Mental Health – Nastasya Parker

Dreaming Spires

This Week’s Bite of String: Noise in an Oxford museum

While I was admiring Japanese cloisonné vases in the Ashmolean this half-term week, a family came along. They had a couple of primary school-aged girls shining cheap little laser torches everywhere. The slightly older of the two girls was quietly singing to herself, but the other was shouting and running around.

“Beatrice!” her parents kept saying in upper middle class tones, ever surprised at unconventional behaviour. “Beatrice, you’re getting silly… Beatrice, we’re in a museum. It can be quiet and peaceful…”

“It CAN be quiet and peaceful,” retorted Beatrice, without slowing down a bit.

Gotta love a girl no more than 6 who’s already dismantling arguments on semantic grounds.

The brief clamour enhanced my experience. I was on a solo overnight trip, and spending the afternoon in the massive Ashmolean with only myself to set the pace was a treat. I’d browse a couple of galleries, then sit and scribble about my finds, then repeat. Favourites were the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian exhibits, complementing the several Nimrud temple panels at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum in my home region of New Hampshire, and examples of Islamic and Indian geometric patterns and art.

There are exhibits predating those civilisations, and it inspires me to see how early humans, too, were compelled to preserve and create beauty. Feeding my brain on such exhibits felt rejuvenating, certainly unlike revising for standardised GCSE exams. But feasting on snippets of real life conversations thrills me, too.

Rest and Change

People like to say, “Change is as good as a rest.” It’s not strictly true; I think change enables us to push ourselves further without rest which we may need. Long-term, it’s possibly not of equal restorative value.

*A little bit of reading time, Worcester Shrub Hill station*

That said, it felt as if changing up my brain’s intake for a day or two rejuvenated me. In addition to visiting the museum, I read Mslexia magazine on the train rides, wandered along the canal in Worcester during a stopover, explored both the busy streets and the tranquil parks of Oxford totalling 43,000 steps in less than 36 hours, and enjoyed a theatre production of Little Women.

Seeing the literary classic on stage was the main purpose of my journey, which I learned about thanks to well-targeted Facebook ads. It was a terrific show, with energy and heart. They made use of birch trees as set pieces, and seeing those made me feel connected to New England from afar.

After the play, I went hunting for ice cream, as is my late-night, post-show wont, and I didn’t go to bed till midnight. But I didn’t leave my hotel for the next day’s explore until 10:30, and that is pretty luxurious for me.

Spending Time Well

So I took a bit of the morning to recuperate, and keep up with my daily scribbles. I have some novel-planning to work on, but I didn’t get to it; didn’t even read much. As usual when I travel, making the most of the experience involves a lot of walking and a fair bit of writing down what I want to remember.

Before visiting Oxford, I’d made an effort to put all my new novel work into a Plotting Table, with columns for each character and rows for each chapter. The Plotting Table is super helpful for seeing where stakes may need to be raised for some characters, and so forth. I wanted to print this out and pore over it on paper while out of the house, undistracted by chores.

But our printer is at least 10 years old and is suffering memory loss. It no longer recognises paper. I’ll be poking pages into it and it insists said pages do not exist. Or it will pick up a sheet of paper (or heck, two or three at once), load it an inch, then suffer a fresh bout of amnesia and say it’s out of paper anyway.

I had to give up on printing my Plotting Table. I had nearly 2 miles to walk to the train station, with my rucksack of overnight necessities, and I couldn’t risk missing the train. Turns out I was a bit busy, anyway.

Like Beatrice at the Museum, I would say vacations CAN be quiet and peaceful—but they certainly don’t have to be. Just this once, I think I struck a decent balance.

Have you given your mind any change lately?

Voice Check

This Week’s Bit of String: Forbidden conversations

The exams (GCSEs) for our Year 11 students have begun. I’m sitting them alongside a young man with special needs, in line with his access arrangements.

The first exam we did together, we had a power-tripping invigilator who told us off for talking. The student finished dictating answers to me minutes before the end of a 105-minute exam, and I asked how he was feeling. He nodded, and grinned, and said he felt ok. Then he asked what time it was.

We’re not allowed to tell students, because it might unfairly advantage them (apparently). So I silently pointed at the analog clock set up in front, which many students can’t read.

The invigilator came over and said we mustn’t talk. According to her, I could only speak when reading directly from the paper.

“And if you want to know the time, you have to ask me,” she told the student.

“Oh, okay. What time is it?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you.”

Gah! Thankfully, our usual invigilator is less officious. We’re not rebuked (yet) for asking a frightened exam-taker how they’re feeling.

I wonder if smiling at a student and showing mild concern for their welfare does give them an extra advantage. I wouldn’t feel too bad if it did; there are so many disadvantages actively at work. Many of our students with special needs are already convinced they will fail.

My exam student keeps saying, when we’re studying: “I don’t know how I can remember all this.”

I worry about this developing from a mantra to a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I’ve been suggesting fixes. What if the video clip running in his mind said instead, “I’m good at solving problems. I can try to work out the ones I don’t know.”

