Look for hope in the small things

It’s been such a long time since I wrote. For you.

I have time on my hands now, something I’ve always wished for more of so that I could write. But I realise it wasn’t lack of time that was stopping me at all.

What is it, then? Fear of discomfort, the blank page. What if what I write is not good? What if it upsets someone? What if it’s too good? What if I can’t ignore any longer the little voice in my head that says ‘you were born to write a book’?

Why does it say that to me, that little voice, from time to time? What do I have to say that’s more important than what anyone else has already said? How can I write as beautifully as those writers I admire?

Is it any of these? Is it all of them?

If you ask me to write something for you, I will. I will help you write a CV, a covering letter, a complaint. I will edit documents; keeping words that count and cutting ones that don’t. I will write you poems that rhyme and ones that won’t. I will draft your birth announcements, your its-not-you-its-mes, your vows, your eulogies.

In my career, for other people I have written headlines, captions, columns, horoscopes, public health campaigns, travel guides, tender documents, blogs, leaflets, press releases, programmes, brochures, adverts, social media campaigns, website copy, case studies, strategies, FAQS, how-to guides, policies, newsletters, emails for incompetent bosses.

But I will do almost anything to avoid writing for me. The intimidating blank document and the blinking cursor on my own computer, the fresh page of a journal and a new pen, oh how they taunt me.

Even this blog began with the idea of writing for other people. How we all make life more complicated than it really needs to be. What should be obvious, that we ignore, and causes us grief? Do not touch the lobsters. I will write that for you.

Every uncertain day just now I walk my dog on the beach. She runs and digs and sniffs and splashes, and I look for broken bits of pottery and glass, nuggets of treasure among the broken shells.

And on the way back we wind through the nature reserve. She looks for squirrels and listens for rustling. I look for signs of spring and listen for goldfinches and magpies.

On a sunny morning, I spotted a shard of sea glass with a pretty flower design. I stooped to pick it up and slid it straight in my pocket to carry on throwing the ball for my dog.

After we left the beach, she dropped her ball in the undergrowth on the nature reserve and, as I crouched down to fetch it, I noticed the sweetest patch of forget-me-nots in the shade of the trees.

These are my favourite flowers. Tiny and perfect. A reminder that there is real reward in looking carefully for joy in the places you might miss.

Days like those are quickly followed by heavy leaden ones right now, where I can rouse myself to nothing. Not crochet or cleaning, and certainly not writing. I feel repelled from the keyboard as if we were magnets set against one another, wishing that something would snap us back together the way we belonged, but not knowing how.

On a day like that I slipped on my coat to go out with the dog with my head full of storm clouds that just wouldn’t pass.

In the pocket I felt the ridged sea glass in my fingers, and pulled it out to look at the flower once again.

Turning it over in my hand, I noticed there was writing on the other side. Someone had painted these words in tiny script:

‘Look for hope in the small things’

It’s been such a long time since I wrote.

For me.