Can empathy be aspirational?

ii. ruminating, curating, and inspiring your week ahead

Inspiration for your week ahead

Hello there.

If you are at all like me, you spent a lot of time on your phone last week. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—phones are incredible tools for discovery, connection, and learning. But let me ask you this: can you actually recall what you’ve consumed on your phone?

A few snippets? A game or two? Something funny? Something inspiring? For me: curly hair routines, a few newsletters, LA fire updates (as an Australian who knows the wrath of bushfires, my heart goes out to you!!), a YouTube video or two, and…the rest escapes me. I hate it. My weeks feel incredibly short and busy, yet there is a void where time spent on my phone exists. Precious time I cannot recall for the life of me.

I begin my creative writing dissertation soon and know I want to make every minute of this year count; the anxiety of all the lost time in my week feels compounded by this knowledge. The simple answer is to log off. Take a break from social media’s algorithms. But (and aren’t there always ‘buts’?) I feel caught between the desire to build my community on these platforms and my crushing inability to do just that. I’ll be the first to admit that social media isn’t my forte. Has it stopped me from trying? No. Has it resulted in anxiety and frustration and hours mindlessly scrolling ‘for inspiration’? Yes. Playing the game comes at a cost and I’m not sure I want to foot the bill.

I think I will step away for a short while. Spend more time taking care of myself, reading, getting back in front of the video camera, writing for you. I think it will be good for me.

Talk soon—hopefully with a clearer head.

I love you.

Caitlin x

P.S. If you would like me to expand an idea in one of these letters into its own essay, please do let me know!

Get your free international online poetry event ticket!

You might recall that I made my first poetry shortlist towards the end of last year. If you would like to listen to me read my poem Muscae Volitantes to you, be sure to get your free ticket to The Brilliant Poetry’s Inaugural Reading and say hello when I pop up on your screen from halfway across the world <3

Also! The start-of-year offering ends at midnight tonight, so don’t miss out:

Noticing

The poetry in the everyday

i. How easy it is to crumble beneath the weight of it all.

ii. The passage of time. I hadn’t seen someone in a few weeks and it felt like it had been months. I hadn’t seen someone else in over a year and it felt like it had been weeks. I’m becoming more and more terrified by my inability to make the most of each day and my phone’s role in this ongoing dilemma.

iii. Watching our first pomegranate fruits slowly take shape. Feeling the velvet skins of our three figs and gently pressing them to see if they’re ready. Remembering Plath’s fig tree analogy and reminding myself that I can change; I can begin again.

iv. The ugliness of shame. Then: its arms outstretched, soft, open. All pain is an opportunity for understanding.

v. Fire is catching.

vi. Perfectionism as rot. Perfectionism as necrosis of the bone. Perfectionism as the antithesis of peace.

vii. The Fibonacci sequence in nature; the pearlescent curve of an abalone shell.

viii. The human capacity for cruelty.

Curating

A collection of evocative images and things

a collage by yours truly

Ruminating

Things I’ve been mulling over

This week: attending a feminine rage event, bestdressed, aspirational empathy in the context of the LA fires, our growing addiction to inconvenience, and more…