
I don’t know where this road is going to take me. These days the destination isn’t so important. I still get anxious, I still have negative thoughts. I think I always will. But I have learned to trust a bit more – in myself and in the universe and in my God. I stayed in a job which sapped my soul for too long because it felt safe. My life now doesn’t feel safe but it feels like living. And it all started with the lighting of that spark on the Winter Writing Retreat last year.
If you have a spark inside you then give it your attention, tend and feed it. You have no idea what transformation it might bring.