It’s hard to change an internal narrative, though.

Rewriting the Internal Monologue

How we talk to ourselves inside our minds can be a game changer. My inner voice, for quite a long time, has been somewhat generous and cuts me some slack in a few respects. It cheers me on through busy days, and it might later say, Great job, you’ve done a tonne of work, have a tonne of peanut butter. You know, stuff like that.

*Sometimes we have to allow ourselves a slower pace.*

It wasn’t always that way; as a young person I completely reviled myself. Trauma and peer pressure and mixed-up interpretations of religion will cause that. Then, after a couple years as an immigrant, on some subconscious level I must have grasped that no person especially in a foreign land would ever provide all the reassuring words I’d always longed to hear. And I settled for hearing some version of that from myself.

It wasn’t a conscious effort. I realised how much kinder I’d become to myself because I listened to how my students talked about themselves, and contrasted my own, long growth.

But lately, my inner voice has been harsher. Once again, this realisation snuck up on me. I was summoned to a procedural absence hearing at work, after all those days I missed with a late winter flu, plus a couple days further back in the year thrown in.

The deputy headteacher said I’m great, highly valued and respected by all staff, and they don’t question the reason for my absences. But… do better, Or Else.

That put me in a panic. How do I avoid getting sick while I’m scribing a GCSE paper, leaning in to hear whispered dictations from a boy who’s blowing his nose rather juicily?

Panic Versus Control

The thing is, I had been really down on myself about every sick day. There’s no excuse for this, I’d think while I bundled, practically immobile, on the couch. No one else missed as much work for this bug. There’s obviously some insufficiency in me.

But when told I could lose my job if I get sick again, the terror I felt came from helplessness. I can’t truly be helpless and at fault at the same time. Maybe it’s time to stop blaming myself, and summon some fighting energy.

Fortunately, I’ve had words from others to help me turn things around. Colleagues from my actual work team have been outraged that I felt threatened. In their view, I do way too much already.

“I know it isn’t easy,” one of my TA friends said, “But you have to put this away in a mental compartment so you don’t think about it, or it will make you sick, and we aren’t going to give them that.”

The SENCo, head of our department, swore she’d accompany me should any further meetings occur. “I’ll tell them that if they let you go, I’d be under so much stress I’d be off sick, and good luck to them covering us both.”

Sometimes, people around us know just what to say. Slowly, our panic and stress ease off. But as wonderful as it is hearing kind support from others, it’s even more important what we hear within—after all, our inner voice is the one we’re stuck with. Might as well make it an amiable one.

I certainly hope to at least keep panic at bay for my students, and more importantly to help them dwell on their positive attributes. I will work on moderating the tones of my internal monologue to be less harsh when I have a slight off day.

How does your inner voice keep you going?

Staying Creative

This Week’s Bit of String: An accident-prone day

You know those days when everything goes wrong? Last Sunday, I had a few chores left on my weekend list. I needed to change the sheets, but inadvertently laundered a tissue with the bed linens. It avenged its fate by leaving sticky fragments all over everything.

I stepped outside to put some recycling in the bin, an opportunity also to chat with our neighbour in the adjoining half of the duplex. This brought up a fencing dispute which is provoking grief and peevishness on both sides.

While we attempted to reach a compromise in the sunshine, I saw my cat speed round the house and dart in the open back door with a pigeon in his mouth. I spent the next 20 minutes waiting for him to finish tearing into it behind the couch, and at least as much time after that shifting the furniture, picking up pieces, hoovering feathers, cleaning the carpet, and wiping bloodstains off the lamp cable.

In the afternoon, I needed to clean the fridge. I dropped an egg, it slipped underneath the appliance, I had to empty the fridge completely and move it and clean behind it. When wiping the worktops in preparation for hoovering, I tipped a bit of water on my laptop, which has thankfully survived unscathed.

With half my chores taking up more time and aggravation than planned, I reached the evening exhausted (but with a clean house!) and thought, am I actually going to write today? I barely felt human, let alone like a writer.

The Great Humaniser

Maybe I was a walking disaster because, after a week of flu, I was still battling extra fatigue and some headaches. My husband was now in the throes of the virus so the house was generally miserable, had been for a little while, and wouldn’t be imminently abating.

*Thank goodness it’s been sunny and springy or I’d have been seriously depressed.*

When I’m sick, or drained after being sick, I refer to myself as “running a reduced service.” I still have to do laundry and basic cleaning and cook and if not get groceries myself, arrange for them. Have to help my family in whatever way possible, and must get back to school to do my job as hastily as I can. The result is I’m doing nothing but work and chores; no extra exercise or writing sessions. No social gatherings or outings for entertainment, or long hikes. It’s a drag and can continue for weeks because a reduced service is still fairly demanding and I’m rarely getting a decent night’s sleep.

