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The Alphabet Years: A is where the adventure begins

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It’s 24 days into 2018 and I’m only now sharing my new year’s resolutions. I am, however, giving myself a pass because mine aren’t just for one year, they’re for 26. Since university, I haven’t planned my life more than a few months ahead. I thought I was a free spirit, but I now believe it was indicative of the opposite – one caged by fear. One that’s scared to plan and be disappointed; terrified to make goals, in case I miss the goalposts.
x While I had an incredible past year of achievements, I experienced something akin to daily stress fractures on my brain, which created fissures and cracks in my mind triggering mania and depression in rapid cycles. Now, I have chosen to unlock the cage: I’m committing myself fully to my creative endeavours all while travelling wherever this wild spirit finds itself drawn to, because that spirit was slowly dying. I was not in a good way.
Now, here I am with the vastness of life stretched out before me. These endless possibilities are exhilarating, …
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The Ballad of March Forth

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After a year’s unintended break, I am drawn back to The Year of Celebration. Today, on my late father’s birthday, I pored through emails, articles, photographs, essays, newspaper clippings and videos. I feasted on his life. The portion I spent with him and the portion before me. I don’t reserve that purely for his birthday of course, but on March 4th I always celebrate him, because often I just can’t. Sometimes, even now, the pain is too great and to remember him is to remember that he’s gone. And when I lost him, I did everything I could to lose myself.

I learned many things from my dad. He was my greatest teacher, both in life and in death. His life story rivalled the best of any Shakespearean drama, but if I could condense it into one soundbite, his birthday sums it up: March Forth. It’s not just a date in the calendar, it’s a direction – to do something, to go somewhere.
My grief and depression following his death was the launch pad for The Year of Celebration. I needed to find some…
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Kintsugi and the Beauty in Broken Things

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Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering  There is a crack, a crack in everything  That's how the light gets in.
- Leonard Cohen

Kintsugi ("golden joinery" or "golden repair") is the Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery with gold. It treats the breakage and repair of the item as part of its history, its journey, its existence. Rather than hiding the damage, it brightly illuminates the repair, inviting the world to see its improved beauty.
Just like pottery, we humans can crack, splinter, break, shatter. These knocks remain part of our being and, whilst a brave face might create a temporary disguise, nobody can hide forever. At least I couldn't. To heal, I found I had to expose. Kintsugi treats the crack as merely an event in the life of the object, not a reason to end it. Kintsugi knows that something is more beautiful for having been broken. As someone who considers themselves broken, that can be hard to believe, but at my depth…
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