Recent Articles
New Year, Same You
It’s a new year! Somehow, it feels more honest to just acknowledge that fact without adding the customary ‘Happy New Year’. So far, ‘happy’ isn’t an adjective I’d associate with the first two weeks of 2022.
Living without the internet
For almost a month, I have been living an internet-less life at home. That’s not fully true - I still have data on my phone so I can check the news, emails etc. But the kind of mindless internet clicking around has been (mostly) absent from my life and I gotta say, it’s been great.
Wintering
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but it crucible.”
The Covid 19 pandemic will lead to a loneliness pandemic
As Ireland responds to the Covid 19 crisis, the policy responses and media narrative has focused on families, older people and the economy. But another vulnerable group has been mostly ignored: people who live alone.
Life just whizzes past unless you make time for yourself
I’m in full on ‘pit stop’ mode at the moment. In a few hours, I’ll be boarding a flight to visit pals in the UK. I’ve been travelling a lot this past while - mostly for work. It gets me in this very specific mode of packing things, prepping things, always living in what future Clare will need (breakfast, clean clothes, an hour with a book) and preparing for that. I’m grateful for my life, even during these busy spurts. But, I also need to take care of myself. Life just whizzes past unless you make time for yourself.
In Praise of Autumn
I always arrive into autumn with a sigh of relief. Temperamentally, it's the season I’m most suited to (introverted, home bodied). It’s the homestretch of the year. I enjoy the ‘fresh start’ feeling of back to school, dressing in cozy layers, having more opportunities to curl up and rest. The air is quicker, cooler. The weather is damper, heavier, crisper.
