New year, same me

New writing workshop dates & nice things to start the year

Hello all and Happy New Year,

I spent it eating chips from across the road and was asleep by 10pm. One of the many good things about getting older is that I no longer try to make myself like and do things I don’t want to do…. like going out on New Year’s Eve.

Another good thing: In the run up to Christmas I had a tummy bug followed by the classic coughing headache combo doing the rounds* which means I haven’t had any alcohol for almost a month. I’m going to keep that going for a while more and have been falling asleep listen to Allen Carr (the stop smoking/drinking/eating sugar guy, not the comedian, tell me that alcohol is poison). This is the audio book if you also want poison sweet talk to send you to sleep.

So let 2023 be full of chips and sobriety and taking it easy.

I spoke to a friend last night and when I asked her if she had any resolutions she said, ‘to have a nice time.’ How can you argue with that?

I also liked this from Matt Haig about new year’s resolutions:

You don’t need a new you. You don’t need replacing every year like another iPhone. Don’t throw yourself away like another piece of plastic trash. Love the old you. Improve, evolve, do better, but head towards yourself not away. Be gentle with your mind.

The vibe for this new year: No drastic changes, no ‘new you’, just a gentle loving approach to doing our best with this messy, tedious, precious life. Seems good.

On which note: Thank you to those who came to the New Year writing sessions. It was a joy to see so many of you.

For anyone who is interested in doing some writing in the winter months, I’ll be doing Writing for Fun and Sanity sessions for every Saturday in January. 1-2.30pm UK time. Book here. ** Thanks to everyone who has asked for them back.

People have also been asking about the newsletter. I’m sorry I dropped it. I had a crisis in confidence the last year, doubting the point of anything I wrote etc. In a world filled with content I didn’t want to add to the noise, and with so much big stuff going on I questioned if the stuff I wrote was useful or helpful to people. It was all very indulgent and I didn’t come up with any answers, so sod it I’m back. Again, thanks to those who have been prodding me.

The friend who wants a nice time was also saying that she thinks that what the world needs now is gentleness. She says she has very little capacity to handle stress these days and I relate. So I wondered if it would be helpful to use this newsletter as a place to share positive, gentle things.

Here are a few that might help us get off to a good new year. I’ve shared a few of these before but I think they are worth reminding you of:

The Nick Cave newsletter is a thing of beauty, wisdom, compassion and gentle wit. I mentioned it to the friend yesterday who pointed out that his music is miserable. It is!! But his newsletter isn’t. It really isn’t. He answers fans questions about life, death, music, art and grooming. One fan asked him if he was ever going to stop dying his hair. His newsletter was a one word reply: No.

Ask Polly. Heather Havrilesky is a writer and agony aunt. Her advice is so so good and again, like Nick Cave, she shows great compassion and understanding of the human condition. I feel like she never makes anyone wrong - neither the person writing in nor the person/people they are complaining about. I learn from everything she writes. I just wrote a piece of Red magazine about the enduring appeal of agony aunts. I’ll share it when it’s out.

Austin Kleon’s newsletter is also a source of creative inspiration. It’s light-hearted and fun and has introduced me to lots of good writers/artists/music/films etc. He seems to read and make things for the joy of it rather than to achieve anything in particular… and in the process creates a lot. He is a good role-model for me who tends to take things VERY SERIOUSLY and MAKE THINGS HARD THAT DO NOT NEED TO BE HARD. Thank you Nieves for the introduction to him.

London Writer’s Salon. If you want to write regularly, they are a gorgeous resource. They do free zoom co-writing sessions which give structure and community to anyone working at home on their own. It’s a lovely international group of writers - about 200 people get on each of their free sessions. Some big published authors, others just starting out.

I have just come across the Insta page of Nicola Jane Hobbs /aka The Relaxed Woman. Her stuff is all about rest and I think it’s great. I once went to a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert who said that her greatest wish for women was not that they achieve more but that they could relax and that the world is set up in a way that most of us never feel like we are doing enough on any front and actually rest could be a radical act of feminism?!! Is that taking it too far? I don’t know but I like what The Relaxed Woman says and Elizabeth Gilbert seems to be a pretty sorted human.

Speaking of relaxed: Jenny Keane, Jenny Keane, Jenny Keane. I am in love with her. Many Irish readers will know her. She is a yoga teacher who started adult sex education workshops on zoom in lockdown. Tens of thousands of women from 20-80 have now attended. She is a joy and is honestly changing the world. Here a piece I wrote about her for the Irish Independent.

Who else…

Hmm.. Oh yes, Charles Eisenstein. He writes about the world, the environment, love, spirituality, economics… and he makes me think. His last newsletter was about how the world is ‘in between stories’ right now. The old world order - capitalism, patriarchy, organised religion etc - is collapsing but we don’t yet know what the new world will be which is why things feel so chaotic. He said in his latest newsletter that he is no longer interested in critiquing what’s not working in the wold and instead wants to focus on what comes next. That seems healthy. He inspires me but I sent one of his videos to a friend who thought he sounded like a stressed robot… so he might not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Gabor Mate! Let 2023 be the year we worship at the feet of Dr Gabor Mate. I interviewed him last year and the conversation has replayed in my head almost every day. He is wise. His new book The Myth of Normal is about how the increase in mental, physical and behavioural health issues is the product of a world that is not meeting our human needs. It’s the size of a telephone book so if you don’t want to read, listen to these podcasts instead. Here is the interview I did with him for the Irish Independent.

Also The Holistic Psychologist and The School of Life offer wonderfully succinct life lessons on Instagram. Both are providing the emotional and psychological education I wish we got in schools. Maybe we will one day.

This podcast with Dr Tim Spector had me chopping up vegetables and drinking Kombucha on New Year’s Day. He talks about the importance of microbiome - bacteria in the gut - for energy, focus, mental health etc. This seems to be a growing area of research, along with stuff to do with the nervous system. Nervous system awareness is hot right now. I’ll leave you with that breaking news. See, you missed this, didn’t you?!

Bye for now and thanks as always to anyone who reads and prods and come to the workshops. I’m really lucky to have you and wish you a good year ahead. I think it’s going to be a good one.

And to send us out here is a funny video about 2023. Carl Mullan’s videos make me laugh.

Love and chips and kombucha (balance!) .

mxx

*New Year’s Day in the cafe and it seemed like every table was swapping notes on the journey of their winter bugs. ‘Was your cough dry or phlegmy? Did you get the sore mouth thing? Do you still feel tired? etc etc’. As I took to my bed for a week, I was very grateful not to be a mother. Friends who had children were having to plough on. Heroes, the lot of you! Also overheard in the cafe; ‘Are you having a dry Jan?’ ‘No, I’m having a moist one.’

**A reminder that the writing workshops are writing as therapy rather than writing anything in particular. We just get our thoughts on the page in the hope that we’ll feel lighter and clearer about things. There is good research to back this up. Look at this piece on the BBC You do not need to be a writer or want to be a writer. We never read anything out loud. You cannot be bad at it. We have people aged 16 to 70 something. You don’t have to write in English. We have people all around the world writing in different languages. I speak in English. Obvs. Would be a bit of a mess if I tried to conduct things in my GCSE French.