For the longest time, and from a whole lot of conditioning, I was under the assumption that I was less than intelligence. I was convinced when I entered a room, I couldn’t hold a candle to anyone. Everyone seemed to know so much more than me and I was always asking questions, wondering, asking how things worked, interested in people’s jobs and talents, in wonder of all the ways the world worked. I wouldn’t come away from rooms feeling inferior, instead, I would come home feeling energised, interested in learning more about how the world worked. You see, for the longest time, I had thought that those of us who asked questions were someone not as smart as the ones who answered questions and asked none.

It was only later that I learned asking questions was how one kept intellect and wonder alive. And in a world where mystery and awe were constantly diminishing and people become more and more set in their ways, the ability to ask questions and being interested in other people’s perspectives is an essential part of growth as a human being.

A friend of mine once pointed out to me that the human equivalent of stopping to smell the flowers was to just pause and truly listen wholeheartedly to what someone was saying about their life experiences. And it made me realise quickly why we got so angry at each other over the smallest things in our lives. When you are in the habit of not listening, you have turned yourself into the kind of person so set in your ways that you consider no one else worthy of listening to.

The art of listening is simple really. You just have to close your ears to your own internal voice and not be waiting for your turn to talk. Instead, you need to focus, entirely, on what someone else is telling you. As a writer and a poet, I cannot tell you how often the act of discovery lies in listening to someone and realising how different the cadence of human experience is, how unique but still relatable every life lived is.

So how do you fall in love with the world? Grace. You give grace to people. You listen to them. You walk amongst the trees and understand they’ve been here long before you. You smell flowers without plucking them. You log off social media once in a while and understand that how algorithms are devised specially to draw your attention by outraging you. But more than anything, it is the art of listening. The art of understanding that the human race isn’t as bad as social media wants you to believe. Or the news wants you to believe.

That we have a great practice of good within us all and the way to connect with it is have faith, have hope and most of all have the love that is needed to survive any and every existential crisis.

A Small Writing Prompt

In your journal, write seven to ten things you have loved about the world. This could be a memory or just a daily thing you get to see (flowers, the garden, the sky, a loved one). Revisit this list when you are annoyed or sad. Additionally, every week, add at least one new thing to this list and revisit at the end of the year.

If someone had told me 20 years ago as a teenager that I would have a device that fit inside my pocket where people yelled at me every single day for even my blandest opinions, I would have told them to go back to Mars where they clearly belonged. If they had further added that I would be constantly connected twenty four seven to everyone I knew via text messages and emails which came with the added anxiety of “what should I respond to this“ and “oh God, I hope I haven’t said the wrong thing“ while also being simultaneously connected with every single thing that happened in the world, I would have asked how to opt out of this nightmare.

The trouble is, of course, none of us can opt out of this contract that we never signed that says we are now all connected to each other 24/7. No wonder everyone is so stressed out all the time. Usually when we subscribe to something, we can unsubscribe, but how do we unsubscribe from what is now the new normal which emphasises hyperconnectivity at every turn?

How often do you randomly pick up your phone without even realising it? We’ve got so used to hyper connectivity culture that we have even invented words to describe its negative symptoms, words like doomscrolling or fear of missing out. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think the human brain was designed to stay in constant contact with the world, the news, everything that has ever happened ALL of the time.

My grandmother says that the key to a long life is to go on long walks and smell the flowers more often, to find peace in a less noisy life and “taking breaks from the opinions of others”. And coincidentally, she does not have a smart phone.

And this is precisely why I decided a while back that I needed to break up with my phone by creating some really firm boundaries for myself. This required from radical honesty, including realising I was spending more time on my phone than I was making art. Here are some things I realised:

1. Recognise that your attention is the most precious commodity that media corporations are fighting over. As your attention is the prize, each shiny object on your screen is designed to court it - no matter how detrimental that is for you.

2. Put timers on social media apps. One to two hours is more than enough for me to post, respond to comments etc and I use social media for work. There are loads of app blockers out there, the one I use is called One Sec. It helps you stop app switching as well.

3. Recognise that the internet is full of clickbait designed to make you angry so that you spend more time reading it, talking about it and engaging with it. That is precious time you could spend doing ANYTHING else. My way around this is when I see something that utterly infuriates me, I take a deep breath, put my phone down. This has taught me to stop being so reactive.

