A thought occurred to me today: what would it look like to only be online one day a week?

Obviously, this couldn’t include working hours, as my job very much requires me to be online the entire time (unless I have in-person meetings on the rare days I am in the office, or I manage to carve out some time for working on documents without emails or instant messages nudging me). But what might it look like to have (part of) a designated day of the week when I sit down and work my way through my personal messages and newsletters?

After idly musing this for a few moments, I realised my problem isn’t with being online at any given point, it is feeling like I have to be online, or being online in particular places. Those notifications, those emails building up, those replies. Alack, I am worn to a ravelling.

There is a problem in that everyone expects everyone else to be online daily at least, now. Isn’t it strange how people think they deserve a prompt response to everything? We have done this to ourselves, we have no-one else to blame. And, though there will need to be a culture shift, there’s no reason why we can’t dial back from that. It’s not too late.

And anyway, in reality, how true is it that everyone expects us to be online all the time? Is it really this, or is it just the unknown of navigating digital etiquette in a changing world, and not wanting to offend? I think we all know it is more the latter, much as we all know that – in a personal sense, at least – any friend who expects an immediate response to a non-urgent message is possibly not the healthiest influence or benchmark.

Nevertheless, with updates from nurseries and schools, and potential replies from submissions or whatnot, I would probably have to incorporate a cursory glance at my emails on a daily basis, just to turn round any actions that couldn’t wait a few days.

Such an approach would also mean that all the newsletters to which I subscribe would stack up, but perhaps that will help me rethink how much time I am giving to those things. I have already had a number of vicious culls over the last few years, but there are so many fascinating things that I love following or reading.

In fact, one way to manage the newsletter phenomenon in a more workable way is to use RSS. I love my RSS Reader, because I can be focussed when I work my way through the various posts and updates, and sit down with a cup of tea to enjoy them when it suits me. Emails in an inbox sometimes feel like I am being yelled at, nagged at. They sit there, niggling away. Curiously, I also feel more guilty at skipping or deleting emails in my inbox than I do skipping over the exact same content in my RSS Reader. Isn’t it curious how we think that, because we subscribe to someone’s words, we have a duty to read every last one?

I put a lot of stock in gut instincts and first feelings, especially when I am trying out new thoughts and ideas. Curiously, when I had my initial thought to be less accessible, the first feeling that bubbled to the surface was excitement, followed by pre-emptive relief. What prison have I built for myself – what have many of us built for ourselves – that we feel we have to check in so regularly? Surely, it wouldn’t take too long for friends and family to readjust to expecting me to message on a particular day of the week (or perhaps on different days, but just knowing not to expect a reply immediately).

To be honest, at any given time I probably have at least two or three emails to close friends stacked up to reply to anyway, some of which wait months. Wouldn’t it be better to know that I could dedicate the time to responding to them sooner? Logically, I am aware that it doesn’t follow that reducing my time online will mean I will have more time to reply to those emails – but I have a hunch that it will rephrase my thinking and I will somehow prioritise these messages. Besides, if I am not looking at various things throughout the week, then I can make notes and start drafting replies offline, to be sent whenever I am next in my inbox. Or I can write more letters, send more postcards.

And reading. I will have more time to read more of the glorious books I have waiting for me!

Since my last bout of fizziness (that feeling when I get restless, and want to disappear), since I stepped away from posting quite as much, my brain has been teeming with ideas. They’re bubbling over like a boiling pot. And, though this is exciting and wonderful, it is also accompanied by a feeling of an anxiety that I won’t be able to do many of them justice. Or even get started on them.

On Wednesday morning, walking to school, Auri told me she wished she had a Fairy Godmother (Cinderella is a current favourite – that, and Asterix) and, when I asked what she wished they would bring, she basically described, in a convoluted way, a blank notebook so she could write and draw a book with chapters. Yes! I thought. That is one of the most exciting things in the world! And I want her to do that, I want her to write and draw stories – and I want her to see me doing the same.

