I recently wrote a post about how happy I’ve been since the birth of our beautiful rainbow baby earlier this year, so this post might seem a little contradictory. It’s about trying to find a way out of a negative space. Or, in my case, trying to block out external noise that is starting to feel like a hinderance to my wellbeing.
Let me start by saying I’m still very happy in my baby bubble. I don’t see that changing any time soon unless bub suddenly stops sleeping and becomes some sort of witching hour demon child. But there are external factors that have been creeping in lately that I would like to push aside or learn to block out.
Firstly, on the writing side of life, Jodi Gibson posted on Instagram the other day saying she’s been noticing authors and aspiring authors are feeling negative and despondent around the subject of publishing in recent times. I, too, have been noticing this in some of my writing group chats. It’s starting to feel a lot harder and like you need to be ‘in the know’ to have any shot at moving from aspiring to published. People seem to be feeling exhausted and overwhelmed at showing up on social media and building their brand and entering all of the competitions and trying to find open submissions they’re eligible for, all the while trying to pump out more writing they’re not getting paid for, redrafting old work over and over, and receiving multiple rejections for the work they were previously sweating on.
While constantly thinking about writing and career stresses, I’ve been finding I’ve been letting the ‘real world’ get to me again as well. We all went through sucky times during COVID, but it’s starting to feel like the world is getting heavy again.
We’ve all been seeing the atrocities play out in Gaza online and I’ve seen horrific and confronting images my brain struggles to comprehend. Heartbreaking images of children that I would not even dare to describe because it’s so upsetting. So I won’t. Go to X or follow those on Insta who post about the barbarity if you want to learn more.
Closer to home, obviously nothing as devastating as what’s happening in other parts of the world, but there are still things I’m hearing about that make my blood boil or make me worry about things we shouldn’t need to worry about. As a Melbournian, I’ve already shared that COVID was an extremely stressful time for us. It was awful for so many reasons and I’m still angry about a lot of what went down over those few years. To hear recently that ex-Premier, Dan Andrews, was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia… it has completely blown my mind. There has been a huge uproar around this, as there damn well should be. As Premier, his state had the highest number of COVID deaths thanks to his outrageous handling of the hotel quarantine fiasco, we had the longest lockdowns in the country and the harshest restrictions, and he’s put us into the highest amount of debt, which I can attest to having just received our land tax bill which kindly states we have to pay to help cover the COVID debt. On top of the cost of living increases everywhere, I have to pay more of MY money to cover debt that DAN was responsible for. Imagine we were all that terrible at our jobs and still got rewarded for it…
On the COVID theme, I was horrified to hear this week that people still aren’t receiving the same health care if they are unvaccinated. A 17-year-old girl in NSW just died because she was refused a lung transplant. Although I believe she had all her childhood immunisations, apparently she had refused the COVID one. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that a teenage girl refused something that has no long term studies and no studies of the effect on fertility. To me, this is abhorrent and completely unacceptable in Australia. So much for the doctors’ oath of ‘do no harm’.
And just when I think surely that’s enough bad stuff for a while, I watch the news to see that apparently tap water in parts of Australia contain cancer-causing chemicals! All we’ve ever been taught from day one is that water is the way to go and we should be drinking two litres a day. Why now is drinking water something on my worry list??
Anyway, I could go on, but these are the main things that really got to me this past week. Why does everything around us feel so dark sometimes?
My honest answer is I don’t know. I don’t know why everything feels so grim again, and I don’t know how to make things feel better.
But here’s my plan for me and my wellbeing:
I’m going to continue to notice my happiness when I feel it.
I’m going to focus on a couple of big writing projects that are just for me that I’m hoping will help me find more of an audience without having to rely on the subjective opinions of agents and publishers.
I’m going to try to read more novels and take a step back from doom scrolling.
I’m going to continue binge-watching Grey’s Anatomy and stay away from TV news.
I’m going to try not to dwell on awful things I can’t change.
I’m going to keep looking at the things I have in my life and remember how lucky I am to have them.
I’m going to start ‘positivity posts’ on Instagram to try to remind myself and others to keep looking for the good wherever we possibly can.
Because there is a lot of good. We just have to filter out a lot of the stuff around it.
Comment below with your ideas for blocking out the dark and taking in the good.
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Recommendation
I’m recommending a Disney series today, which also focuses on the good - Welcome to Wrexham.
This is a sports docuseries about soccer and I never thought I would hear myself recommend anything like this in my life! As someone who used to despise soccer, it is an odd show for me to be championing, but I love it.
The show follows Hollywood stars, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, as they purchase the Wrexham football club and try to turn this fledgling club and team into real candidates for promotion.
The beauty of this show is not the soccer itself (although I have to admit that I find a lot of the game footage quite exciting!), but in the hilarity that comes from the two stars learning on the job about the game and how to run a club. The show also goes behind the scenes of the club to delve into the lives of local community members and Wrexham fans as well as the lives of the soccer players themselves.
While the show is often funny and quirky, it also has a lot of heart and, once you’re a few episodes in, I defy anyone not to root for a true underdog story to be discovered!