4. I put my phone away at 9PM every day (unless I’m out of the house). I have a friend who does this at 6PM. Everyone’s life is different so make your own rules around this one but good sleep hygiene for me is not even having the phone in the room which would tempt me to pick it up in the middle of the night. Some people keep it in a locked drawer just in case an emergency call does come through.

5. The urge to scroll can be replaced as any habit can. I taught myself to keep a book by my phone and when I am about to grab my phone, I go for the book now. I keep reminding myself that it is better to read a page of a good book than learn why GaryMcGuy83746421 thinks women aren’t actual people.

6. You do not have to respond to every email and text immediately, checking for responses at all hours of the day unless it is literally your job to do this. Find the right rhythm for you. For me, I try to respond to emails in the afternoon for an hour usually and I stick to that schedule as much as I can. After that, every other email can wait till the next afternoon.

7. If all else fails, get a friend or someone close to you/who you trust to post on social media for you for a while (delete all the apps from your phone). OR, in case you want a more radical idea, stop using a smartphone. Answer your emails from the computer and get an oldschool cell phone. I got to the point a while back where I switched to a phone with no apps, only calls and texts to keep myself away focussed on a project and it helped me so much, I am going to do it again this year.

I noticed that the further I get from my phone and hyper-connectivity, the more exploratory I am as an artist, I am a better activist for the causes I care about because I am more involved at a ground level, the more I read and I meet far more people in real life.

Maybe my grandmother is onto something here. Life is a whole lot better when you go off for a walk and smell some flowers. A simple solution to a busy, noisy life is to find a way to disconnect and go looking for a little bit of quiet. Just to hear your own thoughts. Just to feel yourself breath.

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Today is the final day of our rest as revolution challenge and if you’ve made it this far with me, I just want to say how amazing you are. You’ve explored your relationship with rest in a way that takes courage.

To go back and address what rest looked like to you as a child, what you were taught about resting and unlearning rest as “laziness” is in itself a hugely revolutionary series of actions. But to also be completely honest with yourself and truly listen to your body, then giving into what it wants from you? That’s progress, it’s change and it will lead you to a healthier happier you in every way.

Over this week, we have examined so many difficult things, especially the voices of our inner critics telling us that we are unworthy of rest. And we have made it to the other side, given ourselves the permission we need so we can rest (this is the hardest part for me till date!).

So for your FINAL PROMPT today, I’m going to ask you to do something seemingly simple but nonetheless it was the thing that actually changed my life when I first did it.

Get your journal and write a letter to your rested, happy future self. Write about everything you put in place so that your future self could be truly happy and peaceful. Write about all the unlearning you did and how you changed your relationship with resting and your body.

By writing this letter, you are actually creating this version of yourself as you write. You are giving yourself permission to exist as this version of yourself.

Wherever you are, I hope you know that you are worthy of rest. I hope you know that you don’t have to earn the right to rest, it is already yours.

Till our May creative challenge, this is me signing off.

With warmth and verse,

Nikita

A while ago someone told me that human beings would be lost without hard work because it makes us “aimless”. While I agree it’s good to have aims in life, what I disagree all we have been made for is work. I think humans are meant to fully take in this world and exist in awe of it.

My favourite poet Mary Oliver was excellent at finding awe and mystery in this world. She said it was the duty of the poet to stand still and be astonished by the world.I believe that this is for every human being, not just poets to stand still and be in awe of the world.

We can only do this when we free our minds enough to know the peace and gentleness this world offers us. To truly know rest is to truly acknowledge that you are made for more to enjoy your one wild and precious life, just as you are without guilt that you are spending it working or scheduling or doing.

Today, on the penultimate day of this challenge, I am going to ask you a series of questions as PROMPT 6 of this challenge:

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The language we use when we speak about ourselves is a large part of how we treat ourselves. If the lexicon we hold for ourselves, for instance have the word “lazy” or “useless” or “guilty” or “regretful”, we will treat ourselves poorly because within our heads, we have validated ill treatment of ourselves and our bodies. This is when your inner critic’s voice is more powerful that your inner empowering voice and it leads to untold damage.

The inner critic has its uses but when its voice is the only voice, it does nothing but wear us down and wear us out. For a long time rest has been seen as a physical reaction to physical tasks but rest is also essential for the tired, worn mind.

