A change is gonna come

Emotional Explorers! Graham here.

Where to begin. How about…

I’ve been loving you...

Too long...

To stop now.

Those are the opening lines of my favourite Otis Redding song.

I love how with each new line, the meaning of the song changes completely.

“I’ve been loving you…” (oh it’s a love song!) “…too long” (oh it’s a break-up song?) “…to stop now” (ok what the hell is this song??)

How, you ask, is this relevant to anything at all?

It’s how I’ve been feeling about a lot of things lately. A lot of my day-to-day commitments and projects. About life itself, some days.

(I’ve been loving youuuu, too long, to stop now…) 

As you may have gleaned from the last few newsletters, I’m in a space lately that previously I might have called peak burnout. Depression. Doom Town-adjacent.

But the thing is, this time around I’m not actually seeing it that way, most days. 

The best I can describe it is, it kind of feels like something is dying. I just don’t know what yet. And also, maybe, like something is being born.

All of which, dear reader, has implications for the immediate future of this newsletter, as I shall explain. Read on...

The meaning of despair

Every time I've gone to this place - this place of being disenchanted with life, of feeling cut off somehow in ways that don't entirely make sense - it's always felt important. Whether it was losing my shit completely at 23, or being convinced I'd totally ruined my life (again) ten years later. Those periods have shaped my life in major, major ways.

When I introduce myself in a professional context in mental health, I often describe myself as having experienced several periods of "profound despair". Emphasis on the "profound" part.

But you know what? I don't feel like I've ever really had the time, space, and encouragement to fully dig into just what's so important about these experiences.

I've certainly been curious. (I guess you don't write 88 issues of a newsletter about feelings without being curious about the subject?)

But like most of us, when the crisis point hits, I've usually been more focused on what's going to get me out of it. What's going to make those big, overwhelming feelings recede enough to let me get on with regular programming. 

I haven't had the space (or guidance) to really let those big feelings in. To let the experience reshape me. To let it make of me (and my life) what it will.

Maybe it's the lockdown. Maybe it's the fact that my last personal 'crisis' started about four years ago and never really stopped. But whatever it is, I'm ready for a different approach this time.

The quiet life

So for the past few weeks, just as Melbourne comes back to life, my own daily routine has gotten quieter and quieter.

I’ve been meditating daily (something I haven’t done for ages), wandering into this very spacious, open part of my mind. I’ve been walking Bodie by the creek. I’ve been reading a lot. Esoteric stuff, like Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book that chimes my ‘what does it all mean??’ chords in a delightful way.

I've been having long, thoughtful chats with two or three friends who just happen to be going through their own Very Tender Times just now. They're not 'are you okay?' conversations, they're something far more interesting than that. The kinds of conversations where it's not so much the words that matter as the silences between them. The things you are willing to not know together.

In short, I'm going inward. Very slowly, very deliberately embracing the most tender parts of this experience, as best I can.

And then, when I've absolutely had to, I've been putting on my work drag, and getting work done.

But amongst all this, there's one thing I haven't been doing...

I haven't been writing.

At least, not for an audience.

My journal is bursting with quiet reflections and little threads I've been gently pulling. But every time I try to dress them up for public consumption, they look... wrong? Somehow both overdressed and underdone all at once?

It's the same with the other day-to-day business of running Big Feels. I have several half-finished email replies sitting in the Big Feels inbox. But I can't finish any of them.

I try to push through all this the way I'm used to doing, and it just... hurts.

There's a line in my other favourite Otis Redding song. At the climax of the song he's singing, imploringly, “It's been a long, long time coming, but I know, I know a change is gonna come… yes it is.”

He’s almost pleading - with himself I think. A change has to come, even if he doesn’t know what or how yet. Even if he still can’t decide if he’s singing a love song, a break-up song, or something else entirely.

I think that might be where I'm at.

The view from my last creek walk. That face tho...

So here's where I've got to...

That two-week break I thought I needed, a little while back? It was nowhere near enough.

I’m going through something. And I don’t really even understand what it is yet. But I want to understand. And when I say I'm going 'through' something - I mean that. It feels like a process, like it's taking me somewhere.