On any given day, I am ambushed by new ideas. Not overwhelmed per se, but my brain just doesn’t stop. It is just the way I am neurologically wired. There are thoughts and notes I want to structure into an essay, but instead of taking the time to consolidate these (or at least consolidate the years of historical notes I have – I’m better at sorting my contemporaneous notes, now), I keep tipping more into the bottomless well. I will never get started at this rate, or move forward at least.

There is no scenario whereby I am happy that I spend my life getting to Inbox Zero and don’t have time for writing as a result. Or time to play with my girls, or cook, or garden, or to learn languages, or pursue some other as yet unknown creative adventure. When will I finish off the children’s book I started writing before being knocked for six by early motherhood? When will I set up the digital café or member’s club I have fully sketched out (as something very much in its own right, but also a precursor to a possible physical premises in years to come)? When will I launch the large-scale multi-year fiction project I have been developing, on and off, for several years (more than half my life, in one form or another, now I come to think of it)?

I am thoroughly enjoying sharing my Scribbles and Sketches notebooks, and also my year-long Simply This project. I am halfway through my March notebook, and at present I have no fewer than five ideas for June. More keep spinning into my head, dancing for attention. I want to do them all. I probably will, at different times.

I made the leap to publishing my first seasonal notebook in a matter of hours. A brief fleeting idea arrived in my head and immediately convinced me of its value, talking me into just running with it there and then. I have loved each of my notebooks, not least because they force me to share, and everyone who reads them knows that they are designed to be more raw than polished.

These are the sorts of things I want to pursue – off-the-cuff ideas that make themselves known quite forcibly, and won’t pipe down. Recently, I have felt an increasing urgency about the need to progress certain ideas. Not in an Armageddon-is imminent sort of way (let’s not go there), more in an if-not-now-then-when sort of way. I feel like the last forty odd years have been building up to this moment. All the (many) things I have done, all the creative projects I have thrown myself into, these have all been part of a fantastic journey that is still only just getting going.

Once I have made a decision to do something, I tend to see signs everywhere confirming that I have made the right call – or, if I am still internally debating, there are signs encouraging me to commit to the outcome I know, deep down inside, I should pursue. In the day and a half I have been musing on these points, the following have popped into my life:

1. “Why are literary authors publishing less? I think many of the causes are not terribly mysterious. I won’t be shocking anyone to say that streaming TV, cell phones, social media, insane politics, etc. drain our time. On top of this, authors are also increasingly expected to “build platforms” and publicize ourselves. A lot of time that could be spent writing books is instead used to post on social media, film TikToks, or, yes, write newsletters. This is all true yet seems like only part of the answer.” Is the American Bibliography Shrinking? (Lincoln Michel, Counter Craft: the quoted part is actually not the main thrust of the post, which focusses on publishing, but it struck a chord.)
   
2. “Imagine the projects you could launch, the hobbies you could explore, the ways you could conduct your social life or parenting, and much else besides, if you needed no reassurance that the new way of doing things was every going to become a permanent feature of your life! Wouldn’t you suddenly feel much, much freer to act?” Toxic Preconditions (Oliver Burkeman, The Imperfectionist)
   
3. “I keep semi-joking that writing a cultural history of the 21st century “radicalized” me, but I certainly reached the end of 2024 feeling that the current media environment is not very healthy for the human brain. There is way too much information to process. I couldn’t possibly be the only person who feels this way. A good illustration of this is Ben Dietz’s incredibly good newsletter [sic] that rounds up the best cultural reporting/criticism of the week. There are so many links in each issue, because there is so much good cultural criticism right now. Every issue is both enlightening and makes me feel total despair because I can’t get through it all. So in finishing the book, I promised myself that I would adjust my media consumption habits and give myself more quiet during the day. But this means I’m listening to way fewer podcasts and reading fewer newsletters.” On Writing a History of the 21st Century (W. David Marx, Culture: An Owner’s Manual)

I have often thought that some ideas exist out there in the ether in an almost tangible way. When I was younger, my sister Ginny and I would be quietly playing Lego when, out of the blue, we’d both start singing the exact same part of the exact same song. Over the last several years, I have had some excellent ideas that I haven’t had the time or energy to pursue. A scant handful of years afterwards, someone else has done them instead. I am determined not to let more ideas pass me by – to leap more, to move fast (with due care and joy), to just do the things I want to do. So, maybe, I need to give myself a proper chance at doing this. I need to carve out the time, to preserve or create the necessary energy.

