2024 is here and how different it is to the years that preceded it! My partner and I did a tarot reading on New Year’s Eve, each pulling a card to represent the start, middle and end of our year. I pulled the Ace of Pentacles, Wheel of Fortune and the 7 of Wands, so I can only anticipate this year to be incredibly prosperous for me.
The delusional confidence the tarot brings me is the thing I like most about it, if you haven’t done a reading for the year yet, I highly recommend even a free one.
Thanks as always for subscribing, or if you haven’t you can click the button here and I’ll be thrilled to have you, or you can follow me on Instagram. I’m chill and easygoing and just happy if you’re happy.
Your Essence
As always I am in the middle of working on a million little projects simultaneously. Jumping from writing, to design, to filming and back again. It is my favourite place to be and I am constantly adding fresh projects so I don’t have to face the point where I have to admit I am stuck and need to hit my head against a wall for a while to finish something.
The beginning of the year always feels a little too focused on self-love and personal growth for my liking. Perhaps I like my already existing mess of systems and coping mechanisms (I don’t, but I also don’t want to change them and things get worse). If I am being honest I am trying to be more consistent with the part of working on things that involves putting them out into the world.
At an old job I worked at, the co-working space looked more like a hostel than an office, complete with a raging vinegar fly infestation. One of the main features was a library across the entire eastern wall, full to the brim of new-age psychology books. These books were not relevant to the work we were doing, but I am sure my boss put them there so they were tax deductible.
Once when I was caught looking at the wall, my boss walked over and pulled out a book to hand to me. He said, “This is the book that captures your essence if you read anything it should be this”. The book he handed me was called “Eat Mangoes Naked - Finding Pleasure Everywhere and Dancing with the Pits”…I’d never been more offended by a recommendation in my life.
This book was the ravings of a mad woman! The design was something that should have been left in the 90s and the whole thing was full of handwritten scrawl and watercolour illustrations somewhat reminiscent of the recently re-popularised Groovy Chick. The whole book felt like something that had been cobbled together from all the half-written notes that surrounded the author in a bid to meet a looming deadline.
There is very little that I am willing to do naked, and eating mangoes certainly doesn’t make the list. I eat those fully clothed, tea towels tucked into my shirt and my fully erect nipples carefully hidden. Perhaps if I had ever bothered to read this book we could have changed this and I would be streaking through the city, spinning around lampposts and laughing maniacally in the rain. Writing it that way makes it sound almost fun, like the final scene in Saltburn but without having to get caught in an embarrassing lie.
Now 6 years later, after becoming even MORE cynical, I have come into possession of that very same mango book. I thought it would come up in my upcoming show Concrete Pigs a show that focuses on the places where cities have gone wrong. Except its moment in the show has since been cut, so my only option left is to, unfortunately, read it.
This is my long way of saying that my resolution for 2024 is to read the book, find more pleasure and, fingers crossed, leave the year ‘chortling with glee’.
Working Tips
I’m trying to admit to myself that one of the things I give the most attention is different ways that we can work and so I thought it might be worth sharing what I am trying now and then.
The last few weeks I’ve found myself so frustrated that I can never let myself get hooked by my writing. I always know where it’s going and so I switch off in the middle and realise I’ve spent two hours on my phone playing “My Perfect Hotel”. This dilemma is especially apparent when trying to figure out what ‘the story’ or arc is in a show. I was feeling defeated by the realisation I couldn’t take it all in at once and figure it out.
This has led me to spend far too much money to get the app ‘Speechify’ (who ONLY does an annual subscription?!?). So far it has been great to have my scripts read to me by someone else. It doesn’t feel like a jarring computer voice and it is much easier to be objective about my writing when it is read by Gwenyth Paltrow or Snoop Dog. Whether it makes a difference we will have to wait and see, but who am I to withhold what might become a secret weapon?
Links
How am I meant to go back to work when my podcasts are all still doing repeats from the archive only? Open to any new suggestions for interesting/educational podcasts but nothing obvious, please! Don’t waste my time with a “You’re Wrong About” or “Hidden Brain”! Of course, I’m already listening to those!
In love with this apartment (from 2016)
I am recreating my own Joan Didion packing list for 2024.
Loved this deep dive on Romance Novel Covers. Turns out we are getting more prudish?
Can’t get over how intense this Pantone video is to announce the colour of the year is… PEACH FUZZ.
I hope you have a great 2024. Let me know how you’re tarot card reading went a
nd whether you have any other writing or pleasure tips I should look into. We should now be back on regular fortnightly programming for ISMLFT. Though that’ll drop again come festival time in March!
Appreciate you all!