I don’t know if it’s the best physical remedy, but the best emotional one might be to write anyway. That’s what I did Sunday. I bashed out 500 more words of a character sketch, prepping a new novel. I went from feeling I was barely surviving, to remembering I am capable of adding beauty and empathy to the world through what I create.

Any creative endeavour brings out our humanity and even transcends it.

Why We Write

The past couple weeks reminded me why we write (or make music, or create art). Even while I was sick, if I could get a few minutes of fresh air, and perk myself up listening to quality tunes, I could then engage in some writerly activity most days. That creative feeling fought off some of the glumness.

Here are ways creativity elevates us:

Wearing pyjamas for the 4th day running doesn’t mean we can’t write a piquant description of the flowers sprouting outside or the cat’s sleeping position. Tip: Take 5 or 10 minutes, scribble about what you see. Write your favourite line from those scribbles on a post-it or take a picture on your phone as a reminder of your formidable talent.

The more we practise bits of writing, the more we notice without trying. When an articulate description comes to mind, we feel observant; we feel less like we’re missing out on life. Even if that’s a clever phrase about how cough syrup tastes, or the pound of a headache.

We can still be part of a community. Being on Twitter isn’t always a positive experience these days, but I was running the profile for the Women Writers Network while I was poorly. My Tweet about a recent visit to Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, an independent bookshop in Bath, received over 350 likes, and dozens of responses with other writerly/ literary types adding their indie bookseller recommendations. It turned into a real bright spot. If you’re low on energy, taking a few minutes to encourage and lift up others on social media can boost our mood.

When we’re forced to take a break, it knocks our confidence. I found that, though I’d kept some semblance of writing in my life, I still felt disheartened about picking up bigger projects again. On Saturday while I was feeling a bit better, I sat in the sunny dining room and did a watercolour based on a favourite place, where I’m setting my next novel. I’m not an artist and don’t have much experience with watercolour, but I made myself complete it. This took less mental energy than writing, but plenty of courage. And I don’t hate how it turned out. It reminded me it’s ok to bash out writing too. We just have to go for it.

Do you use creativity as an antidote when things go wrong? What are your tips for maintaining a creative state of mind when low on strength?

Use Your Words

This Week’s Bit of String: A particularly memorable Christmas gift

The Christmas when I was ten, my family were hosting a gathering for our local relatives. My dad’s brother was a fire captain so kept a busy schedule, especially since he split his time caring for his fiancee’s family. But he stopped by when he could. Everyone wanted some of Uncle Mike’s attention.

As one of 4 kids, I was somewhat resigned to not being a sole receiver of attention, though I occasionally did cringey things to attract it. (You’ll be shocked to hear that, I’m sure.) That Christmas, I was fetching something in the kitchen just as my uncle departed, so I was on my own when he passed.

He took that moment to tell me, “It was good to see you today. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without you. You make it really special.”

Our Uncle Mike was later diagnosed with a brain tumour, having the biopsy on my kiddo’s first birthday. His illness and death at the age of 54 devastated us. I wish I could remember his face more vividly, without the vague unease of being heavily dependent on photos.

We all have people like that whom we think of particularly this time of year. I know I’m lucky to even have the pictures, and I’m spectacularly lucky that he bestowed kind words on us long before he knew that his chances to give them would be curtailed.

Christmas Treasure

The holidays can heighten sensations and emotion, packing extra power into our words and gestures. I always think of the line from the book of Luke in the Bible: “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

You would, wouldn’t you? Everyone from redneck shepherds to esteemed astronomers turning up to pay tribute to your child…

*Knitivity, Gloucester Cathedral*. *Note there IS an octopus present at the birth of Baby Jesus, bottom left…*

As you can see, I’ve preserved my Uncle Mike’s words in my internal Christmas treasury. I’ve also preserved that verse, Luke 2:19, because it was recited toward the end of the Christmas pageant every year in the little town where I grew up. The verse is tangled with memories of candlelit windows upstairs in a New England church, of the choir singing “O Holy Night” and elementary school students dancing in angel costumes. And then knitted blankets in the car, hot chocolate and my mother’s Christmas cookies at home, and Christmas lights reflected across a lake.

If You Can’t Say It Now, When Can You?

Christmas films have programmed us to expect great emotional fanfare at Christmas. Confessions of love, heartwarming reunions, the sudden cessation of being taken for granted. It doesn’t usually end up this way, as we’re still busy and stressed and full of ourselves at Christmas. But how much better are our holidays, how much more comforting and lasting are our memories, when we do take time to share moments and kind words with each other?

These are, after all, the true things to treasure. Because I’m somewhat cut off from my family most of the year, the interactions I have with my siblings and parents are generally focused on the present, or the near future. We don’t get much time to reminisce over lost loved ones, and I wonder what memories they treasure which could augment my own. Then there are my cousins who I barely manage to keep in touch with, and I’d love to better know even what’s going on for them currently.

So, in addition to my extremely important (and incredibly taxing!) hot chocolate challenge, I’m doing a little version of an advent calendar. I’ll write a relative or friend’s name in my planner for each day remaining in December, and send a message to see how they’re doing, and let them know that although I’m rubbish at showing it sometimes, I really do think of them. And that when I do, they help make my memories special.