Do your thoughts constantly race? When you are trying to read or nap or take a walk, are you constantly disturbed by the loud voice of the inner critic telling you how guilty you should feel for taking time for yourself? This is where we need to build a vocabulary that replaces the dialogue of that voice with the voice of empowering kindness to ourselves.

So here we are with PROMPT 5 of this challenge:

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The weekend is a time for many to be able to unwind from their week. Yet I’ve found that the weekend is the hardest time for me to unwind. I’m constantly focussed on the future and I look at this time as “spare time I can use to catch up to whatever I couldn’t in the week”. No wonder I’m burnt out all the time. And I’m not alone in thinking this way either.

The whole point of the weekend is to have time to rejuvenate and rest before the next work week. And yet this is become less and less the case for many people.

Several of my friends have told me that their boundaries between workweeks and weekends have become blurred because there is no way to keep up with other life tasks during the work week. For instance, the housework. Or perhaps just catching up and responding to emails and texts which aren’t work related but still essential. This is why so many of us end up exhausted. What does one do when the off button is hidden away behind so much to do that we simply cannot find it?

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A while back I was having a chat with a friend about burn out and the compulsion I felt to keep working through burn out. My friend told me that she was feeling exactly the same way - that her whole body was telling her to stop and at least sleep properly, but the stress and anxiety of everyday life was preventing her from doing this. I asked her in that moment what her body and mind was asking for. She thought for a few moments and said “I have been trying to ignore it so I can just keep going.”

And herein lies the issue. We do not listen to our bodies and minds when they tell us what we need because it gets in the way of working.

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The notion of rest in a world that doesn’t just ask for productivity but demands it is a complex one. Yesterday we spoke about how resting has been invalidated into some strange notion of “laziness” when truly, a well rested body should be a basic human right.

But how do we switch off when it feels like the whole world is telling us in a thousand different little ways that we are not doing enough? First, let me acknowledge that a Sisyphean task to do the right amount of “enough” in a world where no amount of work is ever enough. And by this I mean the EXACT amount of enough that will make us feel we deserve a break.

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Hello everyone, and welcome to the 7 day REST AS REVOLUTION creative challenge!

I wanted to do this challenge after I went through intense burnout in February and March. This challenge was devised with the specific intention of listening to our bodies, changing the narrative around rest as well as changing the notion that we must be productive ALL the time to earn our place in the world. The truth is our non stop productivity at the cost of our mental health and wellness is not how a healthy society is supposed to function. A healthy society prioritises happy, well rested humans. At the beginning of this year, I went through a spiral of taking on far too much and refusing to ask for help or resting. It made me reconsider my relationship with rest on a level which I have never done before. A big challenge for me was allowing myself to be “unproductive”. That is, taking time out to do essentially nothing but nap and eat as my body had been begging for. It’s like my body has been in fight mode for so long, it doesn’t have an off switch.

The real challenge however came to me in the form of examine what I had been taught about “rest” growing up.

Keep reading for your first prompt!

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It’s all over the internet and before the internet every woman’s magazine was full of it. “How to look younger”, “try this anti ageing serum”, “prevent wrinkles!” and I can’t help but feel sad when watching yet another generation of young people being drawn into this capitalist notion that youth is the only kind of beauty worth having.

Every day I look into the mirror and I can feel the constant societal narrative that has been drummed into me speak. A new fine line around my eyes. A brand new wrinkle on my neck. It has taken a huge perspective shift to stop thinking this way about myself. And the perspective shift comes from the devastating reminder that so many people I love didn’t get to age.

There are people I love deeply who didn’t make it to 30. Or see 40. Or know 50. People I love who should have got more from their lives - got old enough to see the wrinkles on their face and to get laugh lines from the joy of being able to laugh with those they love. People who should have got to grow old and I am reminded what a privilege ageing is. I miss my people every day. I wish we had got to grow old together and laugh at the memories of our youth.

I am reminded through my grief that not all of us have the privilege of growing old. And in the grand scheme of the universe, we are here for as short a time as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. All this time spent preserving youth is futile when we should be treasuring every wrinkle is a map back to the people we have been. Every year is a gift from a life that can be snatched at any given moment.

I look at the ageing discourse and think surely it is in our nature to age, as is with all the perishable beings that have been made by nature. What else are we supposed to do other than collect experiences and memories and love. The older we get the more we know of love and of hope. So here’s what I pray for, and what I hope for you. I hope you and everyone you love get to grow old together. I hope you get to know all the many dimensions of love and life. May you be gifted with a long, happy life.

