Hey,

A couple of weeks ago, when the first frosts really started to hit, I was pitched up in bed with a cup of tea. Pretty sure it was the last Sunday of the Christmas break.

Our house is one link in a terrace of 50-odd Victorian houses. The view across the road is more of the same. It’s cute enough. It’s home.

Our bedroom window faces west and the sun rises over our house, lighting up the roofs opposite.

Hey,

It’s been a little while. Again.

The second half of this year has seen me write just two editions of Slow News Day. That’s way past slow. It’s more like glacial. An agonising drip-drip-drip of snowmelt.

Maybe agonising is overdoing it. Either way, t’is the season of generosity and goodwill – so let me deliver a newsletter. Such thoughtful gifting.

Hey,

Well hello there. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

I’m grateful for the few of you who’ve checked in and asked about the future of the newsletter. It’s still here, I’m still here. I’ve been hard at work at what feels like not a lot, but is probably even more than I can say.

The abridged version is that I’m just getting back into the rhythm of a more settled life. I’m only just starting to lose the twitching sense that we’re about to have to pack up our stuff and move somewhere new. This little house is ours. (It’s the bank’s, really.) Its wonky walls and wobbly floorboards keep us – still. Still.

Hey,

“Dan really did live his life like Fatback [his dog]. He got up when we wanted, lay down when he wanted, spoke when he wanted, stayed silent when he wanted. Unlike white people, he never explained his actions, or announced when he was going to do something, no matter how abrupt it might seem.”

So writes Kent Nerburn in Neither Wolf nor Dog.

Nerburn and I both agree – modern-day mythologising about Native American mysticism isn’t pretty or useful. His writing captures the ordinariness and difference in American and Native American cultures.

Hey,

Friend, we’re in.

Moving has meant a lot to me. Nine days in, I’m trying to keep track of all the things it’s meant in all the ways.

It’s meant four separate bunches of flowers brightening our kitchen windowsill.

Hey,

The last six months have pretty much been about two things:

Rebalancing after an anxiety resurgence + buying a house.

The former is an ongoing process, but the latter is officially done next week.

Hey,

Want to know a burgeoning interest of mine that I’m a bit embarrassed about? It’s speedrunning. No, I’m not becoming a 100m sprinter, this is something entirely different.

This is the dominion of elite nerds who complete video games as fast as possible.

When people start ‘running’ a game, it’s basically about skill, learning patterns and the scripting of events, and optimising the routes taken. Then, it gets messier. Pushing games to glitch in beneficial ways. Beyond that, it gets into insane stuff like interpreting the game’s code and chaining unconnected events together to skip entire sections of the game. People can complete GTA Vice City in eight minutes, ffs.

Hey,

I’m still here. Slow News Day is still here. It’s all still here.

I’m still waiting for our house move to go through.

I’m still caught between stages of life and still bemoaning the fact I said, in January, that I didn’t want this period to feel like purgatory.

Hey,

I’ve always said that my schedule works well for me. I work five days a week, but very rarely a 09:00-17:00.

10, 11, or 12:00-16:00 is more like it. So, I do ‘part-time’ hours across a five-day week.

(Side-note: not sure why, in all my self-employed freedom, I still maintain that work should be dictated by a 40-hour standard. Weird.)

Hey,

I’ve not been very slow recently. I’ve been work-heavy and life-stagnant. I’ve been waiting and waiting for progress on the house we’re buying. We’re getting there, but it’s not as fast as I want.

Try as I might—and forewarn myself as I did—I’ve felt a bit like my life’s in limbo.

Everything’s good, really. But I’m caught between places and selves.

Hey,

The Hero’s Journey sees a protagonist take up the call of adventure, departing from their daily life to face challenges and glories alike. Their final act is the homecoming—a return to the place they left all that time ago—that cements their progress, their change and transformation.

I make no claim to heroism, but what are we if not the protagonists of our own stories?