I hope you have some treasured memories of kind words at Christmas, and that you’ll join me in creating more.

My Life in Libraries

This Week’s Bit of String: 14 million books

We finished a half-term weekend in London with the realisation of a dream for me, walking up from Lambeth to Camden so I could visit the British Library. I browsed their Treasures collection, a variety of artefacts displayed to the public with no admission price.

There’s one of the original Magna Carta sheepskin documents, a Gutenberg Bible, and a couple of the earliest Greek translations. Each of Shakespeare’s folios, a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. They’ve curated manuscripts of writers ranging from George Eliot to Oscar Wilde to Andrea Levy to Siegfried Sassoon, and musical notations from Mozart and from the Beatles, plus gorgeous ancient texts from every religion. Fantastic examples of moveable type in Asia (a century or two before Europe managed it), and 2000-year-old homework of an Egyptian student.

The library also has a philatelic collection, vertical tabs so you can pull a sheet out with examples of money or stamps from all around the world. There are the reading rooms, which I’m sure I can find an excuse to utilise one day, and on every, open storey, there are seats all along the walls and overlooks. Each one was occupied by someone studying or working, mainly young people.

There’s a central, multi-storey cube just beyond the foyer. It’s massive, and full of the old, vellum and leather-bound volumes that were King George III’s collection. We’re talking at least 5 floors of this, 4 walls facing out, each many metres long. I wonder if a librarian there knows every book in that collection and where they’re located. I wonder if I could fill my brain with something like that instead of obsessing over how the election will go.

Library History

Yup, I’m still stressed about the state of the world! However, I’m on half-term break so at least I’m not stressing about work and the state of our students. I am carrying on in the vein of last week’s post, by writing about something quite happy. Books!

As I looked at the enormous hoard of books the ‘mad’ King George had amassed, I was intrigued by his motivations. Did he enjoy actually reading the books? Were they merely a status symbol? I felt, for once, a bit smug about my native country because I remembered hearing that Benjamin Franklin started one of the first American libraries and I thought, How perfect that a Revolutionary would counter the tyrant King’s greed by sharing books.

Only, wouldn’t you know it, Franklin’s library wasn’t free. It was a subscription library in Philadelphia, so you had to pay dues to check out books. On the other hand, Britain established its first free public library in Manchester in 1653, thanks to a bequest from a textile merchant, Humphrey Chetham. He even requested that librarians overseeing the collection “require nothing of any man that cometh into the library.”

Isn’t that a lovely thought? Welcome to the library. Nothing’s required of you here.

Libraries I’ve Known

Libraries are so much more than book lenders. They often serve as community centres. Our little library in Lyme, New Hampshire was across from the school, and would welcome us for an autumn celebration every year, serving us donuts and cider as we listened to stories like The Enormous Crocodile, or Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, or The Funny Little Woman who followed her lost dumpling into the underworld to get it back.

*Another phenomenal library I ticked off my bucket list previously: Trinity Library in Dublin*

By the time we moved away when I was 8 years old, I had a boyfriend and we’d kiss hidden by bookshelves from the rest of our class. I also had my favourite little chapter books from the library. One was about a puritan settlement in early America, including a dispute over a pewter spoon resulting in public punishment. Another had a young heroine, Elizabeth, uncover and foil a plot to blow up President Lincoln’s inaugural train. I don’t know the books’ titles, their authors, how old they were, or how I chose them. Perhaps I just bumbled into meeting them, as I did with my then-boyfriend.

The great thing about libraries is they allow you to be reckless. You can choose whatever you want—for free. If you don’t like it, just put it back, no charge. When I was first settling in the UK, I was so lonely I went to the fiction shelves in our orange-carpeted library and worked my way alphabetically, grabbing almost anything. One book had, as its climax, a heroine confronted by two marriage proposals from great guys and the stress of this caused her to fall into a deep sleep for days and wake up with clarity. Why couldn’t that happen to me? I thought.

The library in my parents’ town, where my mom worked when I was a teen, has a theatre hall/ voting place upstairs and a mysterious cabinet of porcelain dolls at the back. While waiting for Mom to finish shifts, I entertained myself reading through weekly news magazines in the 1990s and learned quite a lot about world events. I also spent many of my high school lunch periods in the school library. Compared to the lunchroom with my peers, I truly felt less was required of me there.

What libraries have comprised your history, and what do they mean to you?

Toughness

This Week’s Bit of String: The power of pinching

“You know something I’m good at?” a Year 11 girl says, raising her eyebrows at me over her Jacqueline Wilson book. “Pinching.”

She proceeds to list all the boys she pinched good and hard in Year 7 to keep them in line. She’s often the only girl in the lowest-set class, and maybe her talent for pinching has been key to her thriving in potential chaos. I don’t condone it, but I understand where it comes from.

