Beginning

I spent most of last year trying to re-ignite my love for the onlines. I had huge visions and big plans, spreadsheets and goals. What I didn’t have was enthusiasm or focus. Or - most importantly - energy. I’ve told the story of 2024/25 already elsewhere. Autumn-winter 2025/26 brought increasing, chronic pain, and me running on Minimum Viable Effort every day. Being present on the internet was just not even close to being a priority.

When I did go online, I saw how people who were already working extremely hard, were increasingly required to be content creators and social media professionals in order to catch a small amount of attention. With a huge potential audience, posting can look like an audition with millions of others trying out for the role. Similarly, those trying to find IRL professional support for their creative endeavours seemed always to be asked,”What’s your following like? We’ll need big numbers.” All that did for me, working alongside my ADHD proclivity for being all ideas and no action, was paralyse me. I did nothing. Created nothing. Wrote almost nothing. With no services, no products, no nothing to sell, what would even be the point? The damn world’s on fire, genocide is a hashtag, people are dying in the most horrific circumstances, and I’m sitting here telling you what I had for lunch and which K-Drama I’m currently watching? Please. Not only is that not entertaining, I shouldn’t be trying to make it be. Didn’t want to try. My actual life, with my people and my place, deserved what energy I had much more than <gestures vaguely at the internet>.

That’s the bad part. Here’s the good part:

So much fell away. My soul just kept telling me, “Less…less…no, even less. You don’t need this, or this, or that. You can’t do that, or that, or that anymore. Lose more. Can you see it yet? Can you feel it? No? Then you need less...” And on it went, until I gained genuine clarity.

What did it reveal?

• My people and place are my forever priority. They matter to me, nourish me, give my life meaning, make my heart happy.

• I need something that is just mine. Something I treasure and enjoy and nerd out over. A hobby, an interest, a thing.

• I love stories. Listening to them, reading them, watching them and telling them. Words are spells and the weaving of their magic makes me happy.

• I’m fulfilled on a bone-deep level by making something tangible and beautiful. Something I did with my hands. A task with a start and a finish and a moment of “It’s done and I love it.”

• I enjoy being alone or with very, very few people. It’s in those circumstances that my energy moves smoothly and regenerates. Most of my life takes place inside my head and my awareness only really moves outwards in the presence of love, nature or beauty.

• I am brought to tears by the mastery of a craftsperson. The time, patience, repetition, experience and knowledge that combine to - sometimes over many years - turn a skill into a blend of art and utility that just thrills me.

It didn’t take me long to find what I wanted to learn and make my thing. It’s been circling for a long time but perfectionism and impatience meant I wasn’t prepared to be rubbish at it. Those feelings have gone. I’m excited by the story potential of beginning and learning.

I’m learning how to hand carve wood. There’s more, but that will do as a simple introduction. Me, some tools, a piece of wood and a vision. Failures, mistakes, lessons and successes. Little stories of craft, beauty and slow work.

Because I love to write and feel a connection with like-minded people, I decided that I’d keep a place where, maybe once a month (pain issues allowing), I wrote about what I was learning - both through and about the process - and shared other beautiful things and makers that I’ve found. This is what this newsletter will be. Because you kindly signed up to follow my writing at some point in the past, you’re on my mailing list. I appreciate this is a change of direction and topic, so please unsubscribe if you’d like to opt out - I totally understand, and have been very grateful for your company. Thank you.

Finally, the image up at the top of this is not of my work! At this point I can barely hold a sharp knife, but what I really love is a handmade, wooden bowl. It occurred to me that I could learn a lot about wood from the work of others. So I went digging around in second hand shops (another of my favourite past-times) and found these beauties. I want to refurbish them, refinish them and restore them to something even more special, as part of my self-designed apprenticeship. I think it will really help me begin to feel my way around working with wood.

So that’s where I am as we move into spring. In other news, my birthday is soon, and as a gift from my husband who knows me very well after 25 years together, I’m off down to the Gower Peninsula and my favourite beaches for a solo break next week. Maybe I’ll bring home some driftwood.

Sending you all good wishes, peace and inspiration,

Jo