Islands of Hope, Waters of Warmth

Four Years Later

Jan 18, 2025

As I continue to ease into the year, reorganising my thoughts and rather strange brain after the festive season and darkness of deep midwinter, I have mostly been offline1. This is not something I am used to, but I know myself, and I know that if I were to keep checking my email, or scrolling through Notes on Substack, I would not get things done as I need.

(This does not mean I am not grateful for your replies, shares, and comments—I know I say this a lot, but they really do make a huge difference. Knowing someone is reading and thinking through my words means I have reason to keep writing more, after all, which, in turn, makes me work all the harder to make those next words even better than the last. It is a cycle which pushes us to do our best—or it should.

TOP TIP: If you feel stressed and anxious about keeping up with a schedule or that you have to keep churning out letters simply to gain more subscribers and hold on to those you already have, I’d politely suggest you’re doing it all wrong. Take a step back, take a pause. Or share something completely different, a poem, a photo, a snippet from your notebook. Then, when your brain is ready, it will return with new longform essays, containing just the right words in just the right order. You are not writing clickbait. You are not hitting your email list with content. Writing, 90% of the time, is not actually writing, but the silent parts in between, when the words marinade and stew, when one idea from here and another from there mix and merge and collide in a delicious, messy fashion to create something truly unique. Give yourself that time.)

As I work on an essay that I think might actually be three essays, all about hope, I have reread much I have already scribbled on the subject, along with my notebooks and now-homeless blog posts. It seems I have written and shared a lot on the topic already, which perhaps tells you how important it is to me—to be able to hope, in an active and effective way, even as what it means to you changes as the world pushes in on your own life, squeezing here, crushing there, is an incomparable tool.

Hope is a wonder, there’s no doubt about that.

One piece I found when I was reading was a letter I originally shared on the 12th of January, 2021. I toyed with the idea of simply resharing that (the original is paywalled, but can be found here), before deciding to create a copy and edit, as lightly as possible, instead. I added a few links to posts and letters I shared after this one, too, which add further detail.

This is that post, crafted when Aurélie and I were at the end of our tenancy in Portugal, in a village in the Alentejo, where we had weathered the first year of Covid—signing the tenancy two weeks before the first lockdown, and were in the process of moving to France.

At the time, I had a ‘cold open’ with a descriptive vignette of where I was at the time, woven through and fattened by the threads and feeding of nature.

Here’s that piece.

Specks of seedlings are strewn across the empty plant pots on the balcony. The flowers or salad they held are now mostly long gone, with the exception of a single nasturtium and a sprawling and exceedingly hardy lettuce, reverted to its more natural self.

These green shoots were not planted, but found their way to the available compost. Here and there they have already grown: sow thistle, nettle, dandelion and others, all ready for the coming warmth. Despite being on the fourth floor, on a protected, north-facing balcony, the seeds have found a home. Nature, remember, will always find a way. Brought by wind or bird droppings, each verdant, hopeful delight is a reminder that life continues, no matter how pressing or stressing the news.

The seedlings wait, the air is too cold right now for further growth, frost wreathing patterns on the windows and dusting all with fine sugar icing. This may be close to as far south as Iberia goes, but that does not mean winter cannot wreath all in her chill embrace. Inside, with no heating, the air is 9°C (48°F)—even with a newly purchased oil radiator and a handful of candles, the single room we heat rarely hits 18°C (64°F). I knew this before we arrived in Portugal last year, that the colder months mean layers and hats, scarves, gloves and extra bedding are essential, yet to experience it is different. I am colder inside, here, than when I lived wild in a natural shelter, even when the Scottish winter hit hard, with temperatures far below freezing and soil like rock.

Yet the green scatter on the balcony shows life, as do the owl calls in the cold night, or the clatter of the returning storks, or flurry of small birds in the orchard and orange grove. When the sun is not concealed, her warmth can be felt, strong, ready to work her magic once more. There is a reason all the old houses have stone benches outside. The line of frost on the rooftops moves rapidly with the changing light, wintry sundial marking the passage of the earth through space. It is possible to stand and watch it melt as the sun rises higher. Clouds dance across the blues and greens, reds, oranges, yellows and greys of the wide sky.

Once, on a dog walk in Orkney, on an April morning—the first time I had returned to spend a night since leaving as an 18 year old—I stood and watched the sun rise, at the edge of a similarly expansive sky. This is something I have done many times, and it surprises me that more people do not also allow themselves this wonder yet, this time, the memory has stayed with me, fresh, strong and magical. One of those moments in life, which I shall never forget.

Across the bay, somewhere behind the island of Shapinsay, the sun appeared, fast and flowing, at a speed which I have never before or since witnessed. I watched a deep red ball appear, a sliver, then a segment, then a wedge, growing rapidly, my camera forgotten in hand, even Orlando the dog surprisingly silent and still, also watching, witnessing.