In first and second grade, I was good at getting pinched. I thought it proved my mettle, and built my tolerance. A couple of boys in my class obliged me by pinching the back of my hand, the tiniest amount of skin to cause the sharpest pain.

“This hurt?” they’d ask, and I’d shake my head, lips pressed together. I was quietly proud of my fingernail-shaped scabs.

As a small human, I was terrified of doing wrong and earning punishment. Because of abuse in my extended family, I knew what kinds of pain were out there and I knew that loved ones could inflict it. When aware of struggles in my immediate family or in the wider world (I was pretty self-absorbed, as kids often are), I internalised and worried about that, too.

Inviting pain, consenting to it, made me feel more powerful. It made me feel tough rather than sensitive.

I look back on this because I’m still prone to concern and deep feeling. Many of us creative types are. Now, my sensitivity is spread across a broader field; I’m aware of so many more problems and wrongs and agonies, many that are worse than my own.

Perhaps just as a pinch is less painful when gripping a wider section of skin, empathy cripples us less when cast over a greater area.

Reinvestigating Empathy

I’ve just finished reading Octavia E. Butler’s dystopia/ sci-fi classic The Parable of the Sower. The narrator of the story is a teen girl called Lauren, a hyperempathic ‘sharer.’ If she sees anyone injured, she will feel their pain, genuinely, sometimes to an incapacitating degree. (This is revealed in the beginning of the story—I’m avoiding spoilers.)

Because it can give her the appearance of weakness among a desperate population, Lauren tries to hide her ‘sharing.’ When she has to fight, she strikes to kill because then she won’t feel her enemy’s pain. Her empathy could make her a target, but it also forces her to be tough, and that’s quite a fascinating juxtaposition.

And our heroine’s empathy makes her wary. Tuned into, and rightly frightened of, the world’s suffering, Lauren educates herself and prepares for disaster. I love how Butler uses Lauren’s empathy as a catalyst for wisdom, combining heart and head, so to speak.

How often do we see our empathy as kind of a drag, as something exhausting? It’s a bit like writing. We actually have a tremendous gift, and when not in its throes we can consider how to let it steel and prepare us.

Resilience

We can only take so much, and when we hear stories, we have limits to how much we can stand to feel them. Or maybe it’s not limits. Maybe it’s more of an inoculation.

My most heart-breaking moment as a teaching assistant (and there is some competition here) was a Monday morning exchange with a Year 7 boy. He’d been allowed to see his mum at the weekend and then returned to his foster home. He said to me in a wavering voice:

*Can a good heart still be tough as rocks?*

“Miss, you know how usually, when you cry yourself to sleep, it stops by the morning? Well… this time it didn’t.”

He was refusing to go into the classroom because he didn’t want to risk crying in front of the group and looking weak. But his feelings were big enough to slay me where I stood. He wielded a power without knowing it.

This happened a decade ago and I carry it as a reminder that no matter how much aggravation my students cause, their inner turmoil is so much worse. When they don’t want to work, it’s often because they’re anxious about failure. If they’re disrespectful, it’s often because they want to impress their peers. They are frightened and often in pain.

Awareness of their angst inoculates me against taking things personally and becoming overwhelmingly discouraged. Likewise, empathy for those who suffer bereavement or chronic illness makes us appreciate those around us and our own ability to keep functioning (such as it may be). Like Lauren in Butler’s Parable of the Sower, we can combine empathy with awareness to make us stronger.

How does your empathy serve as a strength?

Pick and Mix

This Week’s Bit of String: Hyperspace snowstorm

One of my students, finishing up her penultimate year of school and diligently researching university options, is becoming almost paralysed with anxiety. She explains, “I don’t like thinking about the future, because then I think too far ahead. Like hundreds of years, or hundreds of thousands of years.”

“And it all depends on which uni you go to?” I ask, imagining the alternative timelines which might be thus affected.

“No. So it makes me feel insignificant.”

I see the bind she’s in. Berating herself for her insignificance won’t help her feel any less anxious and confused. I suddenly have an image of her exceptionally intelligent thoughts as a vehicle driving into a snowstorm, the blizzard flying almost horizontally at you as if you’re zooming past stars in hyperdrive.

*Sometimes, of course, it’s easier to just keep things frozen.*

I’ve been in an end-of-term rush myself. When I stop to reflect for a moment, as modelled by writer and life coach Liz Champion, I realise it’s been a hell of a term. In the last few weeks, students I’ve worked with for years have taken their exams and left. My kiddo just moved into their first apartment, while I try to support from across the ocean. At the same time, I sent queries and novel extracts to agents, after another careful edit. A friend died the day before the second anniversary of another friend’s death. I’m still dieting and not sleeping a tonne, packing and organising for my summer trip home while also cleaning the house and weeding the entire garden so it’s set for the catsitters.

I’m not even really reflecting here. I’m merely cataloguing. If I stopped and felt the loss, some part of me would counterbalance it by acknowledging the many greater crises in the world, and I too might get stuck between my own sharp pain and my global insignificance. In case you’re overwhelmed this time of year, let’s do a quick round-up of things that keep us going.

