The in-between

It’s been a long time since I last wrote something on a public-facing website, so bear with me as I warm myself up. Going back to writing is something I’ve wanted to do for several months now, but I was channelling that into forced attempts trying new styles that didn’t really feel like me. It’s taken a brief stint back at my mum’s place, my old home, to finally have some time to get to this point, and once I got there the ideas came flooding back. I say flooding back, what I mean is I’ve got three other posts sitting in drafts with half-baked reflections that still need a great deal of refining before they get their spotlight.

I’ve been wondering how best to approach the 5+ years of absent writing, which led me to make the unfortunate mistake of reflecting on what’s actually happened in my life since then. I realised this most starkly when a friend of an ex recently asked me what I’d been up to since we last saw each other, which had been just over 4 years ago. There was a brief, dont-make-it-too-awkward-that-you-cant-come-back-from-this silence before I said something overly cliche about how lots has changed since then, “but also not much, you know?” Ugh.

The reality is that the last 6-12 months alone have felt like whole lifetimes have passed, and I feel fundamentally different as a person now than I did at the start of the year. But doesn’t everyone? Does anyone ever actually get to a point in their life, no matter what the age is, where they finally sit down and reflect on how well they know themselves, are comfortable and settled in their skin? Do you ever just look at yourself, happy that you’re living your life “true” to who you are as a person, that your actions properly reflect your desires, and that you’re not being fake, living life on autopilot, or anything in between? Does that happen periodically, in between shitty things happening that shake your life up, or overly mundane mediocrity that chews away at your passions? Or do things change too often for you to even reflect, and you keep adapting, learning something new about yourself, how much your interests and focus have shifted, and how little you knew about yourself before?

Besides asking too many questions, there’s no other way to describe my life and what’s happened over the last 4 years, that doesn’t sound overwhelmingly cliche or boring. I don’t even think it matters, but there is a part of me that wanted to acknowledge the time since I last “put myself out there” with my writing, even though I don’t really know how to make sense of the growth and everything that’s changed since.

This time around, despite walking on uncertain ground, partially caused by being freelance, things feel a little different. I’m not quite sure of anything long-term at the moment, but in the uncertain space of the last few years, I’ve built a little foundation on which my external self rests, and it’s a lot stronger than what the five-editions-ago version of myself might have been led to believe. That’s the in-between, so I guess we’ll start and see.