Hi how are ya hello hows it
What’s this all about then Ned? Well I’ll tell ye. I moved to America nearly half a decade ago and I lost something precious to me. Not literally mind you, I gained a scruffy love, had me some fur babies and a whole new sun soaked family, but I lost a sense of self and a lightness of being that I had begun to live in back home. I parted with some friends and gained a whole new cultural identity. From young Irish woman eager to emigrate to tired green card holder entirely ill at ease in her new adopted country, it has been a whirlwind of change.
Now sure don’t I know you are absolutely delighted to be here. “Oh yay”, you’re thinking, “MORE creative social content being forced on us by a self-aggrandising millennial”.
Yes, the eager striving to be seen and heard of our generation is outrageously vast and visible. Duh, I get that we are all tired of the sameness and repetitive over-sharing and our minds are over saturated with internet identity culture wars…but hear me out, and then you may proceed with judgement and eye rolling.
Aeons and aeons ago, about 8 or so odd years maybe, I had a ‘transformative life experience’ that altered my mind, body and spirit and propelled me into a space of sappy delight. I was whole and had to share it with the world so I did what every 22 year old back then, I started blogging. Face meet palm. Now, don’t get me wrong, I had heart and buckets of genuine innocence and good intentions. So sweet, so vulnerable, so christian-trying-to-make-jesus-cool. The need for affirmation was strong in this one.
Jaysus Christo.
I look back now with a slightly more critical lens and I cannot even get through half of those behemoth blogs before I turn scarlet and vomit at my own words. I can see clearly that while I started blogging because I loved writing and challenging perceptions, I got steamrolled by my own insecurity and desperate hidden desire for validation. So I stopped and a little crack appeared in my armour of confidence. A voice, questioning, got louder. Why was I penning these extortionately longwinded think pieces and for who?
The noise of everyone else striving so visibly, missing the point so clearly and hopping on that blog bandwagon eventually exhausted me and honestly it frightened me because I saw myself reflected in their centering of themselves. I knew the true shallow nature of my ‘altruistic art form’ and that’s when I realised I needed a break. Initially I wanted to re-focus myself and do some deep work on my conscious contribution to the world but it backfired. I spiraled into doubt, self-consciousness and apathy and I let shame hold me back from continuing on in my writing, both publicly and privately.
The worst thing I ever told myself during my ‘writer’s block’ years was “If I can’t make a living/money off of it then it’s not worth doing because it takes from my valuable time.” How about that for some psycho unconscious conditioning of the industrial rat race complex.
With all that being said, I have come to a place now where I want to create again. Funny that Mr. Spock.
A little smuttering here, a dash of pottering about there, a humming and a hawwing and a scitter and a scatter…eventually I just decided fuck it. Make a space to celebrate the creativity in all of us. Who gives a damn what people think?
Well ok, I still do but that isn’t all of me nor is it the true me. It’s not the me that is original but the me that was shaped and moulded by the will of societal structures waiting to profit off of my disatisfaction, discomfort and loneliness.
Listen now, I do not expect any one to care or really get too invested in my little rants about the place. But sometimes you just have to let a little of what’s inside of you out in order to feel satiated existentially. Sometimes we are visited by ideas and we create. Sometimes we sit and think ‘I’m blocked from seeing this right now’ and we don’t press on. And then the not pressing on becomes easier because the fear of pressing on and failing is so great. That lasts for a few days and turns into a few weeks, months and yonks and yesteryears and god it never stops does it? This ability to find an excuse to quit.
So that’s what this is. Some writing by me for no other reason except simply because. It’s my stand in for therapy (I’m sure my ex-therapist will be mightily pleased), some arty farty things and some heart warming contributions by the loves in my life. The layout of this site is convoluted and random so I’ll give you a brief rundown here.
Éire: the homepage seeing as that’s the old motherland and all.
St. John’s Wort: possibly an antidepressant of sorts? Hopefully the works of written ok-ness by me and also excellent works of prowess by my contributors will cheer everyone up just a little bit.
Bluebell: the home of the arty shite cause they are a great beauty and I am shallowly an aesthete.
Bramble: all the interview and conversational stuff cause it rhymes with ramble so there’s that. Here I will feature bants with my lovely contributing creatives, people I find interesting, my fur babies etc.
This is me then, where I am at. I’m doing it, I am pressing on and getting uncomfortable once again. I am saying fuck it and I am going to indulge my ego and strive for this diluted hyper-visibility because it makes me feel powerful and seen and purposeful. I’m going to treat you lovelies as intelligent because you are so I promise I’ll try for no lies, give ye lots of messy writing and I’m going to let the beautimous works of the babes around me speak for themselves.