Find the portals.
three years of changing my mind in public
My room grows quiet when I close the windows. I like this. I like this when my neighbour is mowing their lawn, or my other neighbour’s dog keeps barking, or the constant whir of passing cars becomes decidedly loud and it’s all too difficult to ignore. I like how still the sheers become. So unmoved without a passing breeze, they swoon into their pinched pleats and petrify, silky and statuesque. But then a few hours pass, and I miss the rustle of leaves (nature’s static), the cool autumn air, and watching the sheers kick away from the wall and billow above my bed. So I open the windows again.
I change my mind often. Typically on small things, though increasingly on bigger ones. For me, it’s often a sign of two things at play: my curiosity reaching out to a world of possibility, and my anxiety holding on to dependability with all its might. The flickering between options and outcomes and dreams and fears has always been my default setting, and, until more recently, I accepted that this is just The Way Things Are. One step forward, three steps back, always.
But things are shifting.
I started Ruminations in 2023 with a braided essay on grief. Grief and loss have become recurring themes in the time since, as have rest and resistance. My time on Substack has proven itself to be an ongoing study of making and unmaking, being and becoming, failing and failing better. Although my presence here has fluctuated over the years, I am always finding my way back. I come here when the words are bursting out of me, and I come here to be held. Writing for Ruminations feels habitual in the way walking a familiar trail to lean on the same old wooden post by the river does. The view changes, and so do I, but returning still feels like coming home. Calling home—writing to you—feels honest.
“I am tired and trying my best. Pulling away and pulling things back with me. Rearing my little head when the time feels right; when I’ve found the right words; when the words are no longer mine to keep.” — October, 2025
It’s an unconventional approach to newsletter writing, and one the algorithm hasn’t rewarded me for, but it’s also the reason I’ve stayed. As ugly as it looks in process, there is wisdom and revelation in falling apart. I haven’t been afraid to experiment, begin and abandon different schedules, or follow a creative urge and let it go when it’s run its course.
I’ve felt bad about it, sure—unreliable, unconvincing, ungrateful, uncommitted—but I know that shame doesn’t come from me. By now there are thousands of Substack articles urging you to implement varying versions of xyz to succeed, and I’ll be the first to admit I’m not immune to the pull of their vague promises and endless badgering. I’ve bought the workshop, run the title check, altered (“optimised”) the post format, replied to the umpteenth note, and written the inevitable letter declaring my guilt. Three years on this platform will do that to you. And it will teach you a whole damn lot. Sticking with this letter as long as I have has meant allowing myself to grow in real time. I’m a slow learner, but I very rarely give up. Nowadays, I recognise endings as entry points.
Didn’t you know? Everything is a portal.
Three May’s ago, I decided nothing would stop me from becoming a Writer. I left my job as a critical care nurse, finally enrolled in my masters, battled my fear of public speaking at poetry readings, earned a hot desk fellowship in my city, then a writing residency in Finland, smashed a printer in a rage room, brought home the sweetest little puppy, started the long difficult journey of medicating my ADHD, applied for Oxford, gained an autoimmune disease, drank an inordinate amount of matcha in Japan, returned to pack and vacate my first home, committed to an idea I’d been harbouring for months, didn’t get into Oxford, wondered if I had, perhaps, made a terrible mistake by following my dreams, decided I most definitely had not, repeated the last two points on loop, ran away to the bush whenever I could, and always, always, returned to my laptop.
The question has changed from “How do I become a working writer?” to “How do I make writing work for me?”. This shift is essential. When I started actively pursuing my dreams, all I wanted was to prove to myself and everyone around me that I could do it. That I had the sheer audacity to try. And you know what? Turns out I do. And that I also have poems to read to you, stories to weave, and a few strong opinions about literary culture and human rights and the power of slow, intentional work that I’d like to share. And the best part is I have nothing left to prove. I know who I am, what I’m facing, and what I’m here to do. My job now is to build a process that’s sustainable (physically, emotionally, financially) and creatively rewarding, and to find more ways to foster connection. ‘Cause at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about: writing for, with, and to you.
More than ever before, I know exactly what I want. I want to write strange and meaningful work that makes people feel alive and worthy. To try and learn and fail in new ways. To remain open to changing my mind. To love radically and openly and often, and to let that love make me brave. To connect with as many people as I can and really listen to them. I want to morph into something else—not necessarily something better, just different. Kinder, even. I want to find the portals. There are only so many times I can open and close the windows before I have to walk out the door.
Thank you for three years <3
Caitlin xx
De Beauvoir: “ After the Enlightenment discounted all love as a malfunction of reason, the Romantics reclaimed it and revised the ancient taxonomy into a hierarchy, under the tyranny of which we still live, placing eros at the pinnacle of human existence. And yet our deepest relationships — the ones in which we both become most fully ourselves and are most emboldened to change — tend to elude the commonplace classifications and to shape-shift across the span of life.”
Deeply affected by your lovely flow "To try and learn and fail in new ways. To remain open to changing my mind. To love radically and openly and often, and to let that love make me brave." Thank you, Susanne (very poor, writer, Australian, 79) XS