Goals of Fun

Before parting with my hyperspace-minded student for the summer, I made her a “Summer Pick and Mix” list. I used to do this with my kiddo when a problem loomed: we’d sit down and make two lists: Goals of Need, Goals of Fun. Not my catchiest or most articulate idea, but for the things we need to accomplish, it really helps to break them down into small steps.

And so we don’t get overwhelmed by what we have to do, there’s the fun. I’ve been known to write things on my to-do list like: Re-watch WALL-E (my favourite Pixar film–the detail! The storytelling!) or: Eat a bowl of cereal while reading a book.

*Hopefully I’ll have a few moments like this.*

For my student, apart from putting links on her list to research the courses she’s interested in, and breaking her homework assignments into weekly chunks, I added links to relaxing activities like chair yoga and mandala colouring, interior decorating, and Bob Ross’s happy little trees. I recommended writing a shape poem about her cat, and reading “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver—especially when she’s feeling inadequate. I haven’t worked out yet what I’m going to do to relax this summer, or if I’ll have time. But I might look at a few of those links.

Do you have any methods that really tick that de-stressing box?

Words of Power

I’ve gone entire school terms or more ensuring a certain anthem plays in my earbuds while I bustle through the school gates. Years ago it was “I Believe” from Book of Mormon, “One Foot” by Fun., and this year’s exam season was survived thanks to “Odds Are” by Barenaked Ladies. The video is hilarious. Maybe things aren’t going remotely ok. But you can put on a brave face and laugh about it.

Searching for memorial quotes to honour our late, great writing friend Sarah Tinsley, I was reminded of how she personally and tirelessly encouraged and inspired so many (she was the first person to read my novel that’s now, terrifyingly, out on submission), and also that we all have that potential.

Here’s an excerpt from “Let Me Tell You About the Moon” by multilingual poet Elizabeth M Costello in her gorgeous little volume Cajoncito: “Let me tell you that you and I are gardeners. I cultivate words, sowing them here and there, watering them, and teaching them how to worship the sun as they should… and to venerate the trees, not only for their height, but also for the honour and honesty that courses through their sweet sap, and that the bravest among them is not always the tallest.”

*Just look how many branches can work together from one trunk.*

Likewise, I’ve always been inspired by this wonderful quote from Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus: “You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that… there are many kinds of magic, after all.”

And what about these words from Sarah herself? Our fellow writer Rita Gould reminded us Sarah said on her Substack The Disorganised Creative: “There’s that strange connection between me sitting at this laptop and you being wherever you are reading this. Maybe you and I have just made the world a tiny bit better, across the space of words between us.”

When we are far from those we love, when the future we face seems to render us insignificant, it helps to remember that even a single connection, even online and not in person, can really give someone a boost. And then maybe that encouragement renews them enough to encourage others, and on it goes… Keep boosting the world in your little ways, friends.

Feed and Flow

This Week’s Bit of String: Starving feet and empty legs

When they were little, my kiddo would sometimes pause their playing and say, “I’ve got my starving foot on!”

I assumed this was Bear’s way of telling me they were hungry right down to their toes, similarly to how my aunt described adolescents as “reaching the empty leg stage.” So I’d scramble to provide a snack.

Years later, I found out Bear was actually telling me their foot had fallen asleep. That pins and needles sensation in their extremities felt similar to the queasy emptiness of hunger in the belly, I suppose.

*Then there’s this little guy, who slept 8 hours straight one day last week after bringing a live bird inside, chasing it around, and then eating most of it.*

“Yeah,” mused Bear, “I always wondered why you gave me food every time my foot went dead.”

It’s an interesting feeling, hunger. Sometimes weirdly similar to feeling overfull, the ache and stretch of a stomach panicking, desperate to adapt its shape to the circumstances. While our minds seek refuge from pain, they are to an extent sharpened by hunger, since surplus can dull us.

Coming Clean

Over the half-term week off I began a change, cutting down my food intake and waiting 18 hours between one day’s evening meal and the next day’s late lunch. It’s a decision based partly on aesthetics, as I would catch sight of myself looking puddly, a bit of a soft mound. I’m proud of being a busy and vibrant person, and although the tiredness of life has accumulated somewhat, I still sort of picture myself as that trim mum chasing a little kid around.

When Eve goes through her first pregnancy in my novel–the first ever human pregnancy, according to the Creation myth–she describes how “hunger and revulsion vied in my belly.” When our appetites have such complex manifestations, it’s easy to convince ourselves that our bodies and minds want things they don’t actually need.

*Saving myself the time it takes to bake goodies like this lemon meringue cake, and saving myself money on peanut butter.*

Over the last decade, I got in the habit of having “a little something,” a la Winnie the Pooh, to get me through whenever I had to do something hard. The problem, as you may swiftly detect, is that there are a lot of things we have to do that we don’t want to. Some days are an absolute litany of them! And my definition of a difficult task broadened to pretty much any job I wasn’t keen on. Even parts of the writing process fall into that category.

