I am an orderly, consistent writer — for the most part. I have my routines and systems. That’s how the work gets done. With any major projects, long-term mental endurance tests, I sit down to write for an hour or two each morning. That’s all I can manage these days. It’s difficult to carve out the time to write when you have a nine-to-five job. Journaling is one of my nightly habits. Weekends and the occasional off-day allow me to write more than usual.
For all of my order, I need some spontaneity. That’s my approach to poetry. When I sit down and force myself to write poetry, it doesn’t arrive. It usually strikes me when I’m not searching for it. Perhaps blog posts are the same. I haven’t written one since December 2022. I’m writing this post on a day off from work.
I have lived in Cardiff for five months now, in a one-bedroom flat. Alone but not lonely. My friends and family are always nearby. My apartment is warm and cosy. Leaving Aberystwyth filled me with dread. Cardiff embraced me very quickly, though. Perhaps that’s what cities do. They welcome anyone seeking a life for themselves. Especially graduates. This progression feels natural.
So many of us are lost. My friends and colleagues and I are in our early twenties. Even if we have some vague idea of where we want to go, there’s still the feeling of being adrift. This is a universal experience. Every older, wiser person whom I talk to reminds me of this.
This is adult life. We’re all so busy, going off in our own directions. Trying to find the time to see our loved ones and do what we really want to. The great goal is to find poetry in the mundane. Meaning in the everyday.
Yet when I sit with myself, I realise that this is all there is. The daily work. The living. Everything is here. Life is created in the friction between our inner and outer worlds. It just gets so exhausting. How do we bear it?
So many of us don’t. We numb ourselves. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see that I’ve stopped using social media in a personal capacity. I will only use it in a professional sense. Mostly for my writing and any journalism. I’ve stepped away from social media because it is a hellscape. It is the thing we most often numb ourselves with. TikToks and doomscrolling. Less of this makes us better people, even if it hurts to see what the world has become and is becoming. Even if it hurts to navigate our personal struggles. I’m not saying you can’t live a whole, human life if you use social media. But it’s becoming harder and harder to maintain your individuality. What makes you, you. That’s why I stepped away. And I feel less stressed as a result.
Walt Whitman once wrote: ‘These are the days that must happen to you.’ These are the days that must happen to us. All of us. Our lostness is a gift. It is a bridge that connects us to others. None of us start out where we want to be in life. Maybe we will never get there.
But the striving is all that we have.
Iestyn Tudor 