What I Brought Back from Mallorca - adapting my practice to suit my chaotic brain
Plus what paid members can expect in November
I recently returned from a week in Mallorca. It was our first proper holiday in about seven years, so I was ready for it. Partly we were there to visit family who live on the island, partly we’d decided to just step out of life for a week, reset, do nothing but soak up sun and listen to audio books, walk, eat, drink. It worked a treat. I have come back refreshed, with a clearer perspective on some of the things I was finding exhausting before I went, and how I need to work with my creative brain and all its strangeness, and my fluctuating energy levels, rather than trying desperately to fight it. Let me tell you all about it, maybe there’ll be something to help you too.
But before I tell you about what I’ve been changing to suit my needs, I have a few dates for the paid subscriber diary.
The next Notes from the Margin online course will be in January, I’ll have details for you about that soon, but in the mean time, alongside paywalled essays, like this one, that only paid subscribers have access to, there will be some zoom gatherings:
Thursday 21st November 12.30 - 1.30pm UK Time - Lunchtime write-along. Join me on zoom for an hour of communal writing. We’ll begin with a reading, an optional prompt and then we’ll settle down to some writing in the zoom room. Feel free to bring along a long term project, or use the space in another creative way. This is a place to be creative together, a gentle accountability to your creative self. If you are a paid subscriber to Notes from the Margin, you don’t need to do anything, your zoom link will appear in a paywalled substack post just before the event.
Thursday 28th November 6 - 7pm UK time - Exclusive paid subscriber launch party for my new collection Blackbird Singing at Dusk. Join me on zoom to celebrate the launch of my new poetry collection. I’ll be reading from, and chatting about, the collection and the process behind writing it. This is my chance to celebrate with you, the people who support my writing. Feel free to ask me anything about the book, the publishing process, how the industry works etc.
Thursday December 12th 12.30-1.30pm UK time - Lunchtime write-along. Join me on zoom for an hour of communal writing. We’ll begin with a reading, an optional prompt and then we’ll settle down to some writing in the zoom room. Feel free to bring along a long term project, or use the space in another creative way. This is a place to be creative together, a gentle accountability to your creative self. If you are a paid subscriber to Notes from the Margin, you don’t need to do anything, your zoom link will appear in a paywalled substack post just before the event.
As I was saying, Mallorca was magnificent. We stayed in the touristy bit, but took trips into the mountains visiting family. For two glorious days I watched the clouds rolling down the mountains while I drank my coffee.
We walked around Palma, ate tapas on sunny terraces. I did not have data roaming, so could only access my internet in the hotel via their free wifi. It meant I finally severed ties to TikTok, it meant I couldn’t check emails, or compare myself to other writers on social media, or plan and plot what I should be doing. I found myself writing short stories in the scrappy notebook I’d brought with me. I found myself sketching daily, I even joined a life drawing class and sank into that delicious space of creativity that is absolutely key to my happiness, my survival.
As the week progressed I could feel the anxieties rising away from me. Breaks like this, where you do absolutely nothing - not catching up, not planning, not decluttering, are absolutely key to assessing your life. They are so hard to come by, so hard won. I wanted to make this break work. On the plane journey home I began thinking about parts of my working life that had become unmanageable, and how there had been a habit formed of a continuation of ‘putting fires out’ rather than addressing why the fires kept starting. I began setting up some new systems of working.
There were four main areas that I wanted to address. These were areas where I felt I was overwhelmed, and also where the work I was doing was ineffective. I’ve worked very hard to accept the chaotic miracle that is my brain, especially through the writing of The Ghost Lake, but there are still areas of my life in which I find myself punishing myself for not quite being able to live in the way that other people seem to be able to. Work is one of those areas. I have been attempting to manage my life in a neurotypical manner, when, whatever I end up calling myself, whether that is autistic, ADHD or just an oddbod, I am not a neurotypical person. My brain has never, and never will be able to work within those parameters, and rather than force myself into that way of working, I need to find structures of work around the way my brain works, otherwise I will continue to be ineffective in areas in my life that I want and need to be effective in.
This is a long drawn out way of saying I need to work with myself, not against myself. Maybe you feel the same. My three areas of improvement, my three areas of work on myself are:
My fluctuating energy levels
My work hours
My kraken-like email inbox (currently sitting at 17,000 emails between the two accounts)
Here is what I have done to address these areas, as someone with a chaotic brain. I have not been doing this long, but it is working. I am getting more work done, more effectively and feeling less exhausted at the end of my adapted work day.