I'd rather be Professor McGonnagall actually

I don't buy ornaments, I don't own ornaments, I don't even really like ornaments. Dust collectors, my mother called them, and I very much agree. I particularly do not like kitschy twinsy chirpy little cheaply made bird ornaments, no offence to birds.

I bought these anyway. I found them for $1 in a Hospice op-shop and somehow had to have them. I couldn't explain it then, and I can't explain it now, other than we are all something of a mystery, even to ourselves. I think that's a bit good? And a lot terrifying.

Before I went shopping I had been spending the morning making up business cards (for a business that is yet to exist...) and trawling through old Instagram photos looking for some artwork or photography to adorn them. It was unexpectedly, brutally, sad; I've never been high on confidence in my own work, but I could see clearly in my photographs through the last couple of years the point where that confidence went from low to not existing. They were as bland and pointless on the outside as I have been feeling on the inside. I felt such a loss of that old imperfect but ever optimistic Megan. She had a spark of something I no longer have; she believed that even if she wasn't good at things right now, she might one day be good at them in the future. It was enough to enliven a lot of her work and her ideals.

This is the bit where I write something rousing and uplifting to push the sads back down again, but I'm not going to. I'm not unhappy with my life in general, and lack of one individual's confidence is hardly an armageddon level problem. But it matters to me, and I think that without that spark, it is much harder to do useful work, to make helpful changes, individually and collectively. It is much harder to 'do' at all. Life becomes stew without seasoning; nutritious but lacking that essential sensual something that makes nutritious yum. Who wants to make, let alone eat, let alone offer to share with others, a stew without seasoning?

Well, but anyway. It's important to keep making the stew regardless; no-one cares about my bloody stew but me, and if confidence is the metaphorical salt in this scenario, then fake the confidence. Borrow someone else's, buy some weird kitschy bird ornaments and assign them magic confidence-giving powers. Pretend a fairy godmother has just granted you a life-time supply of the stuff.

Fake, real, it doesn't matter. Confidence is a belief, it is smoke and mirrors, not some measurable material reality; whatever the world might do or be to us, whether we have been labelled muggle, wizard, or squib, we can all be Harry Potter on the inside.

a story about fear and hope

It's been three months since my first post. I could prevaricate and tell you the website this blog links to isn't ready, so it's premature to post here until I have that completed.  I could tell you I've been unwell, and very busy. I could laugh it off as typical of procrastinating me; all talk and much less action. I could come up with any number of stories about why I haven't, why I didn't, how come I couldn't even. Maybe some of them would even be true. But none of them would be what I believe.

What I believe is that I have been afraid. Afraid that what I love to draw, to write about, is too childish, naive, enthusiastic for our tenuous times. Too superficial, too privileged, too fatuous. And these are good questions to have; I can't be sure I am contributing in a way that leaves more good in the world than what it takes without first questioning that contribution, without first questioning what it is I take. But I haven't been using the fear as a way to question, I have been using it as a shield against action. Cowardice is an ugly motivation. I'm not proud of it.

I'm not ashamed of it either. I live, I learn. At least some days I do. I believe this is a fragile and fractured world, populated by fragile and fractured people; much wrong is done and suffering endured. I also believe this is a magic and wondrous world, populated by magic and wondrous people; much good is done and joy created. I want to celebrate the good and the joy, and resist the wrong and the suffering. No biggie then. Sure, yep. Stick figure under a rose should totally do that.

Of course it won't. But it does make something in the depths of my belly (pancreas? ascending colon?) feel a little lighter, and if it does that for me then maybe it will do that for someone else, and another someone else, until slowly, and between us all, we create a space large enough to take a few step backwards so we can see our lives a little more broadly, with a little wider perspective. The sociologist Bourdieu called this a margin of freedom, a thin slice of opportunity in our otherwise busy and duty-bound lives where change can be imagined. And where change can be imagined, the possibility for action can be created.

It's a revolutionary idea if you think about it, and I think about it a lot. I believe it is a kind of hope, a pragmatic kind of a hope, one within all of our reach and power, the world over, time without end, amen.  And I believe that kind of a pragmatic hope, naive or otherwise, is a thing worth spending a lifetime drawing stick figures for.

I'm still afraid. I'm just not willing to also be a coward.

new year's day

There are days when you feel you should stop for a minute, sort out the pieces of your disparate life, and take the time to put yourself together.

And there are days when you remember...

...together just isn't a thing.

Happy New Year. Welcome to my blog.