I know what it’s not. It’s not as simple or as prosaic as ‘depression’ (whatever that word even means, I’ve never really known despite being told it’s what I am, multiple times). I mean, I think it could be depression, if I wasn’t willing to try to make space for it.

So I have realised something. After a few big chats with those friends of mine, the ones who are also living near that same edge right now (something about this year ya think?). After much journaling and reflecting. I've realised that I need to make space for this experience to unfold, whatever it is.

All of which means... you're going to be hearing from me a bit less, for now at least

Specifically, I'm going to stop putting out this newsletter on a strict, fortnightly schedule.

I’ve been doing it every two weeks, rain, hail or shine for over three years and 88 issues (woof). And while I could definitely push myself to keep to that schedule, at this point I’d be phoning it in. If this little community has taught me anything over these three years it’s that you seem to find the most value in me at my most authentic, my most vulnerable.

For now at least, I want to throw the schedule out completely. I want to write things when and if I feel like writing them, and put them out when and if I feel like putting them out.

Some months you might hear from me a few times, like normal. Some months you might not hear from me at all.

And here’s the bigger picture. For me, this is part of a bigger change that’s gotta come. I think the path I’m on right now is to finally make space for this big experience that has been knocking at my door year after year for over half my life. To see what happens when I willingly let it in.

The death of who I think I'm supposed to be?

Those are Joseph Campbell’s grand terms I used above. That 'something is dying, and something is being born'.

I think I do actually know what’s dying, if I’m completely honest. It’s the version of me that does things purely for the approval of others. It’s the person I think I need to be, in order to be liked. In order to be safe.

That version of me would keep on putting out the newsletter every two weeks, even though writing to a schedule lately feels like squeezing a very dry lemon. I’d keep on putting out podcasts even though my vocal injury from a couple years back has been flaring up and lately makes every word painful to speak. I’d push, and I’d keep pushing, based on some notion that that’s what you want from me. That that’s what I have to do to deserve the support of this special little community.

But I’m not going to do that. If I'd only ever listened to that version of me, I'd have never started Big Feels in the first place. I'd have kept on plugging away on the relatively stable career path I was on working in mental health, making tiny incremental changes to a broken system and thinking that was all I could ever do for people.

I think what you actually want from me isn’t for me to push myself to pump out a specific volume of content at all times. I think what you actually want from me is honesty.

I think honesty is the thing you’ve always come here for. It's the thing I came here to offer in the first place. And it's the thing that, if you stick around, you’ll continue to get, one way or another.

This process (whatever it is) has already begun...

I originally wrote this post a few weeks back, for our Big Feels Club contributing members (the people who throw a few bucks our way each month to help us pay our mailchimp fees and the like and generally keep this boat afloat. Bless them each and every one.)

I was so fucking nervous when I posted it.

Hey that thing you pay me to do? Yeah I’m not going to do it quite so much for the next little while, but… stick around?

Surprisingly, the response was overwhelmingly supportive.

Or maybe that's not so surprising, when I think about it? The Big Feels Community has long been a source of support for me in ways I'm only just now even really able to fully put into words.

If I've finally reached a point in my life where I can really 'dig into' this big, overwhelming stuff, rather than just 'get through it', it's partly because of the support of this very community. Your encouraging words. Your material support. And in so many small ways the affirmation that this path I'm on - that we're all on, one way or another, whichever bit of the path we happen to be at - it's a path worth exploring. It's a path that matters. It's a valid way to live on this earth, big feelings and all.

Even in the weeks since I wrote this post, there are so many things I've been finding out - things I very much want to share with you. I just don't know when yet, or on what kind of schedule.

So, stay tuned? x

Meanwhile, take a look at this back catalogue! PHWOAR

In case you need a bit more Big Feels in your life than you see here in coming weeks, I've now put up all our past issues for your reading pleasure.

Check those out here. (It may take a second to load the list in some browsers. It's three years' worth of feelings, people.)

And if you've not yet checked out the Big Feels Club podcast, I recommend it. (I mean I would say that wouldn't I. But I've had a few long-time club members get in touch lately saying 'why haven't I been listening to this already???' So, take it from them?)