I'm back. Am I?

Getting hold of a thread.

Hi.

Welcome back to this space (she wrote, talking more to herself than to you).

It feels good to be writing again. Seriously, I missed it. Missed the substack-space. I just had a peek at when I last published an essay on here and it’s been June. Even though it’s been just two months, it feels like ages. How does it come that even after such a short time, my writing muscles ache a bit, are unsure about what to write, feel like they haven’t been used in a much longer while?

I still remember that my last post was more forced into being than was written authentically. Forced into a writing and publishing routine which I had tried to build over months and that had crumbled for a while, until it fell apart completely, under the pressure I had put on myself; fell apart because I did a move, a quick business decision that made me walk away from my values and needs, as I’ve found out later. Things weren’t going as planned, as I had imagined many seasons ago and so I started to act from a state of urgency, from a feeling of “I need to hurry up”. All the while private changes, the tolls of several years spend in flickering on/off anxiety mode and grief surfaced in the background.

Then, this quick business decision (namely going freelance) made me scratch the edge of burnout, I suppose. It was an inauthentic decision, it was adding more to my to-do list, it made me move further away from my biggest goal – being a writer and artist, full stop – and I can’t stand being inauthentic with myself anymore. I thought I had learned that lesson two years ago, but it seems like I didn’t. I need to work from the heart, having a heart-led business, making honest decisions that align with my values, with my true self.

Otherwise, I end up with blank page anxiety in all realms: Art and text. And without painting and writing, all that I’ve got or need to work through, stays inside. Anxiety, pain, grief are present right now, but also the beauty I see, the value I see, the joy and wonder. It feels like bursting from the inside, without being able to spread the fragments properly. Instead, they stay within, as fragments, surfacing in my head again and again. It’s an exhausting cycle.

Summer passed and came back again, humid and hot, until I realised what was wrong. To not know why I lacked the energy for work, for writing, for art, for cooking, for showering (on some days), for reading or replying to texts. It felt like the label of a piece of clothes, pinching annoyingly in your side, but you can’t remove it, can’t find it even. You think it has to be there, but it isn’t and so you’re searching the item, over and over. It was only after

Charlene Storey

gave me the word – edge of burnout – and Emma Gannon’s A Year of Nothing gave me the permission I needed, that I realised what had happened and that it’s actually fine to lack the energy for “things” for a while. To acknowledge that the past years were exhausting, that working on your creative business without getting anything back right now is tiring, and that a year of change and of grief, may ask for slowed down weeks, is fine as well.

Since then, I allow myself to live more into the day, to be less productive, to be slow, to daydream, to declutter, to throw away, to not answer, to take the time I need, to not decide immediately, to watch goofy series, to not read, to read slowly, to put the freelancing on hold again and have it slowly disappear, to cut on projects that take too much right now and still pursue ones that seem too big for someone small, but still light me up.

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hills to heart, was born out of the wish to find a place where I could write without the need to please an algorithm, to find my voice as a writer again, a new writerly identity even, as “blogger” didn’t do it anymore. I faced a big writers block back then and wasn’t far away from quitting writing entirely, when this platform emerged. I had some first looks around, until I successfully had convinced myself after months to create my own page.

Writing became easier over time, but something was missing. It was joyful, but I never felt like I had arrived where I should. I never felt like I found a new home for my writerly self. It still felt like searching. I’ve never been someone who looked up to a special person or was inspired by someone. I never had real role models, and I still don’t get it a hundred percent. I want to be myself, not someone else. However, two weeks ago, when I was on a short weekend trip, between drinking coffee, having way too much cake and walking through a moor for the first time, I had a thought that spark some new excitement, and it said: “I want to write as clear and honest as

Emma Gannon

, as poetic and calm as

Susie Mawhinney

and as nature-bound and reflective as

Ruth Allen

.” Afterwards, I thanked my brain for giving me this big goal, which will likely take more than a life-time to achieve. (It took me two full weeks to be ready to tag all three of them and not delete this whole part, because it feels very vulnerable).

Anyway, it sticks with me, I can’t get rid of it and it led to me writing again. Isn’t this a good sign? I feel like I’ve got hold of the end of thread and now I just need to start knitting (or crocheting because I can’t knit). Without a sample pattern of course, just following intuition and inspiration. But at least, I’ve got hold of a thread.

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About me: Hello, I’m Mareike, the writer of this newsletter hills to heart. I’m also the writer of my free Studio Journal newsletter, my Studio Blog and an artist, trying to capture the world around me with oils, watercolour or whatelse comes my way. Feel free to explore my art on my website and shop through my online shop.