Doing the Quiet Work

(I'm weary)

Well Substack, it’s been a while.

I set up this account to try to build my writing at a time when my life and career felt it was falling apart around me, and then when everything did collapse dramatically (ie my Dad died), it took me a long while to find my way back to writing, and to you. But here I am, in a weird state of purgatory, and I find myself post-therapy session, pottering back here again as my brain tries to make sense of where I have found myself now.

My life is in a holding space on a number of fronts. I’m waiting to move to Scotland to start a job which combines clinical work as a fully-fledged GP (yay, finally), with working to create health services for a hugely neglected and under-served community, which I feel so passionate and excited to start, and which I’ll gladly chat about when I can.

But I’m weary, and I’m trying to find my place as an activist in a scene which now often feels divisively absolutist. As I spend more time on this chaotic ball of dust we call home, I realise more and more the need for dialogue and discussion with people who don’t agree with me, and I find myself living more in the shades of grey, and that’s a hard place to be.

A decade ago I was publicly womaning every barricade I could find, I was talking to any camera or journalist that approached me on every topic under the sun, and I was known for doing that. But life got hard, work got harder, and I became less visible, as I slowly moved more behind the scenes - still doing work I cared passionately about, but in far less outwardly ‘sexy’ ways. I find myself reading more, learning more, and spending much more time in meetings, doing work which will, on the whole, not be exciting Instagrammable snippets, but the drudgery of the practical stuff, and yet I find myself wondering where I fit in the world of activism now I’ve vacated my (wheelchair accessible) barricade. I look around and realise I’ve gone from being the dynamic and precociously young firebrand to the seemingly boring adult looking on from the edges, trying to work out how we bring people together in a world which feels more divided than ever. I see myself occupying a space that I always considered with a dusting of derision, because I was out there, changing the world, being seen and known and visibly difficult.

I appreciate that writing this all on a public platform, which I share with followers seems very at odds with my whole ‘beavering away in the background’ approach now, but I guess that deep down I do worry about people’s perceptions of me. Now I’m not charging forth on every hot topic, do people think I’ve got old and stopped caring? That I’ve got the accolades and now retired to my allotment to leave the young people to it? I’m 37 FFS, barely ancient, but I feel it, deep in my bones. I’m weary, but I’m doing the work.

Over recent days, I’ve watched the inimitable Kat Brown (author of the fantastic “It’s not a bloody trend - Understanding life as an ADHD Adult”) ponder starting her own Substack (to which I am hugely looking forward), and she highlighted the challenge those of us have who don’t fit into one clear bracket here. I not only recognise this, but I feel that’s why I’ve avoided writing here for so long. I’m not sure where I fit, what I add, which niche I exist in. I’m just working away, through grief and life chaos, and hopefully, I’m still useful, if not so loud anymore.

Me and Dad

PS. If you’re curious as to where my head is at with the state of the world more generally, you can and should please check out my podcast over at TheWeekInPatriarchy’s Substack.