As if I hadn't been loud enough everywhere else, here I am.
And I'm bringing one thought, one question, one nature pic, and one bit of Romanian trivia.
TL;DR: If you only do one thing today, do this: picture yourself feeling renewed and hold on to that feeling for a minute.
I know you’ve probably signed up to many of these in order to keep in contact with your favourite people, and it frankly a surprise to everyone involved that you’d still consider mine. So out of respect for your time, I’m gonna dive right into my first thought:
It’s simultaneously true that everything completely sucks, and that we will be okay.
Social media right now sucks. Publishing right now sucks. Reports are coming in from every direction: being an artist, a freelancer, a small business owner, all across the board, sucks. And it’s easy to feel like that suck is our life now, like it’s been here forever and will be here forever. The wins are getting rarefied, and they feed you for less time when they do come. The hits never stop, and staying in a mindframe that allows you to participate in the world is becoming harder by the minute.
Escaping to a remote island and Animal Crossing your way into a new society has never been this tempting. In Romania, we say “disappear like a donkey in the fog”, and sure enough every fog bank looks like a promise.
A lot of my circle of artist & writer friends and clients have been really down lately, and I keep trying to think of what I can do to help them and I’m coming up short. So here’s a thought: maybe we don’t actually need help. Maybe right now feels like chaos because change feels like chaos, and maybe all we need is to get through it. Our bodies are asking for things to be different, and the process of that happening absolutely sucks, but that doesn’t mean we need to fight it all the way.
So here’s a question:
What’s a future you doing, one year from now, that makes you happy?
This can be such a hard exercise to do when you’re in a rough place, so let’s do it together. Picture yourself feeling renewed and hold on to that feeling for a minute. You’ve got troubles, yes, but there’s something going on that makes you happy. You’ve got support and feel loved through the things that haunt and ail you. You’ve got goals you’re working towards. You’re happy with yourself as a person and proud of the choices you make.
You’ve woken up in this future, it’s morning, you’re alone, and the house is quiet. What are you doing? What’s your main focus? How do you express your creative side? What are you working on? Who else is there?
I used to be quite certain I’d never get to that point, and somehow, that point is with me now. This, working with Tenebrous, writing my own work, occasionally painting, taking nature walks, this is my now and future joy. For all that things have been so hard—and they bloody have—I’m surrounded by family now in ways I never dreamed of. And most of how I got here is, well, an equal mixture of anger and keeping my eyes on that horizon.
Said horizon is being about as sappy as I am, today:
If you’ve made it this far, here’s your reward in the form of a bit of Romanian trivia:
Many of the Romanian folklore-inspired creatures in Whisperwood are originally from legends so old we don’t even know the source, but we’re pretty sure most of them started out as ways to explain the unexplainable. One clear example of that is the Pricolici, said to throw their shadows at the moon when they go on a hunt, the old explanation for a lunar eclipse.
In some cases, like Zburătorul, that unexplainable was why young women were coming back from garden walks sporting hickeys!
There may not be much in English literature about this guy, though Wikipedia does share this quasi-true tidbit: Dimitrie Cantemir, writing about the myth concerning it in Descriptio Moldaviae (1714–1716).[a] stated that the "zburator" meant "flyer" (Latin: volatilis), and according to the beliefs of the Moldavan it was "a ghost, a young, handsome man who comes in the middle of the night at women, especially recently married ones and does indecent things with them, although he cannot be seen by other people, not even by the ones who waylay him".
In my grandmother’s region, it was more akin to a wind spirit that rushed through the woods and gardens and caused women to pine after something they couldn’t even articulate. Beautiful daughters would be warned to watch out when going out to gather wood, but fittingly there was never any specific way to watch out or prevent the infatuation from taking hold.
A fundamental Romanian myth, a warning, or a promise? Like most things in our culture, a little of good and bad mixed together.
And here we are, you’ve made it to the end. I may not be able to make everything easier all at once, but I hope I’ve reminded you of the importance of breathing, dreaming, and taking walks by the woodshed at least.
Weirdest wishes,
Alex.