I hit the wall (and still didn't stop)
Movers and (nervous) shakers! Graham here.
So here’s the thing. I’ve hit the wall.
I can’t even say when exactly. Maybe a few months back, when the pandemic hit? But to be honest, I think my crash was already in full effect before all that.
I hit the wall... but I still didn’t stop.
I just crashed on through, and I’m now trailing bits of wall behind me. My crash has become less an event than a way of life.
Sound familiar?
I’ve realised: it’s time to stop.
I’ve been mulling this for some time. I’ve been experimenting with little ways to take the stress-levels down in my everyday work, for instance. Or spending less time on the internet.
And it’s been helpful. But it hasn’t been enough.
Well, it hasn’t been enough to change the overall feeling of being tight, overwhelmed, exhausted.
But these little experiments have at least given me a glimpse of how things could be different.
If I’m crashing through the wall... what’s on the other side?
What if there’s something good on the other side of that wall?
Like, say, a different way of living? A life that feels calmer and more liveable, day to day, where every moment of decision or doubt isn’t a total personal emergency?
Go on. I’m listening...
I am starting to see glimpses of the life I could have, if I wasn’t such a stress cadet. But it’s still just a blur. And it will remain a blur, until I manage to stop fucking moving.
The very first thing I need to do - priority number absolute one - is to slow down. Halt all that momentum, and eventually, stop.
Only then will I have a moment to dust myself off. To tend to any soft spots still ringing from the wall collision (owww), and ask myself, ‘what needs to change?’
So. How do you do that then?
Well, here’s what *I’m* doing. . .
I’m taking a break
What?? But you don’t even have a real job? You write about feelings on the internet!
For the past few years I have been ‘very self-employed’. It suits me, but it does make it hard to take time off.
You never know where the next paycheck is coming from, so you feel like you always have to say ‘yes’ to potential work. Throw in a global recession on top of an increasingly casualised workforce, and I suspect it ain’t just us self-employed types feeling this way these days.
The inevitable lean periods don’t feel like a ‘break’, since you spend them hustling for more work (or feeling guilty for not having any).
The pull of something I love
Then there’s the other side of this coin, for me.
I feel incredibly grateful to have something I love doing, pulling me onward. This little community of sensitive souls, the Big Feels Club - whether you chuck a few bucks our way each month to help keep the lights on, or you simply value what we do.
So in the time I’ve been running this thing, I’ve felt a strong pull to make more and more content.
It’s been the most creatively fulfilling period of my life. But I don’t think I’ve had a single break this whole time.
Three years of feelings
I realised today, it’s been almost exactly three years since the Big Feels Club became a ‘thing’ online.
Phwoar.
At the end of August 2017, I posted this article on a kiwi website called The Spinoff.
We were mostly focused on Australia, but I’d only been living here a little while and didn’t have any media contacts over here yet. So I just emailed the most senior media person I (kind of) knew from my musician days back home in NZ. He said ‘sure we’ll run that.’
A few days after it went up, we had our first 1000 sign ups to the Big Feels Club. And we were off and running.
In the three years since, thousands more of you have found this little corner of the internet. Through the podcasts we’ve made with the ABC. Through googling the very specific things you google when you’re doing that real deep dive kind of research into whether you’re a viable human.
However you found us, I'm so glad you're here
I have many, many more ideas for things I want to make. Experiments I want us to try together.
My Big Feels co-pilot Honor Eastly has been a little absent from the fold recently. She’s busy tending to the small matter of overhauling our home state’s mental health system. (Honor’s now working at Victoria’s Royal Commission into Mental Health, as one of the few people in there representing those of us who’ve actually gone through this shit ourselves.)
But she’s also got some cool stuff in the works that we’ll be sharing with you down the track. Including a deeeeep cut old project she’s resurrecting, for those of you who know her from way back in the Being Honest With My Ex days.
(Clue: it involves lots of crying. Surprisingly productive crying.)
So we ain’t going anywhere.
Regular Big Feels programming will continue. You might not even notice I’m gone (unless this break turns into my long-held Plan B. Run away and become a monk. Let’s find out...?).
But it’s time I take a break.
A glorious, utterly unproductive break.
In fact... I’m on that break right now.
What?? TWIST.
Well, I will be by the time you read this...
Today is the last day of my mad dash to tie up various loose ends before dropping everything.
I’ve scheduled the next few newsletters. I’ve canceled three different things this week, leaving them for future Graham to deal with (or to just not happen).
Given the state of the pandemic, I can’t actually go anywhere on this break, but I’m okay with that. I’ve been moving pretty damn fast, non-stop, for about three years now. Maybe it’s time to sit still for a bit.
Yeah but how do you do that though??
To be honest? I’m not sure yet. But I’ve decided it’s time to find out.
See you on the other side :)
Just putting it out there
Hey, here’s one thing I’m keen to do once I’m back on deck.
I now have 85 issues of the Big Feels Club newsletter, out there in the world. 85 essays about the nature of life + feelings, which I’ve been told time and again are uniquely nourishing for those of us who need to hear this stuff.
You can read every one of these issues here.
But right now, aside from that underwhelming archive page, the only place they exist is in your inbox.
I’ve been meaning to put a few more up on the website for ages, but haven’t yet for boring reasons (our current web template isn’t optimised for blog posts, for one).
Can you help?
I’m putting this out there, on the off chance someone reads this who is:
a) looking for a small bit of paid work at some point in the next few months (that could be made to fit around your schedule)
b) comfortable mocking up websites through Squarespace (especially the bit where you make the posts look nice and fit our current look, which is usually the bit I palm off to Honor when she isn’t so busy)
If that’s you, hit reply to this email and let me know? I won’t read your email right away (of course) but I’d love to touch base once I’m back, tell you my vision for a revamped Big Feels website, and see if there are ways you’d be keen to help...
