every life is an unprecedented experiment #20
on brain detours, reading updates, and some really rather important small joys
what follows is a small rambly selection of the things that i would love to write about in some smart and specific way but cannot
aka me oversharing as per usual
aka my current inability to focus on one thing at one time
aka some things on my brain
my grandma jean and how much i miss her and how much i owe her and how much her home and her garden were the place i felt safest and most beautiful and creative
how hard it is to lose friends and to not have tidy explanations, resolutions or endings, and yet, how beautiful those losses make friendships that align and remain and return
how impossible it is to be a good mother, a good wife, a good friend, a good citizen, a good daughter, a good sister - and have anything left over to just be taking care of me (see also - how hard it is to know it is inevitable to drop balls and not to good at it all, see also also - the unrelenting nature of doing laundry and dishes and vacuuming)
the continued and evolving importance of the word curiosity for me and the gift my therapist gave me almost 3 years ago when she gently planted the seed in my brain that i could invite curiosity into my brain when things feel anxious or unknown, and how beautiful that plant is as it slowly grows, leaf by leaf, amongst my well-worn tracks of worst case scenarios
the challenge of being an aspirational morning person stuck inside a night person’s body who does her best thinking between 2-3am (by best thinking i mean best and most interesting google searches and puzzle solving - shout out to you NY Times) but also wants to wake up at sunrise for a moment of solitude
the restlessness of feeling like i have a million tiny ideas that need time and energy but finding it impossible to focus on any one thing. the challenge of resting in restlessness (impossible?) while things mix and mingle and my subconscious does the sorting for me (i hope)
the gift of motherhood and the chaos of motherhood and the way i want for mini everything that i haven’t yet figured out - how do i give her the permission to be all the things she is when i am still learning how to do the same for myself/how do i evolve alongside her day bv/will she ever know how much she taught me
what’s currently blowing around your mind in a little dust cloud of chaos and curiosity?
books, books, books
just read - Strong Female Character by Fern Brady
a really really excellent memoir on what it means to get a diagnosis of autism in your mid 30s, and what it was to move through the world as a female before and after this point. Fern Brady was someone who i was struck by when she was on Taskmaster UK (one of my comfort shows) because she was frank and she was bold and she was honest, hilarious and sharp, and at times unlikeable in a way that made me like her even more. i feel like this would be absolutely amazing in audiobook form.
“Neither of them turned around. My mum’s head turned slightly towards my dad, who still looked thoroughly distressed by the whole thing. In the tradition of Irish Catholics everywhere, my dad has always done his best to completely ignore any and all mental illness. To do that while being taken on a tour of an actual psychiatric unit was challenging, but I had to hand it to him: he’d made a solid effort.”
currently reading - An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
although at times this feels a little too close to work, this non-fiction exploration of what the world is beyond the confines of our own human senses is a gloriously intriguing read. full of animal curiosities and strange sensory encounters - im taking my time reading through this (and probably retaining none of it) but really enjoying the trip. the idea of remembering how limited it is to take our view of existence as our baseline, and how much our sensory understanding impacts on the way we think about the planet, is constantly bending my mind in new and unusual ways. I Contain Multitudes (Yong’s other work) is straight onto the TBR.
“By giving in to our preconceptions, we miss what might be right in front of us. And sometimes what we miss is breathtaking.”
next up - The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
i still regularly think about Shafak’s other novel, 10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world which explores the minutes following the narrator’s death and the experience of sense related memories as she recalls her life. it was beautiful and political and unlike anything else i’d read. it’s taken me too long to finally pick this new novel of hers up (new being 3 years old so not that new at all) but it sounds similarly intriguing - told through the connections of a fig tree (or maybe multiple fig trees?). very excited to have finally grabbed this from the library.
“The possibility of an immediate and wholesale decimation of civilisation was not half as frightening as the simple realisation that our individual passing had no impact on the order of things, and life would go on just the same with or without us.”
- 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
small (non book) joys
i am currently finding a lot of compassionate accountability and curiosity in the We Can Do Hard Things podcast with Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle. every now and again (actually very rarely) i listen to something while driving, and know deep in my being i need to re-listen in order to take notes and reflect deeper on what is resonating so strongly, and this episode on friendship was 100% that - i have a page of scribblings from this episode that say things like “it is imperative that we are troubling ourselves with ourselves” and “if you lose a relationship where you can’t be yourself, you never had the relationship to begin with” and other things that feel like i should have known but am still learning
i am having a moment with billie eilish and her latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, especially this track. moody and dreamlike and pulsing and just the thing i need to let my anxious brain feel absorbed into something for a while
soup, soup, soup. for a very short period of time in the year, soup just feels like the perfect thing and i think i’m in that moment right now
over the last month i’ve watched the “Irish Folklore Trilogy” of animated movies (The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, and Wolfwalkers) and they were just beautiful, absorbing pieces of visual storytelling. Song of the Sea was my favourite (i love a selkie story) but i would recommend them all
mars bar cornflake slice - seriously this is one of the things i return to again and again. i have made it enough times that i can wing it from memory (not that that’s anything to be proud of for something as simple as melting mars bars with butter and then chucking in a bunch of cornflakes)
emptying all the rubbish bins/recycling bins/food scraps at once and feeling like a rather competent adult for all of 30 seconds. bliss
i hope you are surrounded by small joys
aroha nui,
lizzy xxx
p.s. today’s title is from my first proper re-read in a while (thanks to my book challenge this year) - untamed by Glennon Doyle. this was a ridiculously impactful read the first time round, a few years ago pre-motherhood. post mini arriving, this second read is even more supportive and strengthening and i’m grateful to have picked it up once again
“Every life is an unprecedented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers.”
i hope you can return to this list in the future and explore some of these ideas again, there's so much great stuff in there