Resparking the fire

A note on life, autopilot, ditching the proverbial plan and just writing again.

Jun 05, 2026

It’s been a while since I have been in Substack - in an annoying turn of events, the amazing momentum I had been building in this space, suddenly lost it’s spark.

I started this Substack because I love writing.

I remember being 8 years old and sitting on our family PC, using Microsoft Art to create newspapers of my life.

I had a shared diary with two girlfriends in Intermediate School, and we would take turns taking the battered exercise book home, writing letters of what had been going on before giving it to the next person.

I had a teen version with a close friend through high school too - I remember the time we’d take to write letters, create borders, make it beautiful.

As a young adult when I embarked on my gap year (and subsequent years of overseas travel) I would write a blog for friends and family. We had the most mundane yet so weird of experiences that I could craft these funny stories from it. Probably more funny for me but yolo, it was a vibe.

I’ve always loved to write.

And I’ve loathed short form social media since the beginning.

So having this space was elite.

It was somewhere that I could write in the evening, when the house was finally quiet and dark and the kids were asleep next to me. I’d prop open my laptop and sit in bed writing.

And then I had some posts go viral on tiktok which brought many of you over to my Substack; which I love, and I still do and will forever be grateful for.

But something invisible, and something most likely self imposed, switched at that moment.

Suddenly I felt like I had to continue what I had been doing.

I had schedules and topics planned and all this juicy info that I did want to share. But it suddenly was a demand; and I was suddenly hyper aware of the performative ask of me - to write this self-imposed list of topics.

So I stopped.

Ghosted entirely lol.

Same life strategy that I’ve always employed, just in a different space. Oops.

I have spent this year thus far, on autopilot.

Continuing the grind that many of you know all too well.

The kids, and home school, and neurodivergence needs and accommodations. My teen stepson has moved in. Our daughter is heading into adolescence. The wider world is imploding and we invested all our savings into starting a business during this time hahahaha. The absurdity of it all does make me laugh, but it also makes me weep sometimes lol.

But equally, we are so good. We have life, and the sun is shining and the birds are chirping, and later tonight the fireplace will be on. I currently have a few hours of alone time (desperately needed and not at all typical!) and later the house will fill with the sounds of the kids playing make believe, or fighting, or asking me for snack and snack after snack.

It has been hard so far, but I am equal parts so aware of the beauty we do have.