Sunshine Through The Rain #2022

It’s raining today. The forecast over the next few days is also for rain, on and off. There is a single day of ‘sun’. It feels like a metaphor for 2021, searching through time for the brightness among the drab, for the fun among the dreary.

In my first blog post of 2021, ‘Every Step We Take in 2021’, I encouraged readers to use the power of story to rewrite what they wanted to remember of 2020, because memory can be a choice. We can use it to analyse and reframe our futures.

Yet at this stage of the pandemic, I find myself needing a different approach, as I’m not looking to the future much, more to the present. My focus is on day-to-day tasks, what goals at hand I can achieve, next month rather than next year. When it comes to 2022, I’m not really thinking beyond a camping trip with my family and friends in January! Hopefully it won’t rain then!

I’m also looking to the past for inspiration, and am reminded of an approach my father used when he was alive, having survived such significant global events as the Great Depression, WWII and the 1980s worldwide recession. Through each event, he lost everything important to him. Still, when I was growing up, he would often tell me ‘don’t worry about it’ or ‘try not to worry so much’. I don’t believe I did ‘worry’ particularly, but I think it was his way of communicating his state of mind – nothing for him was worth the bother if it came with angst.

Angst can be defined as existentialist dread or anxiety, typically centred on the state of the world or the human condition; though it can also be a simple feeling of anxiety mixed with frustration and negativity. As a writer, I try to ensure my main characters have angst in their lives, because it will drive them to change their lives for the better, and exploring the shenanigans of characters who experience change is one of the reasons we create and share stories.

But I’m not a character in one of my stories and, with so much uncertainty and change happening in the world right now, it feels safer to avoid angst, to take my father’s advice and not worry about anything in particular, and instead live for the moment.

That’s not to say I’m not writing for future publications or planning more opportunities to bring creativity to my community as I have throughout 2021! It just means that my approach to 2022 will be to consciously enjoy whatever single bright days shine through the continual pandemic drab.

Dear reader, will you join me?

Here’s some work I had published in 2021:

Remembering When, Mosman Council

You Pick B, The Ampersand Magazine

The Kind of Man, Welkin Magazine

The Air You Get, Northern Beaches Writers’ Group

The Polite Watchman, SFS Stories