That’s why during half-term, when I had some time to do things I wanted to do, I stopped indulging in that way. Weirdly, it hasn’t been super difficult, even this week back at school. I feel a lot calmer not relying on sugar to get by, and probably in no small part because I stopped telling myself I deserved a “treat” at the slightest jostle to my plans.

Treating Myself

I’m still not getting a lot of sleep, but I’m finally accepting that sweets (and peanut butter by the spoonful) don’t cure tiredness. If they did, I wouldn’t have to keep dosing up on them.

It’s a conundrum in busy, tiring lives, keeping ourselves going in the short-term without sacrificing the long-term. I am not angry at myself for waiting this long to return to better habits. I don’t judge anyone else for doing the same, so why be nasty to myself? There are periods in our lives when it’s just not within our strength to make the best long-term decisions.

Instead, we treat ourselves to little immediacies, a pleasant taste on the tongue, a gravity to our middle while everything rushes around us. Now, I think I’m ready to go beyond “treating myself.” I’m going to treat myself… as the person I want to be.

Treating myself to a few extra minutes of sunshine taking the long way home on a nice day, instead of rushing over shortcuts to get chores done after work. Treating my stomach to a long rest. Treating my brain to concentrated periods of writing work instead of little bits here and there.

When thinking through this issue, I looked up the etymology of related terms. Words like food and hunger are so tied to basic physical needs, their roots have no surprises. The etymology of nourishment, though, reminded me of its Latin ties to nursing, as in feeding a baby, and before that, it shared the prefix nau: to swim, to flow. I do feel as if I’m getting into a more natural flow.

When my kiddo was a baby and I nursed them, they caught on quickly to the fact that milk hormones put them to sleep. Bear never wanted to sleep, even as a newborn. So they’d hum, kick, even bite to keep themselves awake while eating. It was not a tranquil experience. But it’s interesting, that link appearing again between a sated appetite and sleepiness, between hunger and staying awake. Exercising discipline physically, I feel, helps my discipline mentally.

How do hunger and satisfaction affect your mental and creative states?

Non-Stop

This Week’s Bit of String: Dreams about reading

A Year 13 student informed me somewhat randomly, “It’s impossible to dream about reading books because you read with the opposite half of your brain from where you dream.”

Given she mentioned this after insisting, during a GCSE Maths Resit lesson on multipliers, “It’s impossible to have anything higher than 100%,” I should have taken it with a grain of salt. But I was intrigued because I do dream quite a bit, and I couldn’t think of any dreams in which I’d been reading a book.

Maybe it was true, a never-the-twain-shall-meet sort of thing. I often dream about getting lost while travelling. Maybe the signs and maps have no words, and that’s why. Have you ever read in your dreams?

*Can one truly rest when words are present?*

My subconscious launched into gear to prove me utterly and completely wrong.

The first night, I dreamed about gathering reading material for a trip. There was a photocopied chapter about encouraging students to read, and I distinctly remember reading the title in my dream: “Reading is like getting a big hug!” As if that would persuade my actual students.

The second night, I was in a library with a dusty shelf containing all the stories I’d written, and I searched through for the right one to offer a friend.

Whether this proves which brain hemisphere is in charge of what activity, I would not presume to say. Maybe words have permeated every function of my mind. Or maybe my subconscious is a stubborn and contrary creature.

All the Words, All the Time

When working with students in lower-set classes, sometimes I turn around to help someone else, reading an extract to them upside down. These kids struggle to read rightside-up, through no fault of their own, so this amazes them.

I almost inhale words though. I’ve been reading since age three. If there are words anywhere in the vicinity, I will read them. I can barely help reading them.

The problem with reading somewhat involuntarily is that it goes beyond my control. Stories are bigger than we are, aren’t they? I think a lot of writers have difficulty shutting stories off. We rely on this, and it’s marvellous to get lost in a story. My problem is, I can’t stop the words in general.

*Might be nice to just look, not try to describe or capture…*

My brain is always writing, if not creatively. It might be planning an email to check in with a friend, or working out how to explain developments to a student’s parent, or considering how to promote my own material, or thinking up character quirks.

It could be going over what I’ll recount in my daily scribbles: Magnolia blooms like flocks of butterflies. Trying to pass the gauntlet of Key Stage 3 girls outside the toilets between lessons, their handbags pert like ship prows. These thoughts from a Year 10 special needs student: “This might be stereotypical of me, but if I went to Texas, do you think people there would be mean because I’m different? They might stereotypic me because of it. But everyone’s different in some way and can get stereotypicked for something…”

Waste Not, Want Not?

My brain has been programmed to optimise any free moment. It’s learned to write like I’m running out of time, except my body can’t keep up. The second I wake up, even when it’s still the middle of the night and it’s the third or fourth time that night… Words switch right on and I’m rocketing through lots of things to say or write.

