The Next Orange Triangle

The Next Orange Triangle

Wednesday 4 January 2017

So 2016 wasn’t the best year. AmIright?

Around about the time I was getting over jet lag on our annual trip to the UK, a few things happened that tipped me into the abyss of Not Fucking Writing Anymore. While I was down there, someone dropped a grand piano of work stress on my head, ripped up my faith in humanity with their “protest votes” and left me doubting both the authenticity and the authority of my voice.

Which is another way of saying I felt like I needed to spend a bit of time listening to the insanity around me, instead of trying to talk all the time. So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last few months.

I still don’t feel ready to start speaking again. I still don’t feel like I have anything worth saying, or any right to be saying it, but writing was always a form of therapy for me, and I have missed it in my life.

Over the Christmas break, we packed up the car and got away with friends. When I say that, I mean we ventured into the land that 3G forgot, living under canvas, adventuring in caves, washing in rivers and walking trails marked only by small orange triangles.

These orange markers are nailed to trees on all but the most obvious trails, and as my experienced walking friend commented, you may start each walk feeling confident of your direction, but by the end, you hold on to every orange marker triangle like they are your lifeline.

Actually in some cases they are your lifeline.

I bring this up, because while I was dragging my sorry ass around trails that no office worker should attempt, it struck me that these orange markers were probably quite a good analogy for getting back into writing; no grand plan, no expectation, and no fucking analytics.

Just talking about stuff that I care about, as if nobody is listening.