Spring Special! Is love in the air? Is writing about yourself cringe? Is everyone lonely?

Read on for my thoughts amid gratuitous pictures of blossom

Spring has sprung, substackers, and I am thrilled. Give me all the blue skies, boisterous daffodils, frothy blossoms, candy-floss-pink magnolias, those cute little crocuses poking up out of the dark cracked earth. Give me sunshine and spring showers, yellow fluffy mimosas, asparagus and peas. This time of year makes me want to skip down the street and compose poetry. I see this season as nature's reward. Mother Earth is saying: here, sweetpea, you made it through winter, feel the sun on your skin and take a look at these flowers. 

I've been loving the lighter evenings and stepping out in a leather jacket instead of my lumpy red coat. Oh, the fresh beginnings vibe of it all - that spring feeling of: hey ho, there's life in the old girl yet! I really have been seized with optimism this week. I have no real cause for this sudden delirious cheer. I'm a fool for spring - see the whatsapp I sent to a friend - and I've been so convinced it's here and here to stay that I even filled one of those big Ikea bags with coats and winter clothes to put away in the loft (this is a highly risky move for someone who lives in the UK). 

I'm going to blame spring fever for this substack which I cannot get into one coherent piece so instead I'm going to jump through a few thoughts I've had this week... 

Is love in the air?

I feel it might be. I'm just putting it out there that I think people are meeting people now. 

I have become so used to moaning with friends about dating and dating apps and all the rest of it but, guys, I think something is in the air. I have four friends, single a while, who have all giddily reported that they have met someone. This ranges from one who told me she thinks she's falling in love, to another who is just enjoying getting to know someone, to the other two who are in that initial thrill of early dating with butterflies over text messages and first time sex and analysing feelings etc. 

It makes me so excited! Listen I'm a big believer in vibes and I feel, strongly, that there is a springy love vibe right now. Am I wrong? Oh, Lord, I hope I'm not wrong. Please let me know if you have felt this too. It kind of makes sense, as spring comes with all her blossom and hope, that people suddenly think: hmmm, it's time to mingle! Listen, if I'm wrong, please just let me live in the delusion. 

This does make me think of the spring of 2021 when I was absolutely obsessed with the idea that we were at the end of the pandemic (lol, little I knew) and therefore we were about to be launched into a summer of love so intoxicating it would rival that of 1967. I had also been messed around by someone I liked a lot so I kept pinning all my hopes on the upcoming summer. Anyway, some sort of romantic disappointment took place, I can't remember what exactly, and I felt disheartened - and probably sensed the pandemic wasn't actually ending - and in a famous phone call with my friend, I moaned, 'Oh Lee, it's not going to be the summer of love', to which she replied (and has never let me forget): 'Issy, it's only April!'.

Is writing about yourself cringe?

Urgh, I've been thinking about this a bit. I went freelance last April - yep, almost been a year - and really, I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, I had been a journalist for a while and I did know the basics of reporting and interviewing and writing publishable copy etc but I had never been freelance, I had never pitched before (when you are on staff, pitching is different, it's more just voicing vague ideas in meetings). 

The first story I pitched was about how antidepressants had wiped out my sex drive. It was something my friends and I spoke about all the time but I hadn't seen an in-depth piece written with sympathy in a newspaper about the issue and I... well, I don't know, I thought it was a good story that hadn't really been told before so I pitched it. In some sense, I don't think I actually thought it through. It ended up in The Times magazine and was on the front page of the paper and since then, I've written a lot more about myself. I've written about buying a flat, about trying to come to terms with not being a mum, about dating, about having bedbugs (random, I know)... lots of things.

Sometimes I feel a little embarrassed about this. I went to a social thing recently where people kept telling me they had been reading my articles which was very sweet and yet I felt embarrassed. All these articles about myself. And then other people asked me what I wrote about, and that was even worse - oh how I wished I could give them an area - ‘I write about crime, or the environment, or foreign policy', instead of, 'oh, I write about myself'. 

And then someone said to me something about how much of what I wrote was about myself - Lord, how I shrivelled up inside - and then said of another much better known female journalist, 'Oh, she writes about everything.' And there seemed to be shame in that but then I thought, I love this female journalist. I love her writing and I still remember the absolute joy of reading one of her books - how funny it was and how refreshing to read about the experience of being a young woman knocking around London making so many fucking mistakes but trying so hard and how I felt less alone when I read it. I know it's not for everyone and definitely not everyone is called to do it, but there is real bravery in writing about yourself sometimes. 

Anyway, I'm still grappling with it, I suppose. For me, I think, this is about accepting who I am. I am not a war reporter, I am not a health correspondent, I am not a political journalist. I think the fact that features in newspapers need a 'newsy hook' is actually a real pity. Maybe I just am someone who writes about themselves a lot. And yes, maybe that is a bit cringe. But maybe life is a bit cringe?

Is everyone lonely?

I feel lonely often. I work alone almost every day and most of my close friends live in New York. I miss them deeply. I miss being with someone who just knows you inside out and back to front and loves you and understands you and you feel free to just be yourself with. I have no shortage of people to go out for dinner and brunch and all the rest of it with but it takes time to build up deep bonds and, the truth is, I think there's only a few people in one's life with potential for those deep bonds. I don't think you can just manufacture them. 

I went to a christening last week and for some reason I felt the loneliness heavy upon me. It is horrid when it feels almost like a second skin. And even though I was there with family and old friends, as I sat in the church I felt it on me. That really is the worst kind of loneliness - when you feel it in a sea of people. But then the vicar directed us, along with the choir made up of kids, to sing this hymn.

We must walk this lonesome valley

We have to walk it by ourselves.

Oh, nobody else can walk it for us;

We have to walk it by ourselves.

It really was a magical moment because as I listened to the words, all I could think was: this has got to be a universal experience, if it wasn't, these lyrics would make no sense. And suddenly I realised - without a doubt - that everyone sitting in that congregation had at one time or other - and probably often - felt lonely, no matter what their life circumstances. And, strangely, that made me feel a lot better. Nothing like the misery of others for improving one's mood! 

Blossom in Berlin

Recommendations 

Going to keep this short and sweet... I wrote about (what else? myself!) quitting vaping this week but my absolute number one recommendation and the thing I'm going to end this newsletter on is Philip Larkin's poem, The Trees. I think of that last line every single year when the blossoms are out.

Let’s all begin afresh. Thank you for reading as ever and I'll see you next time x