*Oberon the baby-cat is responsible for many of these wake-ups.*

To an extent, this helps me later on. I can remember how I decided to word that message for work, and I’ll remember the order I wanted to put things in when reunited with my journal.

But it’s also tiring, the constant torrent of words in my head, because it’s difficult to rest when it flows. Then the fog of tiredness is somewhat counterproductive.

Is poor sleep an inevitable part of creative life? Have I unwittingly rewired myself in a harmful way? If we took a machine and rerouted some electrics to provide extra energy to a particular function, then the other functions would not run so well. I’m worried I might have done this to myself.

I now have two weeks off for the Easter holidays. I may commit to the massive to-do list I’ve made which includes sorting the garden out and cleaning the house and stocking the freezer, plus catching up on reading literary magazines and (she adds breezily…) proofreading the latest type-up of my 330-page novel. Or I could try to catch up on sleep, see if I can pause the words, and then when it’s term-time again, throw myself back into the merciless pace of trying to proofread the novel and grow lots of veggies while working a rather intense job and keeping the house clean and meals cooked every day.

I have a feeling my subconscious has already chosen for me. It’s a good thing I’m rather fond of words and writing.

Do you have tips for getting control of all the words in our heads… preferably without stifling creativity?

Checking the Story

This Week’s Bit of String: Sudden appearances

During a research project on Brazil, my Year 11 student enjoyed quizzing me with each fact he found. We learned it can rain up to 394 inches per year in the Amazon, and that the rainforest covers twice the size of India. He also took a few side quests with Google: the deepest hole in the earth, the biggest airplane.

Then he asked, “You know that Boeing 747 that disappeared?”

“Um… which one? Do you know what year it was, where the flight was from?”

“I don’t know. But they’ve just found it; look! Here’s the plane.”

*Don’t believe everything you think–street art in Cheltenham*

He angled his laptop screen to me. He’d put “Boeing 747 disappeared” into Google and then gone to the images tab. For all I knew, every picture was of a different plane and completely different circumstances and who could say from each photo whether that plane ever had, in fact, disappeared.

I follow political news avidly (it’s a not-particularly-healthy habit of mine) so I hear and worry about the spread of misinformation influencing elections, and about voters being in their own, social media-cultivated bubbles. But what I witnessed here drove it home in an entirely new way.

Suddenly it hit me, anyone can Google, for example, “Joe Biden senile” and the algorithms will present them with exactly what they want to see. And thus the course of human history could be affected.

Refining Terms

When we factor in the literacy struggles which some people have–why search for information to read when a picture will do? The problem is, a picture could depict anything and be from anyone. Someone could Google “Israel terrorists” and I hate to imagine what photos would come up.

The intent can be ambiguous, too. “Israel terrorists” could mean terror acts against Israeli persons, or terrorist acts committed by them… And viewers of Google images might get both but assume all confirm their viewpoint. Sites label photos with whatever fits their agenda.

Intent matters… Online algorithms are desperately trying to work out what we want to see, and it’s on us to return the favour by investigating the motives of people who post and share content.

Writers are infamous for spending our time on side research. Sometimes, it’s easier to check what wallpaper would be accurate for a time period than to actually write some plot. I generally don’t have much time to spare, so I keep my search terms precise. This is useful in following current events as well.

Just Asking Questions

Along with honing our queries to ensure we get the right information and checking the reliability of our sources, it’s crucial to interrogate our own motivations. I think we have an instinct to villainise certain people and idolise others. Once we’ve selected someone for those roles, we exclusively seek evidence supporting our decision.

*An image is only a confined window from a greater story. Selfridges, London*

Last week I had to resolve an altercation between a Year 13 student and a teacher. She calls him Scary Man and she and laughs about it with her friends to cover her fear about his shoutiness, and how it made her cry in one of his lessons.

When I talked to the teacher about her difficulties, he was spectacularly morose. “I don’t want to make children cry,” he kept saying. He knows they call him Scary Man. He tries to be gentle, and when they don’t appreciate this he snaps. They’re each as insecure as each other.

“It’s exciting to rally with our friends against a villain,” I said to my student in our discussion later. “But an inanimate one would be preferable.”

Goodness knows I’ve been guilty of the same thing, not least when I was her age; I signed someone’s yearbook thanking them for hating one of the same girls I did. Not very graceful or empathetic of me, but that too would have come from insecurity and from wanting to form a particular connection.

Humans tend to construct narratives. We like to see an arc of justice, and it’s reassuring when good guys and bad guys are clearly delineated. We love being right so much, we’re perversely happy to sniff out confirmation of our most bitter suspicions.

Real life doesn’t often fit into these binaries and these smooth tracks, though. If things are lining up too well with what we expect and what we want, it may be worth looking deeper into the story, and looking behind the scenes of the presented picture.

Pivotally, let’s try to keep sight of what underlying insecurities motivate those who seem like villains. We wouldn’t write a completely un-nuanced character without backstory, would we? We can’t assume real humans are without them.