To be reminded that the earth still spins, that the morning comes and the night returns, to see these things in action, through a lattice of frost, or a scatter of seedlings, or a parliament of owls—this is deep and ancient magic. We just need to use our senses, to be a part of a whole far beyond the scope of our comprehension and remember: warmth can be found in the coldest of places.

Word For The Year

I am not one for resolutions, per se, I don’t see the point of an arbitrary date being used for these—if you want a resolution, why not just do it when you think of it? Begin to introduce habits when they surface in the mind, rather than waiting for a manmade, calendrical opportunity (2025 EDIT: at the time of writing, for example, today is day 675 of no news scrolling, or news consumption in a traditional manner, and day 311 of no alcoholic drinks).

That said, in recent years I have used this period to think of a word for the coming year (bear in mind, I generally think of a year as winter solstice to winter solstice, which makes far more sense to me than a manmade calendar, especially when there are so many datal systems to choose from).

Last year, my word was ‘consistency’ and, I think, I managed to live by this, building on past habits and creating new ones. It was not always easy—nothing worth doing is—but I am happy with my efforts, especially during such a year of turbulence.

This year, I have decided upon ‘concentration’. I like words which encapsulate different meanings, in this case concentration is intended to mean both the act of my giving attention to something and thinking very carefully about it, and also the act and fact of bringing things together in one place: both work well.

It is important to note that, as I introduce these words and the associated concepts, I do not abandon the previous year’s efforts. Instead, I build upon this, incorporating the new distillation of idea into a life of intentionality. Some years ago, I made a conscious choice to not simply live, but to live deliberately and, to a certain extent, simply. By this, I mean I chose not to drift, not to let days and weeks pass, the months blur or years disappear. After all, we only have so much time and, as I have mentioned before, time is the most precious resource of all.

This year, I shall add concentration to consistency and, indeed, the other words from earlier years. Planning is an important step in this, as is accountability.

Consider this—we are all biologically pre-programmed to survive. We are an animal, after all, no matter what you are told. We are a part of the ecosystems in which we dwell, it’s just that, too often, we do not realise this until too late.

One of the ways in which I try and explain my ethos of being in the natural world is that I do not learn the skills to survive, survival should come naturally, but I learn the ways to thrive, to move with, rather than against, the whole. In recent years, I realised I could also apply this to day-to-day life, using time as best I can, deliberately and carefully.

Concentration embodies this perfectly.

(2025 EDIT: I am still not 100% sure of this year’s word. I have narrowed it down to three, however: movement, community, and compassion. Each of these can mean different things, and each is something I can work with. At the time of writing, I am leaning towards compassion, but I have until the 29th of January, the first new moon of the year, to cement my choice.

Here’s a list of my words:

2018: Completion
2019: Publish
2020: Consistency
2021: Concentration
2022: Sustainability
2023: Connections
2024: Craft

Each of these means different things to me, and all are currently handwritten on my whiteboard, as I consider this year’s word. There are a lot of ‘C’ words.)

I’d be interested to hear if any of you reading this have a similar practice, whether a word, or an idea or, indeed, a resolution. How do you implement these? How do you keep a track of progress? As ever, if you want to reply to this email, you can, or you can leave a comment on the Substack post or over on Notes.

On Distraction

There was a time when I would use social media as the designers intended, posting frequently, interacting all the time. For the writer, this is a trick—it makes you believe you are doing work when, in fact, you are not. Time spent scrolling, time spent liking or commenting, even when the conversation is useful and interesting—it is all time that could be used to do something else: building something, to make something new and worthwhile, something which will be remembered long after my tweets have faded from memory. All writers have the chance for immortality, after all, even if their names are forgotten, their words can live on.

It can be all too easy for the writer to be distracted, to fall into that trap of retweeting, of engaging and posting, debating and scrolling. I have done it before, too many times, writing essays for my now-disappeared original facebook account, posting hundreds of photos and comments on various tumblrs, or sharing many thousands of tweets, spread across several accounts.

At this point, one thing I want to make clear is that I am not criticising those who do use social media as it is intended—as I say, I’ve done that myself—what I am saying is that the realisation it is no longer something I should do has enabled me, personally, to do far more, to create, to be proactive, and to experience life in a different way.

I believe that life should be a string of experiences, memories created and tended and used to help others and further self-development. For me, this means recording these things in my words, not necessarily immediately sharing but instead concentrating, distilling into something more. Saying that something happened is an entirely different beast to saying what something means, what it has added. Time is a friend, when used in this way.

One other reason I have wound down my social media posting is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to actually know who owns the content I post. I am not sure about you, but I certainly don’t want a faceless company making money from my words or photos, with nothing in return for me, other than that old occasional irritant, exposure (which, in terms of bushcraft, or even survival, simply means hypothermia—and that’s how I view this in a creative fashion too, something to be wrapped up warm against, kept at bay with careful management).

