I hope you’re all well on this fine Friday and enjoying the start of spooky season (not that the world needs to get any spookier). I wanted to check in with you all and just type up a blog post with no real direction today! The world is a lot right now, and I find it difficult to ignore when I’m trying to create content each week. It can feel strange having a job that’s centred around clothing and more materialistic things when the world is on fire…

I feel total despair when I watch the news some days, and other days I get lucky and have a rare streak of optimism that enables me to sail through until the next little breakdown. I’ve realised I’m somewhere between checking in and checking out at this point. On one hand, I feel a sense of responsibility to others and myself to keep going and to stay positive, and on the other, I find myself becoming increasingly numb to the world around me as an essential coping mechanism…

It’s not normal for us to be processing as much negative news as we have done this year, and it’s totally normal if you feel as though you are at full capacity with your negative news load. Unfortunately, we can’t help every cause and we also can’t be there for every single person who needs us all of the time.

The world feels scary and uncertain – words that have been repeated an exhausting amount of times this year. It doesn’t matter how many outfits I style to distract myself or how brightly the sun is shining – it’s okay to admit that it just feels fucking heavy, and that we don’t always have to be on our best form. In fact, it’s kind of a miracle if you happen to be on your best form this year. My emotions differ drastically from one week to the next, and I have to be prepared to ride with those emotions and see where they take me.

At this point in the year (and as someone who suffers on and off with anxiety) – I’m quite skilled at distracting myself. However, there’s a certain guilt that comes with distracting yourself this year. I get frustrated that I should be doing more, saying more, fighting for more. When in fact, all I’m really capable of most days is disbelief and despair (shortly before tuning into the latest Netflix show that I can binge watch for a full afternoon).

I want to grab the world in both hands and shake it – reset it somehow, hoping the people who are making it worse might tumble off and land onto another planet in a far off galaxy. I try to string words together to have conversations with friends and all that really ends up coming out is, ‘yeah, it’s just a really weird time… isn’t it?’. Many of us can’t articulate exactly how we feel at any given moment because we are still so distracted trying to process everything that’s happened. I’m pretty sure the news cycle alone has created a small tornado inside my head…

When a situation in our personal life feels desperate or hurtful, it’s natural for us to want to try and fix it. When the world feels this way, it almost feels like we have to admit defeat because we aren’t able to change the world single handedly. We have to find a way to somehow come together in a world that continually tries to divide us. It ends up feeling like one big tangled mess if you think about it too much. Like the very last problem on a maths paper when you aren’t very skilled at maths (me). 

I never want to write these type of posts to depress anyone or make people feel worse – the current news cycle is already doing a great job of that. I guess it’s just my way of trying to connect with some of you and reach out a hand beyond the more polished style of content. It’s a reminder that even when I have to get up and do my usual job everyday – I still have moments where I feel like the world is collapsing around me. I still have moments where I’d rather curl up under the duvet than work on building towards a brighter future. Running a business in this climate is exhausting – working in the creative industry is difficult to navigate at the best of times, but this year has felt like walking a tightrope. I feel as though I’m wobbling all over the place and might fall off at any given second. I’m trying to carry on as normal (there goes that word again) without having much conviction in whether I’m doing the right things or challenging my energy into the right places.

This year sort of feels like we have all been left on a run down building site and need to somehow start creating a safe place for us all to exist – despite our level of building site experience. We are stumbling around, things are falling down, and people are getting seriously injured in the process. The people who have been put in charge aren’t making any sense – they aren’t even being made to wear their helmets…

Back when things were ‘normal’, the narrative that was often shared was something along the lines of, ‘things will get easier with time’ or ‘these things just take time’. This was something we were told over and over again – a way of comforting ourselves through dark times and looking towards the future despite how hurt we felt. These days, it seems as though things are getting worse with time. Time also feels more precious than ever, and some days I even convince myself that our time on this planet is completely running out. These are the places my mind wanders to when I can’t sleep or I have a particularly anxious day. I convince myself that we (as a human race) have completely fucked it, and our poor planet will never forgive us. Of course, deep in my soul, I always know that so long as we are still here and still breathing – there’s always time for things to get better and there’s always time for us to be better. One stumble at a time…  

Photographs taken by Catherine Booty 

Shirt – vintage, Glasses – Celine, Jeans – Whistles, Loafers c/o – And Other Stories

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