the long hold #5

short notes on being right where you need to be

Happy Sunday pals,

Welcome back to the long hold, a tapas-style digest where we hit pause and pay attention to three things: edges, stillness, and time. (If you’ve ever taken a yin yoga class, you might be familiar with the concept.) You can read previous editions here.

Ready, steady, hold.

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finding an edge

It’s exhausting putting your work out into the world every week. Physically, all I’m doing is typing on a keyboard. But somehow, after all that typing, it’s the one-click Send that drains me the most. Way more than 0.001 Joules’ worth of energy.

I’ve noticed a pattern: a few weeks of momentum, where words come freely and I feel like I’m on it. Then the crash. Creative reserves emptied. It’s not burnout exactly, more like a quiet slide into creative nihilism. “What does it matter if I don’t show up this week?”

But it does matter. To me, mostly. I made a commitment to show up every Sunday at 7. I committed so hard I wrote it in the flippin’ header of this email! Supposedly, consistency builds both discipline (for me) and trust (for you). From March to April, I went a whole month without sending anything, which urged a friend to ask me, “When is the next Spag Mol landing in my inbox?”

Sometimes I forget this thing even lands in people’s inboxes. (Except I don’t forget. I think about it constantly. What a lie. Delete that line.)

And so when I don’t have the energy, when I’m scraping the barrel, when I’m at the edge, I start to feel like a fraud. Like if I’m not writing from a place of golden, glowing inspiration, I’m not worthy of sending anything out into the world. But actually, the more fraudulent move would be to gatekeep myself from the process altogether. To decide on your behalf that what I have to say isn’t worth reading, or worse, isn’t worth writing down.

It’s your inbox. You can be the judge of that.

(If anyone has any wisdom about how to show up during fallow periods when your heart isn’t fully in it, for the sake of the rhythm, reps, or ritual — I’m all ears.)

seeking stillness

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: I love long train journeys. Window seat energy is Main Character Energy. Rain or shine, you’re in your own little film, and you can choose the role you want to play. Wistful romantic? Scorned lover? Determined Avenger? Quiet observer of the Midlands?

This weekend, I spent 8 of 48 hours on a round trip from London to Edinburgh. By the numbers, that’s maybe not the most “efficient” use of time. But honestly, those solitary, still, speeding hours in transit felt just as precious as the 24 ish I spent wandering the gothic, windswept capital.

The way we experience a moment often depends on the time that comes before or after it. We’re always in sequence. If there’s somewhere we have to be soon, it’s harder to be where we are now.

Being in transit from A to B gives you permission to just sit in it. Still, but still moving. Nowhere more important to be.

front of the line for Lannan Bakery, Edinburgh

taking time

Edinburgh. Saturday. Woke up at 6:59. Not by my alarm, by my weekend body clock, which offered me just 29 bonus minutes of sleep. Slid off the sofa I’d been surfing on for a night at my friend’s place. Shower.

7:45am. Walked out into a city still half-asleep. Sun already doing its thing. Roads wide and empty. Chitchat light and meandering.

8:17am. First in line for pastries. Early, but not impatient. Forty-five minutes of waiting that felt like water passing over stones. Just time, being time.

There was absolutely nowhere else in the world we needed to be more.