With verse and warmth,

Nikita

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On April 23rd, I will be doing a new creative challenge which is a REST AS REVOLUTION challenge. It will be exactly 7 days long, with 7 prompts and open conversations around rest.

Join me on Tuesday! Keep your journals ready!

For the longest time now, I’ve been thinking about how much pressure we put on ourselves to be great at everything. Whether it is the way we look or our jobs, we push ourselves to the limit, to burnout even. A side effect of capitalism is this push for perfection, to keep up with or be more than others, in order to seek that ever elusive happiness that we need so we can finally be content with who we are.

Is it any wonder then that we do not permit ourselves to spend time creating? To be creative is to accept the mess of who you are as a human being because the most beautiful things come from creative chaos. Which leads me to say this so called controversial point I regularly make when it comes to permitting oneself to create. You do not have to be “good” at art to make art. You are human and picking up a pen, pencil, paintbrush or instrument is in your bones, in your DNA. This is why even the smallest children first find their voice in paper and crayon. And they are joyous and proud of what they make until someone somewhere convinces them that actually they shouldn’t be making art until it is “good.”

One of the most difficult things the commodification of art has done to us is make us believe that we cannot be creative unless and until we are good by the standards of some shadowy gatekeeper sitting up in an ivory tower somewhere.

Who appointed these people as the Gods of Art that now decide which humans are worthy of creation? Why have they got so deep inside our heads that we no longer want to make art unless it fits their standards of ‘good’? And who decides what you get to do with a blank page or a sketchbook?

That’s right. Only you do.

I believe that every single human being in this world is capable of making art if they simply pick up a pencil, a pen or instrument. I think that is what we were made for. To process the world and turn it into art.

There is a poem by Nicanor Parra called “Young Poets” which goes like this:

Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.

In poetry everything is permitted.

With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.

And the first time I read it, all I can think is, that’s some heavy pressure to put on a young poet – to improve a blank page. But as I grew my own creative practice, I realised that the improvement of a blank page doesn’t take much. It just takes you wanting to do something with that canvas. It takes embracing the gorgeous mess it is to be a human being and deciding, I will give this page my chaos. Let me unleash it somewhere.

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Not that I spent much time on the app formerly known as Twitter anymore, but one of the most frustrating points about social media is the way every platform affects the other platforms in some way. Discourse on X will find its way to Instagram, Reddit, Tiktok and vice versa. And since engagement gets verified blue checkmarks paid on Elon Musk’s platform, they have discovered the easiest way to get said engagement is misogyny.

Misogyny is one of the world’s oldest evils and is so normalised, it’s basically baked into society.  

A running bitter joke amongst my friends is if you want to triple your income, the easiest way to do it is get on the internet and bash women – from Andrew Tate to Jordan Peterson, whole careers have been made by sheer hatred towards women and everything women value. And this is precisely what these engagement farming blue checks have discovered. Post a video of women dancing, having a good time and say “This is why men hate modern women”, sit back and watch the misogynists gather to curse or shout at these women. Or post a video of a group of single mothers starting commune so they can raise their children together with the caption “Women are destroying society” and watch as thousands of people comment in the affirmative. A tiktok video of a teenage girl dancing in her bedroom has a comment section full of adult men calling her all kinds of abusive names for the crime of….dancing in her bedroom. And God forbid if women read books by women, because nothing goes viral faster than someone making fun of women authors and women’s literature.

Of course, in a digital world run by algorithms, these posts with their huge engagement are pushed onto all our feeds, which then end up being posted across various platforms for “clout”. The end result? There is absolutely nothing women can do without being attacked. The amount of times I see an innocent picture of a group of women having lunch together being descended on by misogynists who now think they have the right to comment on their looks, appearance and what they are eating has increased exponentially.

And if we are still under the mistaken impression that social media has no effect on real life, I recommend looking into how teenage boys are deeply influenced by the content they consume and how they are treating the women around them including their teachers as a result of that.

In a time when women’s rights are under attack, the notion that women existing and enjoying our lives is now being demonised shows a deep festering wound at the heart of society. If left untreated, the daily misogyny that women face and have to live with will only get worse. However, this can be a teachable moment – the antidote to misogyny has always been to starve it of the oxygen it relies so strongly on, attention and the complicity of society. The best response to seeing engagement bait where women are being hated is to deprive it of attention and engagement. I often think of Iliad in these situations. When Eris, the goddess of strife created the golden apple of discord and tossed it into a bored Olympus inscribed with the words, “For the Fairest”, she did it with the specific purpose of starting a riot between the Gods. She could only succeed because they did exactly what she expected. If we deprive those engagement farming accounts of the oxygen they crave to pay their bills by refusing to rise to their bait or reporting them, we can actually reverse at least some of the damage being done to this world.

