I spoke last time about resolutions as we ease into the new year. I touched on how positive simply resolving to enjoy a TV show had been for me, over the last 12 months.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m going to continue working my way through ‘Murder, She Wrote’, but I’m also going to try and form some connections.
The ongoing poop-show of the pandemic in the UK means that there are still many people I can’t see – getting to/from friends and family in Europe has been close to impossible. I’m also a creature of habit, and my current habit is isolation – this doesn’t help.
More personally, I’m not an especially sociable soul. I do tend to to find myself in unhealthy peaks and valleys of interaction, and these cycles still baffle me somewhat. I find balance difficult when it comes to people and find that I either wear myself out hopping from friend to friend for months at a time, or conversely, hiding – actively eschewing contact. The pandemic forced the later on me, and I find myself at a point where I’m hungry to see everyone. But now that I’m aware of how easily I can let myself get carried away, I’m going to approach my desire for connection to other people mindfully.
I’m still discovering what this means, but hopefully I can find the time to discuss it in the coming months.
In addition to a connection with people, I’m looking to connect with the world again. Travel was a huge part of our life before Covid hit – not necessarily international travel (though for obvious reasons, we spent a lot of time in mainland Europe), but even just trips to the coast, or the forest, or the mountains round about us. As our world shrunk, I found myself feeling more and more like I’d been cut loose – that I was disembodied somehow, an untethered balloon.
In response to this, I’ve decided to make the effort to live more seasonally. I already do this in regards to food (not least because it’s the cheapest way to eat), but I want to feel the seasons a little more – to celebrate them.
During the worst of the pandemic, I got into candles. As with so many things, I inherited some from my inlaws, but lockdown’s less frequent trips to the shops necessitated cupboard space for storing food, so I began to burn through them. To do so, I placed a pretty plate in the middle of my coffee table and over the months which followed, this became something of a little altar to the changes outside – stone eggs in the spring, pinecones and stunted pumpkins in autumn, and sweet-peas in the summer.
In the picture above, you might be able to see my charity shop bargain – The Country Diary of An Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden. I’ve marked the dates on which she wrote observations in 1906, and aim to read them aloud – here in 2022. That way, I can directly contrast what I’m seeing in the natural world (and build connection there) but I can also connect to the past – to the nature-lovers who came before me.
Finally, I not only aim to connect with the physical, literal land of this country, but also, the nation state. The UK has felt increasingly hostile to my semi-migrant family since the 2016 referendum, and I know that if I want to change that, I need to stop distancing myself. For all that Britain has shown its ugly side for most of this past decade, it’s also shown that the vast majority of people want a positive change. First-past-the-post voting is broken, and I so often take heart from the ‘Proportional Commons‘ Twitter feed. What’s happening right now is far, far from ‘the will of the people’. And if that’s the case, perhaps the world isn’t as bleak as I’d thought and it’s ok for me to go out into it.
To focus on the good things, I’m using the Emma Press book, ‘Second Place Rosette’ . Divided into months, it offers what the introduction calls a ‘grass roots’ look at the country. So far, there have been verses about taking down the Christmas tree, and a comparison of Yorkshire puddings to lighthouses. It’s a glorious way to look again at an island I’d fallen out of love with.
University continues into Semester Two and I find myself on campus more. The young people I met during the first few months were inspiring – so different from my disinterested past-self that it was amazing to think they’re as young as they are. At 18, I was so burnt out from school that university seemed like the final hurdle – the last slog in a long line of exhausting exams – but that weariness doesn’t seem to infect the current batch of students.
Or perhaps that’s just archaeologists. Regardless, I feel that I’ve found myself in good company. I hope – most of all – to connect to the optimism present on my course.
As ever, I will try and update as often as I can, but the quantity of work ahead of me remains to be seen.
With much love and hope for the new year,
Farn
Trail of Breadcrumbs 