Second Try.

(Dead birds)

So I wrote my very first Substack post this morning, then managed in my clumsy new user-ness to delete it by accident. I’ll write it again tonight I said to myself, but can I remember any of this mornings literary gemstones? Metaphorically speaking this morning may as well be a puff of cloud on a windy day. What an atrocious metaphor. The first post on a 10 minute long Instagram scroll? Getting warmer. What I wore 2 weeks ago on a Tuesday? Fair.

Metaphors mercifully over and my morning memories well and truly vacant, I have to begin anew, and now this post will be a tired evening meander as opposed to a caffeine fuelled charge.

I remember one thing only from this morning’s finger tappings - that I wrote ‘ I am starting to use substance’ instead of ‘I am starting to use substack’ which I thought quite appropriate when reading back. I mean what a movie! I relate to it a lot, as I will be 50 in 3 weeks, and the tides of time are rolling along mercilessly and when I peer at my face in the mirror in the evenings as I scrub my teeth I feel a mixture of fascination and apathetic resignation. The lighting in my bathroom is pretty harsh but still, it is what it is. I don’t like it and so I go through phases of frenzied facial massage and gurning jaw/face lifting exercises in the car, and blobbing some new cream onto my cheeks, or necking another supplement or other similar endeavours. Then I get tired of it and go back to not bothering too much.

Moving on. I’m getting side tracked. This post is not a rant about ageing or even about the government’s monumental HRT ‘free’ scheme fuck up. (Another day’s rant) I had my flu vaccination today and also my latest covid jab, and now the tiredness is after hitting me like a wet sock in the jaw. Its time for bed. I have high (high-ish, as its too late in the evening to feel passionately about anything) hopes for this substance/substack place, I intend for it to take over my blogging habit. I am hopelessly out of fashion still blogging, I know this, but when you painstakingly constructed a new website 2 years ago, back in the day when blogging was still a thing, you go with it and you don’t mess with what’s working. But I still haven’t figured out how to get people to read the aforementioned blog, even though my artistic ego shies away from the crassness of wanting others to read about my doings.

However I am doing this artist publicity promotional online course right now (NY resolutions and all that) and she says ‘it would be great to get ‘discovered’ but also unicorns don’t bring you your coffee in the morning’ which is fair. All this is a long way of saying I need to get the finger out and try harder with social media etc. And.. substance/stack sends it out to your email list, which genuinely simplifies things for types like me. Note- worry about email list tomorrow.

Rounding out with a little context re the bracketed sub title. There was a thump near the kitchen window yesterday and when I went to investigate there was a little dead bird lying on the concrete. I picked it up. Definitely deader than dead. But so small, delicate and soft. How could this little being be related to dinosaurs? I felt melancholy about this teeny deceased being. Another accidental avian kamikaze pilot crashing into our windows. I hoped it had had some sweetness in its life, nice branches to perch on and tunes to chirp. And friendship.

I’m off to bed. I didn’t get round to explaining what all this substackering is for and why. It’s not that important anyway. It can wait. May your dreams be mysterious but unthreatening.