Make people feel embarrassed of being associated with misogynists. Make misogyny unprofitable for anyone to pursue. The way we win is by depriving it of the attention it so desperately needs.

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Grief and burnout. What messy bedfellows they are, this midnight dark combination. And how often they come together, camp out in the deep recesses of our brains, hidden behind that single crucial door that we cannot find when we are in the throes of despair.

When I started this newsletter, I did accommodate for burnout to an extent, but I did not accommodate for the blackbird of grief showing up in my life suddenly and perching itself at my window. The trouble with grief is that when it sinks its talons into your shoulders, it does not let go and the more you try to shake it off, the more it remains, dug in holding on. You can’t hurry it out. It leaves at its own pace. What no one tells you is that when your whole world has turned into a mottled grey, how do you function enough to create and make beautiful things?

I admit, I was overdoing it before the grief visited. I was pushing my body through asthma in one of the most polluted cities in the world, moving house as soon as I travelled back until my legs gave way to influenza and I was forced to stay in bed for a week and rest. The lesson learned was simple. Take a break or your body will force you to take that break. As my breathing finally comes back to me, I feel grateful to be able to take a lungful of air without breaking down in a coughing fit.

Listen, this late stage capitalist world we have found ourselves in does not lend itself well to grief or burnout. You lost someone? Too bad, you still have bills to pay. Burnt out from weeping and not getting enough sleep because you miss the person you lost? Well, you still have to make rent and your boss won’t take “I’m sorry I feel like I’m drowning” as a reason for you to have time off.

A healthy world is a well rested world. A kind world is full of healthy souls. This is a deep interconnection that we are missing by forcing ourselves to grind until our bodies and minds hurt, even when we are in distress. And yes, on a much higher political level, this needs to change. Human beings are a persevering, resilient species, but we are also only capable of our most generous, intelligent selves when we have the time to relax and dream,

To be honest, this is why the greatest act of revolution in this specific landscape we have built for ourselves is rest. To allow our bodies to heal from the daily stresses that otherwise pile up and have become one of the greatest ways human beings hurt ourselves. To be able to allow yourself to be unproductive and just sleep or relax is the biggest gift you can give yourself.

I am back now. Still with a nasty cough where every once in a while I feel like my chest will collapse into itself, but my mind and heart feel better than it was in January or in December. Burnout is no joke. And if you allow things to get too far, eventually, you end up entertaining everything from illness to painful thoughts towards yourself.

I plan to do another creative challenge towards the middle of April for a week. This one will be designed around 2 weeks of rest, journaling and seeking out the things that bring us mental comfort in a world forever hurtling towards existential crisis. Until next week, this is me asking you to take that half an hour nap that you have been longing for and putting off. Or read the book you’ve been longing to read for pleasure. Or try, just try to give yourself an hour of essential time in the peace of a hobby, or doing absolutely nothing at all. You deserve it, believe me you do. You deserve rest and kindness and all the gentle things your body has been craving for so long.

With warmth and verse,

Nikita

First of all, an apology for not being around these last two weeks. At the beginning of February, I burnt out for a plethora of reasons but one of the biggest ones is being the oldest daughter of an oldest daughter, which means I carry responsibilities and sadness in heavy measures. On the 2^nd of February, I came back to India after 4 years and in the last two weeks, I’ve visited 4 cities, caught 4 planes, 3 train journeys, done 2 major events, a revisiting of some serious childhood trauma but the most important thing I did was see my grandparents after four long years. Homecoming, I think, for most of us is a deeply complex thing – especially when you know that it may be the last time you see someone you love beyond comprehension or words.

For me it is my grandparents. The gift of being the eldest child is if you have grandparents,  you get to know them longest. The tragedy of being the oldest child is you have to watch them go after all that time full of love. For artists, sometimes it is even more than that. You see, for me, my grandfather is my storyteller’s voice. The person who gave me my first stories, who made me fall in love with poetry and story. He is the roots of this tree I have become, the one who handed me Mahmoud Darwish’s work at 15 and told me “let this change you”. His mind was sharp as a tack. I don’t remember a dull moment with him all through my twenties and if you asked me for my heroes, I would name him in a heartbeat. This was a man that was still weightlifting at 85 despite his arthritis.

