On Monday 11th April, I started writing morning pages again. This is something I first began in my 20s and kept as a habit for many years. I no longer remember why I stopped but going back to them has led to a more general experiment in trying to remember who I was then. I have been re-reading books from both my childhood and my early twenties to try to remember and recover a self I think I abandoned at some point in my early 30s: the moment when I ‘quit writing’ and almost deleted this website entirely. (Although, I realise now that I never actually quit writing, I just traded more creative writing for academic writing.)
I hope I never stop writing morning pages again because there is something profoundly grounding about waking up, making coffee, feeding the cats, and then curling up on my couch with an A4 notebook and writing. Sometimes it is fluff and nonsense, sometimes it is ideas for a larger body of work, sometimes it is difficult, and sometimes the words won’t stop coming; but always it is about the sky, the light, the birds, and how I feel both in my body and in my heart.
I like my life and I love my home. I love that I wake up every morning in an orange sun room, and then move through a green hall into a blue sky living room. I love that light floods the entirety of this tiny little flat from each and every direction. I love that when I sit on my beautiful teal couch and look out of my windows, all I can see is the sky and the birds and the clouds.