I'm back baby!

Have you missed me?

Hello to everyone,

How are we all doing? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, I will, however, tell you. I am good. I hate to say something so banal but it’s true. Look if I come up with a better word throughout the course of this entry I’ll come back and revise it ok.

I’ve built this up hugely in my head, because I have been using Substack much more recently and I’m excited about what I’m experiencing. I am fed up with Instagram, and I can see it is shifting hugely for lots of people. The time I waste scrolling endlessly with numb fingers, the scary reality of AI infiltrations, their gleeful abandonment of fact checking (although maybe its bad to leave everything unchallenged if we all disappear from these spaces?) and the bloody state of Zucky and his sad little consortium of rich creeps. I know I am still on it, but you would not believe how little I interact with it. Just deleting the app from my phone has probably gained me 10+hours a week. Not for good mind you, mostly for scrolling through Vinted. Which probably has all sorts of shady business brewing under the surface, but I did get some very fine old velvet curtains with a lovely gold trim.

The first few entries from this sketchbook are from last summer when my back was really bad. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t lie down and I certainly couldn’t work. I had to be moving constantly for three months and was taking painkillers every day. My heart really goes out to people who suffer that kind of chronic pain their whole lives. I was not a humble pain-bearer. Pain makes you so self-centred and audaciously bad-mannered, unable to give to anything outside yourself. Although some people are remarkably and implausibly able to continue caring for others in their darkest moments. It made me certainly wish I could have the luxury of sick pay, but also very grateful that I didn’t have to force myself to go into a job everyday.

And then it slowly diminished, and slowly I got my sleep back and got to yoga and started properly at the gym. It’s funny because one of the intentions I set myself for 2024 was to get stronger. And instead I got the weakest I have ever been, but as I slowly reached out of it I began building habits that have put me in a more stable and strong place now. I now have big biceps and crave the afterglow of intentional movement.

The above is an illustration of the night the aurora borealis came to town. I will save that for another entry so I can do it justice but it was quite the event.

Some more entries to feast on

I would like to share with you that I have entered my Poetry Era. This year I want to read more poetry, and so I bought an anthology with 500 poems to get me started. If anyone has a favourite poem that they would like to share, please do. I enjoy ones with animals, and ones that seem to be about something ordinary but deliver a blow to the guts at the very end. I also like poems about the force/beauty/wisdom of nature, like this one by Anne Bronte:

Finally, I need your help deciding on a new name for this Substack. All the other ones have quirky and clever titles and mine is just my name which feels conceited. I was thinking of creating a place to land, and so I’m leaning into Irish place names and retaining the ‘Mar’ (‘sea’ in Catalan & Spanish). We have three contenders, and I am open to others:

1. Marbrack - from ‘breac’ meaning speckled, mottled

2. Marbeg - kinda obvious, from ‘beag’ (small)

3. Tubbermar - the wildcard, from ‘tobar’ meaning water well

   Thank you and blessings xxxxx