Here’s what I wanted to write about in June:
I wanted to tell you all about the things I’d learned in my first whole year away from BGP and all the wisdom and interesting thoughts I’d collated in the past 365 days. I logged ideas in my Notes app and pondered long and hard. And… nothing. I’m not saying that I haven’t learned anything, or that nothing has changed - not at all. It’s just that I’m not as far from the end as I thought I was.
Rather than a chunk of time, a year has just started to feel arbitrary, and more like, well, 365 days. I might’ve well as decided to rock up with my 100 day wisdom, 200 day comments, or I could’ve peppered each month that went by with some trite words designed to keep you reading. I started to worry I wouldn’t have anything to go on in June, almost immediately breaking my arbitrary deadline, to feed you an arbitrary post.
And then the time passed, and other bigger and harder things (no entendre intended) got in the way. I’ve been working (hooray!) but I haven’t had anything to show because it’s all, as I heard someone say recently, “currently in workstream” meaning that it would be inappropriate to share with you angels.
Oh shit, I thought, readers will be disappointed. I offered, nay promised some chat about life and I’ve got *checks notes* fuck all.
But, perhaps there is some learning here, after those 365 days. It’s that no one gives a shit what you’re doing most of the time. And I don’t mean this at all in a sorry-for-myself way. It’s actually very freeing. Seriously, no one cares.
Side note: Why is this a revelation? When I was leading a movement and an organisation, and I was very online and very public, and I was constantly, always, never not thinking about what people would say about every decision I made and everything I said. What would my team think about this strategic decision? What would our donors and funders say about that? What would our followers think about me saying that period pants by Primark were not a win for feminism? What would the Twitter trolls say this time about our trans inclusive music video? Believe me when I say almost every spike of the news cycle meant a conversation about whether we would respond. Anything anything to do with periods, asylum, money, poverty, women, trans folk, war, fashion, the colour red (OK I’m playing on that one) triggered either/and a team huddle and messages on our socials asking how we’d respond.
Now? Not so much. It’s nice. It’s quiet. Freelance life can be a bit boring. I can be a bit boring. Want more boring?
I went to school in a place called Fallowfield in Manchester. It was in a History lesson in Fallowfield, that I first learned about fallow fields. When you leave your field fallow, it allows it to rest for a year to renew before you set it to work with all those seeds again and then it performs even better growth-wise the following year. Can we all just agree I needed a fallow month? Like, a break? This paragraph feels suspiciously close to Gary Neville trying to define the holiday as “mini retirement”.
I hope to have something to write about soon, but for now, please accept these ramblings from a woman taking a chill pill. A woman just boringly cracking on with stuff. A fallow-pian tube. Less shallow more fallow… Fallow allo allo… *fades to black, whispering weak puns in your ear"*
Happy shitty weather summer!
All my love,
Gabby xx