I am telling you all this because this is everything dementia took from him. His ability to share stories. His ability to tell jokes. His capacity to be present in the same room as us. His laugh, infectious and full. I saw this clearly when I returned, hugged him and he just barely registered it was me.  

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The thing with anticipatory grief is, the knowledge of what is coming even when they are still with you. You watch them fading right before your eyes, you know you won’t have long and there is very little you can do.  You think about what you will do after they are gone and then feel guilty for even thinking about an after. You try to tell them everything you wish you had said when they were still completely there with you. You recall their memories for them because they can no longer remember them. You remind them who you are and who they are several times a day, of the love you have shared. Sometimes, you tell them the stories they told you as a child. You watch pieces of them go day by day and wish you could grab them and bring them back. One day, they will forget your face. But they may remember you as a kind voice and gentle hands which held theirs and told them how much they are loved. And perhaps that is all healing can look like when you are waiting for the inevitable. No one promised us mortality was fair. But we were promised love and to heal, truly heal, holding that love close has to be enough.  

I promised my grandfather I would be back to see him, knowing fully well that the next time he sees me, he may not know who I am. But I will tell him the stories he told me when I was a little girl. And I will give him the memories of our walks and joyous meals together. And I will hold his hands in mine and remind him how much he is loved. And he may not know me. But perhaps his own storytellers voice will speak back to him when he is lost. Perhaps he will find comfort inside the words of courage he gave to me when I was afraid. If nothing else, I hope I can give him back some of the hope he gave me when I needed it the most. I hope that even if every memory fades, the warmth of how much he is loved holds him close till the very end.

Hug the people you love close. Tell them how much they mean to you. Have more meals together. Laugh harder together. Don’t be afraid to cry in front of each other. Remember we were never promised forever which means you must love as much as you can now.

With verse and warmth,

Nikita

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A man I used to be acquainted with (and you will see why he’s somebody I used to know in a few seconds) and I were talking at an event a few years ago. It was a day I was feeling particularly down and though I was trying to be upbeat, he noticed. He asked me what was wrong. I said that morning I had received a disturbingly graphic death threat and the anxiety that came with it was making me a bit jumpy. His response was to laugh and say, “Oh don’t worry, those people hardly ever act on that stuff anyway. Besides,“ he added as he took a sip of his drink, “this is just a price women have to pay if you’re going to have public platforms and have controversial opinions.” I frowned at this and said, “What controversial opinions do I have?“

He shrugged, “Oh they’re not controversial to me, but lots of people find discussions about women’s rights really annoying especially after Me Too. Anyway, this kind of thing is just expected on the internet isn’t it? People send death threats and rape threats out all the time.“

I’m not sure what disturbed me more, his cavalier attitude to something as serious as a death threat or the idea that women should expect them if we exist publicly online and dare to have opinions about our own rights. Or the fact that this was coming from a man who declared himself a feminist as he was a father to two young daughters.

It’s no secret that somewhere along the way, people began to treat online harassment as though its something less serious and less concerning, but the idea that we should actually expect to be harassed if we exist online for our gender, sexuality, race, disability feels like it has only devolved into something worse every year. The lack of moderation on these platforms has made it even easier for bad actors to brigade people and as a whole, we have all become used to strangers shouting the most vile abuse and threats at us on the internet. No wonder we have so much anxiety and depression in our society today - the moral fibre of a culture is measured by our humanity towards each other. And one thing social media seems to have removed with a digital scalpel is the capacity of seeing the other person behind the screen as a real human being.

Back when I worked in care, there is a story I once heard from an elderly gentleman who had served in the second world war. He spoke about how much easier it was to shoot an enemy from a distance than it was to shoot them up close. “You see, when you saw their face and heard them talk, and recognised the humanity in them was the same as the humanity in you, it felt wrong and unjust to shoot this other human being. You wondered if they had a child waiting for them to come home. You thought about their grieving mother if you killed them. But from a distance? It was easier to dissuade yourself from all of that.“

As someone deeply anti war, I often think about this story when I think about the humanity that we have all been gifted with, to recognise the humanity first in another person, especially when you see them face to face. The removal of that face to face interaction makes it so much easier for people to be cruel to one another. We forget that there is a human being sitting on the other end of that screen. We set aside the idea for a minute that every single one of us contains multitudes and we shouldn’t treat anyone the way we would not want to be treated. Combine all that with algorithms that push outrage and hatred for the sake of engagement and you now have people like my ex acquaintance say that this is to be expected. That harassment is just a norm if you exist online as a woman. So where do we draw the line then?