Instead, I have this newsletter. A mostly-monthly letter to friends, a way to keep in touch and let you know I’m still thinking of you, with fewer emojis and thumbs up. (2025 EDIT: at the time this was originally sent, this letter was sent to 378 people, of whom 91 opened it. Growth does not happen overnight.)

I also have my much-neglected website, which will be seeing a fresh coat of proverbial paint and a much-needed metaphorical dusting, as well as a healthy speckling of new material. (2025 EDIT: amusingly, I am at that point again, where I own a few URLs, but have no real site at the moment. Maybe it will happen this year.)

To know that the places I distribute my words and photos are mine (or can be taken with me, as is the case with Substack) is a very good thing. To be able to share them is better still.

Interesting Times

It has been an interesting start to the year. Interesting in the apocryphal curse ‘May You Live in Interesting Times’ way which, I suspect, will continue for some time yet (2025 EDIT: Yes, yes indeed.).

For this newsletter, I had originally considered not mentioning this, instead listing books, movies, and TV series I enjoyed last year, but I thought that would ring false. Better to stand firm and cement my position, try and help in the little way I can. (I will share these things at some point, however.)

It is crucial to note that I see hope everywhere I look, as it is all too easy to assume that the loud, boorish voices of hatred and ignorance are strongest because they are the most noisy, but this is incorrect. The loudest dogs very rarely bite (for me, this is certainly the case—both times I was bitten by dogs they were silent [neither did any damage, fortunately, one catching my thick boot, the other biting down on the tobacco tin in my thigh pocket—I will be talking of my strange relationship with luck in a future note, and this is a good example]).

I have spoken before of the perils for certain angry people, who think that kindness is a weakness, only to be shocked when they are disabused of this notion—and this is never more true than now. We can all be kind, all listen and care and explain patiently. However, it is important to also understand that we cannot and should not always directly engage with those whose entire way of living centres around hatred, especially those who we do not actually know in real life. All too often this can debilitate and sap energy—but if you can, if you have the energy, then certainly fight injustice with whatever means you have. Just don’t let them take anything from you, ensure instead you are giving something to the world.

I would argue that, for the majority of us, it would be better to remove those voices from your timelines, let them shout at each other into ever-decreasing echo chambers (2025 EDIT: hello, TwitterX!), deepening voids and dark places (2025 EDIT: now pockmarked and padded by equally bizarre and disturbing AI content, arguably carefully designed to ensure that we struggle to understand and recognise what is real and what is not and, by extension, have to rely on our own AI friends/masters, kindly sold/rented to us by the very corporations responsible for this in the first place).

I would also argue that it is worth our time to try and explain to those we know in real life why their anger and fear is misplaced. I am sure we all know people like this, people we care about, but who are perhaps a little too trusting of their facebook feeds, for example. We all need to be kind and patient, carefully consider our arguments, and know the facts before we engage. Then we plant the seeds, let hatred wither and be replaced with the new growth of something different, something stronger. It is possible, I’ve seen it work, but do not exhaust yourself—stay strong, stay warm, and stay ready for further interesting times.

And throughout, watch the sun and moon rise and set, see the stars wheel, and feel the cold and heat. Listen to all you can hear, taste the wind and smell the seasons. Touch a stone or a tree, run fingers through water or air. Feel. All these are grounding and powerful, and all are free, as most of the best things in life are. Add art and culture and creativity into this mix, and we have a powerful armour, a strong shield against those angry voices.

The photos in this newsletter are all from that trip to Orkney mentioned at the start. Orkney has a magic of her own, a place which has acted as linchpin at more than one time, a centre of various worlds, and one which is also central to my forthcoming fiction. This year shall be the year I concentrate my efforts, and finally finish the first book of The Greater Good—The Care Industry.

(2025 EDIT: this is another reason I am resharing this piece—that novel is the one I am STILL editing, one which has taken far too much of my life already, one which I really need to release into the world soon [as in, send to agents]. In a few months I will be asking for some of you to help in this, simply by reading the story and letting me know what you think, what you think works, what might not, etcetera. I have a few Beta readers already, but I think this book will need more. If you are interested in this, then either comment below, or reply, or send me a message. I would be very grateful.)

Watch this space and, in the meantime, enjoy the photos.

Finally

You don’t need me to tell you how important looking after yourself is. I am sure you already have your own strategies and methods of keeping going, after all. I do want to say, however, that it is important to be reminded of the wonders in the world, when all seems dark and crushing. It can feel glib and unnecessary to say that, but it is the truth, and truth is something we should seek out and cling to in these stormy seas of our interesting times.

Many thanks for reading.

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