I gave myself until this morning to finish and post this, so it doesn’t just languish somewhere in a digital notebook. There will undoubtedly be other notes I want to include, and points I want to expand upon – but I am releasing this in the full understanding that I will quite likely want to edit and expand it in future. In doing so, I am acknowledging, same as I do with my Scribbles and Sketches notebooks, that it might be nearer the start of something than the end. (It is amusing how challenging I find this approach, neurologically speaking, even now, after all these years – though my notebooks have encouraged me to get better at fighting the paralysis of perfection.)

When I wrote the first sentence of this post on Wednesday, more than 1200 words poured out without me stopping. Last night, the same again. I have tidied it up somewhat, but I have left in the rough stream of consciousness that originally bubbled to the surface, just to show how this progressed, and also to force me to let go while this particular thread means so much to me, before it dulls and the shine goes off. There are many more points I could add in. It occurred to me afterwards that an introductory post to sharing thoughts here might be helpful. It has been a long time since I have maintained an old-school blog, though I have been many other places in many other guises online. I dismissed the idea of an introductory post, because I don’t want to make this A Thing. I don’t want to promise, I don’t want to aim for anything, I don’t want to build a structure I am going to regret in a few weeks or months. Right now, I just want to reclaim this space as somewhere I share ideas, ranging from embryonic to fully formed. Many of the tendrils of thought that run through this post are reflective of themes I have been pondering for some time. It likely won’t be the last you’ll hear of these, but it also just might be, and that is fine right now.

Even while drafting this, in the final stages of my brief tidy and proofread, I paused and thought about waiting to publish this on a particularly neat date, or after I’d thought a little bit more about it all. In the end, I decided I would just post these raw thoughts here, for momentum and the joy of knowing I am finding the voice which suits me at this point in both my life and in my creative adventures.

So, what’s next? Well, going back to the very beginning of this, I want to think about how to reframe how I think about being online, and figure out what suits me right now. The difficult thing is, when I’m not wanting to disappear, I love being online – it has always been a contradiction in that way, for me. In its simplest form, this is because I love people, and love conversing with people. But, one way or another, I only have this one, marvellous life to lead, and I accept I need to prioritise. I’m just not getting to some of the things I know are important to me, creatively speaking.

I have no answers, yet. At the end of the day, the parameters are up to me – I can make and break the rules as I see fit.

But I think there’s something to think about here.

Supplementary Snippets

The title of this post has been adapted from a phrase I picked up in Hugh Miller’s Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, or The Traditional History of Cromarty, published in 1860. “…the unwonted fatigue of being obedient.” This will be part of the longer quote I share for my current Scribbles and Sketches notebook on Sunday evening.

What I have long since crowed (of course) about, is how much I love collaboration. Some of the projects which have brought me most joy have been those that have been spun into existence with someone else. I’m currently considering how to capture this on this site, perhaps throwing out some suitable ideas. In the meantime, if you’re interested in collaborating in some way, please do get in touch.

Find Me Elsewhere

My still-shiny-and-new newsletter, Vignettes, will always include a round-up of the various digital haunts I have been frequenting over the previous months, as well as an indication of where I might be the following month.

I host seasonal notebooks under the banner of Scribbles and Sketches, four a year, each lasting a calendar month and following a single theme, which may be predominantly textual or predominantly visual.

I am currently hosting a year-long project, Simply This, featuring suggestions of fun and interesting things to do. Bursts of nostalgia, old-fashioned fun in its simplest state, and a not insignificant amount of cheerful daftness.

At present, I am sporadically active on Bluesky and Substack Notes.

See also: Inventory