Or, ways in which we can at least try

1. Recognize It and Admit It

It’s almost a week since we returned from our visit to Kalymnos, the Greek island where Conor and I were married 19 years ago. What a trip down memory lane… we even slept in the very room we had stayed in when our boys were small children.

We had forgotten how stunningly beautiful Kalymnos is. It took our breath away all over again, we fell in love with it all over again, we lingered at Platy Gialos beach with its black volcanic sand and turquoise Aegean sea, the scene of our wedding, and relived it. It was all so fondly familiar, and yet strange. Our boys, adults now, and living their own lives, weren’t with us, and everything seemed smaller in real life than it did in our memories. It was as if we overlapped with this place that was so special to us still, but were no longer quite in sync.

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Back home, and still I couldn’t shake the feeling of strangeness. The house smelled different than I remembered, the garden had become a jungle in the fortnight of unusually hot, sunny weather (also strange), and some of my tender plants had withered and died. As I laundered our holiday clothes, I folded them into our wardrobes instead of putting them away for next year’s holiday, if we are lucky enough to have one. The first time I can remember having cause to do that.

My oldest son no longer lives here. He did, when we began our holiday. He drove us to the airport where we said our goodbyes, knowing he’d be gone when we returned. His career and wanderlust have taken him to Dubai, so far away and located on the edge of a war. The strangeness of both those things, and an absence that gapes wide in the house and cannot be filled. But I am grateful that our younger son is still here, although he unexpectedly broke up with his girlfriend while we were away. She turned out not to be the person we thought she was, and I feel the strangeness of that, too.

Everything is changing, for me personally, in society at large, politically, technologically, and ecologically, and I feel the dystopian strangeness of it. It is too much and too fast and too soon.

I take a walk along my old familiar route between hedgerows, the crowding creamy softly-scented raggedy heads of meadowsweet bobbing wisely in the breeze as I pass, and this at least is familiar, even if the heat is not. I have always welcomed change, felt pride in my ability and willingness to adapt. I do not fear change. But I don’t know how to quell this mounting sense of unease.

2. Learn from the Wild Ones

The day we arrived in our holiday accommodation, I noticed a swallows nest under an archway that we passed through every day on our way to the pool with Carys. It had four large chicks in it that looked as if they were in danger of falling out at any moment. They must surely be on the very verge of fledging, I thought, watching as the parents struggled to find a perch from which to feed their giant babies.

As I swam in the pool, I marveled at the parental aerobatics above my head as they caught insects to feed their brood, watched in awe as they skimmed down to the surface of the pool to scoop a beakful of water and rose up into the air in the most perfect, graceful, fluid singular movement imaginable.

On our last morning, only one chick remained. I had missed the precious moment of these trusting feathered creatures falling into the air and finding their wings. At lunchtime, just before we left, I paid my last visit to the nest. It was empty. Success! I felt jubilant. These creatures were instinctively doing their thing, as their kind had always done. Getting on with things. Doing the important work with artistry and flair. Dumb creatures… don’t they know we are in the middle of an ecological and existential crisis? Are they foolish, or wise? Are we?

3. Reorganise

Virginia Woolf famously wrote that every woman should have a room of her own in which to write. I have a writing room, and I know how privileged I am to have my own personal space. This room works hard. It is my writing room, my home gym, my crafting space, and my plant and seed nursery. And yet, I’ve been avoiding it. It just didn’t feel like a home to me. I’d use the kitchen table instead for writing, for sorting my seeds, for crafting, disrupting everyone else’s activities, and inadvertently yoking myself to the role of family servant whenever someone wanted a coffee, their washing doing, help finding something, etc.

So on Friday, without planning to, I suddenly found myself in a flurry of activity reorganizing my room into a space that now makes sense, and all its functions can be clearly identified. Nothing new, still the same old knackered Ikea furniture and stained carpet, but somehow, it feels different. So much so, that my five-year-old nephew, who was having a sleepover, and had unbeknown to me, obviously had a private exploration, felt compelled to show his mum around the space when she arrived to collect him.

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What was this spur-of-the-moment change all about? Dealing with the strangeness, taking some kind of control perhaps. Driving change in areas that matter to me, my writing, the strength of my aging body, the wild native plants I am trying to support, and all the bugs and animals that depend on them.

4. Detoxify your Tech

But the change does not end there. For much of this year, I have been researching how to break up with the American tech bros and their technology that dominates and controls our lives in the most insidious and toxic and entangled ways. My conscience can no longer endure it.

Detoxing one’s digital life from Google and Microsoft and Meta is no easy task, but it can be done. I am in the process of moving to alternative European systems where the algorithms are less invasive or even non-existent, where privacy is paramount, where morality and standards matter, where free speech does not mean hate speech, and where AI is not forced upon us against our will.

It may not be perfect, but it will be better. The American way is not the only way, thank the Goddess for that! I will share more on this shortly, if you are interested. And for all my American friends, you don’t have to live in Europe to benefit from our newly emerging tech.

Which brings me to Substack. There are so many things I love about Substack, and so many things I don’t. Particularly, when I joined, it was marketed as the home for long form writing; now we have Notes, and chat, and live-streaming video, and podcasts, and constant notifications even when you’ve switched them all off… it’s so damn noisy! They prided themselves on having no algorithms. Well, with all of these expansions, they now very much do, and it’s all about growth and money. Hell, its their business and they have shareholders, so of course.

But that’s not the worst of it. They have a nazi problem, they host rape-porn and misogyny sites, and they platform the worst manosphere agents, and make massive money from them; censoring and demonetizing accounts is not a solution, they claim, it will only make the issue worse.

Not from where I’m standing, it wouldn’t, but I guess it would hurt their profit margins. This has long been a problem for me, because by using the platform, I felt I was turning a blind eye and thus supporting them, so long as I could continue in my cosy little niche. It really, really bothered me, to the point that I lost all motivation and inspiration to write there.

5. Hit ‘em Where it Hurts

And then I thought, well, Substack is no different to any community. There are nazis and rapists and misogynists in every town in every country. They walk among us every day, they’re just not so blatant about it when they’re not hiding behind a keyboard or US social media platform. But that did not make me feel good, either. So I decided to rebel in the only way I know how – with my wallet.

I turned off paid subscriptions, so if you are a paid subscriber and recently received an unexpected refund from me, this is why.

Before going any further, I would just like to thank all those of you who committed to supporting my writing with a paid subscription. You probably have no idea how much that meant to me, and what an honour it was.

THANK YOU

But from now on, all my writing will be free to everyone. To be honest, although I strongly believe all creatives should be paid for their work, I think the kind of things I write about should not have a paywall at all.

Unfortunately, it also means that if I support your site with a paid subscription, I will be cancelling that too. But I will be in contact with you to see if there is another way I can support your work, eg I will buy your books, or your products, or make a donation outside of Substack and Stripe.

6. Always Choose Subversion

The only thing capitalists pay attention to is their profit. My Substack didn’t make much money, so it will not be missed, but imagine the power we would have as a collective if we all did this. I know that I will be penalized by the algorithm, but fuck that! In the meantime, I feel great about my little subversion, and I will continue the search for an alternative platform on which to host my future writing. When I do, I hope I can count on your permission to bring you with me.

Until then, we plod on. With grá mór and all good wishes,