Begin, again...

🌱 Plant another seed

Hello, hello my old friend… it’s good to see you here, again.

(Did you just find yourself singing along to the sound of silence there too!? Sorry, but I hope it made you smile :)

So here’s to this…

Another start.
Another seed.
Another blank page.
Another new notebook.
Another digital garden in which to attempt to grow these thought seeds of mine.
Another inside sparkle of an idea that’s yet to see daylight.

These endless circles of starting make me feel dizzy sometimes. Yet I’ve a feeling you’re the same sort of human, so can relate to the dopamine hit of a fresh start!? That buzz you get when the earth is turned and soft, full of nothing but happy worms and inviting opportunity…

So instead of turning away, in shame… of yet another project, another idea, another intention that may not grow. I’m going to stay, for today, and simply plant another seed.

I’m going to see if this Substack soil feels softer, and quieter than Instagram feels to me these days. Each time I go there it’s as if I’ve been teleported into Oxford Circus. I feel bombarded… both by things I love - the sharing of seeds and ideas (I see these like takeaways that you can’t really get where I live), and the things that overwhelm my senses - the volume, the speed, the brightness, the adverts… oh how I love that Substack doesn’t have adverts!

So I think that starting again in these here Substack fields… feels a little like moving to the country. I think I’ll miss not having a community around me… as honestly the support, the connection I felt in the comments and messages in Instagram a few years ago felt truly like sunshine after the rain.

But I’m hoping that it will offer me a little more space, and slowness, in which to start to plant out my garden again. To play with this idea of creating an online journal of sorts. As I still have dreams… of sharing, and growing more awareness around anxiety, and our nervous systems. Which I’ll be honest with you, I’ve learned a whole lot more about in this last year or so…

My octopus (what I currently call my symptoms of a functional neurological disorder that show up for me in the form of a facial tremor, tics and a stammer) is still alive, and sometimes kicking… and has not yet disappeared beneath the surface of my waves. So no doubt, this is what the focus of my garden will be. Speaking about my lived experience of my sensory difficulties, in the hope I can grow some more flowers of understanding… and acceptance.

---

So, in the spirit of new starts, and sharing tiny invitations…

🌱 what might planting a seed, beginning again, look like for you today?

---

For me, it looks like the image I shared above… a little lonely, but exciting… and feels like a lightness right now I suppose. That hormone hit I guess, of having got here after weeks, maybe months, of these seeds starting to sparkle in my mind again…

Gosh, it feels good to garden! Who gives a fuck what actually grows ;)

---

Sharing Seeds

🌼 Had I not have read this poem by the lovely Iona this morning, I don’t think I’d have hit ‘publish’. Thank you for the encouragement Iona… the stepping stone out of my comfort zone.

Bloom and Grow