It Looks Like Spring

and I've missed you!

My first post here on Substack, in May last year, was titled Settle down, now let’s begin… with the subheading “On where I’ve been for the last three years”. The implication, of course, was that without an online presence I had ceased to exist and I would need to explain myself if I were to suddenly burst into being again.

As I write this, the cherry blossom tree outside my window calls for my attention. It has been bare all winter, but for the last week or two the branches have exploded with spectacular pink blooms. The twittering birds occupy it in the morning and the bees hum together there in the afternoon. The blossom doesn’t explain where it’s been all year. It just positions itself elegantly, against the blue sky with its plump white clouds, as a reminder that summer is coming. It looks glorious and I feel grateful, even if it only appears for one fortnight a year.

This post was going to be an explanation. On where I’ve been for the last three months but the blossom tells me it doesn’t matter. Here we are now. The blossom on the branches and me and you.

Winter is over. It has changed me. I’m slowly realising that every winter does.

I allowed myself to sink into it this year. I let it be cold and dark. I didn’t produce much of anything. I fed myself. I fed my family. I cancelled plans. I hibernated and incubated as much as I could bear. I stayed at home.

If I were to give an explanation, on where I have been, that would be it. I’ve been at home. And I haven’t been writing. I’ve had other invisible things to do.

My creativity moved and shifted; morphed into something new and carved out new channels. It took (and takes) many forms that cannot, and need not, be displayed online. It has a smell and a taste to it that renders a screen utterly inadequate. I see it in my children, I feel it in myself.

And yet, I’ve missed you all. The people outside the four walls of my home. The friends that are far away and the strangers that I’ve never met. I have missed sharing the pieces of me that can be translated onto a screen or a recording, and receiving your screen-able thoughts and responses in return.

I have some exciting plans for how I want to evolve this space over the coming months but to share all of that now would be moving too quickly into leaves and fruit territory and for now, I will simply pause a moment to send a message from blossom territory; a short and simple display of life. I shed leaves but I did not die. Spring is here.