I’ll tell you where we haven’t drawn the line. For years, women and girls have been speaking out about online harassment and deep fake revenge porn being made, how dangerous this is as it is being used to silence women, especially because of how often this disturbing revenge porn targets minors which has tragic real world consquences. But because we have got used to women being harassed on the internet those concerns have been swept under the rug as just “something that happens on the internet“. By protecting the right of misogynists to create this type of revenge pornography instead of valuing women and girls safety, we have finally reached the point of massive virality of violent pornographic deepfakes being made of famous women without their consent - and a certain demographic of internet users defending this as not illegal so they should be allowed to do it. It has taken getting to THIS point for the US government to even call for a few regulations around deepfakes, despite the startling statistic that 96% of deepfake technology is used to create revenge pornography of women without their consent. Can you see how the moral fibre of a society declines by allowing this kind of harassment to thrive?

As someone who has existed on the internet for a long time now, I have watched as people have ignored internet harassment as “real harassment“ and turned women’s safety into “if you can’t handle it, leave the internet” something which is near impossible in today’s day and age. But what I do promise you is this, the best way we can protect our humanity at this point is limiting our social media usage, pressure these platforms to take harassment much more seriously and treating social media the way we treat our real life and real people. Every single one of us has a right to dignity and to live a life where we aren’t perpetually anxious about our safety or strangers screaming at us simply for existing - to truly love this world is to see the cracks and learn how to mend them instead of just allowing them to get worse. And no, the price of being a woman anywhere, whether on the internet or in real life, should never ever be to expect the harassment and abuse of strangers.

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Hello everyone!

This post was written on Saturday, but I fell ill, so I’m sending it out today instead!

We are at week 3 of our Creative Challenge and the last week of January. These last two weeks have been a powerful revelation of creativity. In our community chats, we have been sharing poems and pieces of freewriting the prompts inspire in us, and since last week we covered grief, this week, we will be covering how to build joy.

A large part of why I began this newsletter was because joy building is hard work in a world where we are constantly inundated with bad news. One of the many things that social media and the internet has done to our brains is hypervigilance. Whereas once you got the news from television screens and a newspaper, we now have an hourly updating system that we carry around in our pockets via our phones. We are ALWAYS connected to whats going on and constantly anxious about the next awful thing thats going to happen. It doesn’t help that so many news outlets have turned to clickbait type titles that are designed to evoke a strong emotion - whether anger or grief.

No human brain was created to process this level of grief at all times, ask anyone who has ever been through any kind of war or radical movement and they’ll tell you what kept them going was joy, hope, things to look forward to, a way out, an escape - each of these things is an action. My friend, the brilliant poet Salena Godden says “Hope is a Group Project“, and I completely agree. Hope is indeed a group project, which is why we are going to build joy and hope together with this week’s prompts.

Once again, you do not have to be brilliant at any kind of artform to participate in these creative challenges! You just have to want to open your mind and exercise your creative muscles a bit. The prompts are just a way to guide you into a different kind of perspective, and help you reflect and recognise the beauty in your life, just as it is and just as you are.

I have such a special week of joy planned for us and we will have our subscriber chats going to talk about how and where we found joy and hope. I am so looking forward to seeing you there and talking about what you have made!

If you would like to join us on our monthly Creative Challenges, you can do that here.

Are you read for your newest joy building prompts? Let’s go:

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How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And doesn’t care about careers,
And exigencies never fears;
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on;
And independent as the sun,
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity.

- Emily Dickinson, Happy Little Stone

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At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

— Wendy Cope

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When I slip beneath the quilt and fold into
your warmth, I think we are like the pages
of a love letter written thirty years ago
that some aging god still reads each day
and then tucks back into its envelope.

-Ellen Bass, Getting Into Bed On A December Night

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Everything is on fire,
but everyone I love is doing beautiful things
and trying to make life worth living,
and I know I don’t have to believe in everything,
but I believe in that.

- Nikita Gill

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