Two years ago, or thereabouts, we set out on our adventure. Leaving the daily life we’d built in our little rental in Exeter (as our landlord decided to sell up) and opting to live nomadically for the next however-long-we-fancied.

Hey,

A few weeks ago, I wrote to you about returning to my geeky hobbies. More hours have gone into Football Manager and I’m about to buy my first box of Age of Sigmar miniatures to paint. An expensive hobby to take up as I prepare to buy a house… poor timing, Joe.

That was possibly my most popular newsletter ever in terms of the replies it generated. (I don’t know for sure because, as the footer of each email explains, I don’t track a single interaction you have with this newsletter. Worth shouting the privacy-first approach out again, for any newbies here.)

The results are conclusive, though.

Hey,

It was probably mid-2022 when we first played Wingspan. Mat and Rosie introduced us to it and we were baffled in our first game. Then we played again. And again. And we went home and talked relentlessly about it and eagerly awaited our next opportunity to play.

We couldn’t do a lot about our newfound hobby. When you’re living out of a car (or, sometimes, a suitcase), board games just don’t really work with the lifestyle.

But, when you love something enough, you find a way to make it work.

Hey,

When green coffee beans are roasted, a critical part of the process is ‘the first crack’.

Akin to popcorn popping, this noise is an indication to the roaster that the process is nearing completion—a little longer and they’ll have a beautiful golden brown light-to-medium coffee.

The roasting process takes green beans and exposes their base elements (proteins, sugars, caffeine and acids), to heat and motion, transforming them into something delightful.

Hey,

Time for a proper Slow News Day classic. A reflection about slowing down and how it isn't easy, despite all my efforts otherwise.

I’ve written more than enough times to you about my struggles in the last few months. Resurgent anxiety disorder, ill health, you know the score.

Without wanting to jinx it, I’m somewhere closer to balanced right now. Well, I’m not getting worse. I’ve levelled out and, overall, started to feel a bit more normal. But I’m still pretty stacked with struggles, day-to-day.

Hey,

I wrote last week that, among other things, I’m rediscovering some old hobbies and interests. They are—by and large—pretty geeky, uncool things that occupied my early teenage years before my interest girlfriends, house parties, and underage drinking took over.

So, frankly, I’ve been playing Football Manager 2024 and loving it. I used to be so involved (2007 was my peak) that, as a 13 year old, I spent my evenings moderating the second-largest forum for the game with a bunch of adults from across Europe. I used to design some genuinely decent signatures for users, free of charge, and often regret that I didn’t keep up that interest in graphic design.

Geeky, as promised.

Hey,

I used to hate it. The same old, the all-too-familiar drag of routine. It used to feel so default, so mundane in its existence and persistence.

Now it feels like a struggle to ever find it.

Consistency used to feel like a constriction. I’d wriggle away from it and get into something else for a time, start wriggling again, and repeat.

Hey,

Sometimes, when I stop and really look in the mirror, I see the lines.

Big brackets where I smile, tiny rivulets by my eyes, a deep fault line between my eyebrows — I seem to wear a frown by default, but never really notice. There are two clear stripes across my forehead, the imprint of surprises past.

I track my hairline obsessively. Is my widow's peak tracking further back? Are the hairs that stand alone in a tiny island of skin leftover like tidemarks or have they just grown a few millimetres off course by chance?

Hey,

Cape Cornwall, June 2022

I see you, kestrel. Slick, slight. A comma in the raging sky, hovering at the pinch of the cove. Cliff at your back, ocean ahead.

What do you see out there? What could ever cause you — all wonder and magic and flight — to stop and stare for this long? I imagine you’re having fun. The pressure of the wind, the delicate twitch of your tail or wings to rebalance when a fresh gust challenges. I see you looking, looking.

Hey,

“I think today’s a good day to do it,” I mumbled. “At least if I don’t feel good, most of it’ll be over the weekend.”

I brushed off the fact that’s a pretty messed up thing to say and kept looking at the little white pill in my hand.

I opened my mouth to talk, stopped, paused again.