Hello folks,

Insert I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me gif here

It's been quite a while since I've written. Was the last one in May? Anyway. It's not because there's not been much to talk about. There has. Government catastrofucks, attempted lockdown romances, a surreal presidential election and - can ya believe it - even some theatre has dominated my WhatsApp groups and I definitely had thoughts about all of those. It's more that it didn't feel particularly necessary for me to talk about anything publicly. Which is, you know, fine I guess? I feel like sometimes one of the worst things you can ask of yourself as a person is to find a position or a view when you don't have one. Fence sitting is a luxury for plenty of people, of course, but hopping off when you don't know your own mind can leave you trapped in a place you later discover is not your own. Truthfully, I still don't have a whole lot to say but there's a specific concern that I wanted to lay out here - both for my own sanity and because, perhaps, you feel it too.

So what it is...is that I feel like I don't really know anything anymore?

Having conceived of myself as a fairly sharp and convivial person, these last few months have left me with a glacial mind, agonisingly slow and without much warmth to my thinking. This has made me unfamiliar to myself. I worry about the decisions I've made of late. I worry that what has felt like liberation in one moment sneaks back around as the creeping horror of having, in truth, given up. I worry about the amount of apology emails I've been writing to make up for my shoddy thinking.

I worry I no longer know how to be a good friend or a good partner. This year has been spent largely by myself, largely making the most of it, growing increasingly unsure both of what I'm making the most of and to what end. Am I meant to be writing this moment? Am I meant to be looking to move away? Am I meant to be retraining as a ballerina who moonlights as a cybercriminal hunter? This isn't depression I don't think - though of course it has reared its head now and then - it's something texturally different. Softer, sitting on every word and key tap, changing the course of thought ever so gently til you don't know where you are anymore. It's an aimlessness that's appeared in a moment when I expected to be bursting with action (eventually). God, even this bloody newsletter feels so fluffy, so unspecific, so unfocused. Sorry. It won't be too long.

I guess I do know, at least, what I'm scared of. See, I never feared our time in Covidland going from a brief trip to permanent residency. Learning to live with it has, thankfully, turned out to have been an alarming thought experiment that's been dissolved by the positive vaccine news. What I actually fear is things returning to normal but my brain still remaining where it is now. At this particular moment, through this very narrow vantage point I have on the world, being really, really honest...it would kinda haunt me to see others getting back to it while I feel my intention and direction crumbling away.

So that's my fear. My hope is that somewhere in that overwhelming not-knowing will come a curiosity and a clarity if I can just ride it out a little longer. And I'm grateful to have been otherwise so lucky. To have work through this time. To have family. To have health. To have a WhatsApp group that has kept the worst of my uncertainty off Twitter (thanks lads).

And, yes, to have the cats...
 

---

KITTY KORNER

How could I not? 

So Chill Cat has not been in a great way. Just hours a go it was confirmed to me that he has diabetes. Hopefully it will be able to go into remission but it's a lot of needles and special food until then. I had not expected this to be honest. I was almost certain that if there was a diabetes candidate among my cats, it would be Pretty who is a master of soliciting affection and food from strangers. Yet they are both now stuck with the ignominy of "Do Not Feed Collars" and a restricted diet.

I didn't even go to the vet in the first place because I suspect diabetes. Chill had a leg that seemed to be troubling him and I feared to wait til their next check up because a deterioration in hind legs was the first step in how Hero - their once brother - eventually ended up passing. I was too paranoid to let that happen again. It turns out there's an issue with Chill's patella (knee, basically) and he's too old for surgery so we are left with that dreaded phrase: managing the condition. 

Said condition plays out constantly for him, most prominently when he's leaping and, now, occasionally missing said leaps. He's finally using the steps I installed outside the window (did I mention this? yes I've become that guy who's installed steps for his cats to use) but there's a place where he cannot avoid the jump. You see, Chill has this perch up on a cupboard where I've laid down an old duvet for him to bury himself in. He absolutely loves it and would spring up there, via a cat tree in which Pretty would lie in wait and swat at him from inside this little enclosure like a bridge troll...but Chill would always be moving too fast and dodge the strikes. Not so much any more. He hops up the first couple of platforms fast enough but on the last leap, the big leap from the tree up to the cupboard he halts. He raise a front paw, gauges the distance, scopes out the landing...and only then does he go.

At first this broke my heart - watching this charming, care-free cat, slowly becoming more cautious. But maybe I was taking the wrong thought from it. Because look. He's not as a certain as he once was. He's not as effortlessly joyful as he used to be.

Yet still...

Still he measures.

Still he leaps.

Stay safe,

Vin x