Just for today, it feels like a powerful moment to interrupt the months-long silence for those of you that had been following or at the very least keeping an eye on this blog. To say hello! Do you remember me I exist and yes I am still out here working on the things that I had been consistently writing about in this blog? To be honest I am largely just a little disappointed that I was not able to keep up with the thing that I had to write and the format by which I had planned for this year to keep writing them. More than that that I dropped out of any kind of posting at all. I had managed to maintain quite a stint to be fair. Right now I am in Windhoek, Namibia, an exotic location I know. The reasons and answers of how did I get here are far too long, winding and existential than I will ever be able to explain here. What I can say is that for right now I am COVID refugee where I was once a love migrant and things are a lot better than they might read. I am very happy to be where I am. I am safe and I also feel safe. Which if you’ve been following my streams of thought for any length of time you will know is of the utmost importance to me as it should be. I have been here in, Namibia since the 18th of May 2021 will be here I imagine for several more weeks to come, which I am also happy about. The reason why I am telling you this is this means I will finally have time to catch up on content I needed and wanted to produce for this website and all you healing humans out there. However, there is no way around it, though I may be trauma-informed the contents of my head and the strategy for creating content here is currently far from organised in what I can only describe as a backwards-facing action plan.
I started today by using debt management as an analogy for how I feel about my life, my to-do list and cleaning up my mess. That you should pay off all the smallest debts first and dedicate the excess money it frees up towards the bigger debts. Even with this approach to tackling the to-do list it still feels overwhelming as I can’t figure out exactly where is the best place to focus my energy. Though I am very aware that I have significant debt (if not the biggest debt and thus deficit of attention owed) here. This is, to say the least anxiety-inducing as this work and you are both crucial to my path forward and the development of this work. So what the hell happened?
What I can tell you is that a Master of Research in Human Geography; Spaces, Politics & Ecologies has been struck off the list officially today. So I can now put some fancy letters behind my name. I’m now Kimberley K Stone BA Hons MRes. Pah! Just like that, I did it. I achieved a dream. The inconsistency here is the price I had to pay for it and I apologise for that. I do hope to do much better in the future and in fact, I am going to have to.
I always like to remind my readers that I too am traumatised and hope that it offers you some semblance of sanity, in this truly chaotic world. That we are all deeply flawed and what can be impossible to express is at these times totally understandable. ‘Netflix and chill’ has become shorthand for “I just can’t”. At least the entertainment seems to be of slightly better quality than other dystopian carnations. Where exactly do we go to escape from escapism? So yes they say consistency is key to anything and mostly everything that you want to be good at. That turning up is enough. So here I am turning up again. I’m sad I was away from home for so long but I’m here now I’m back and I’m always doing my best to show up, sometimes though, that isn’t always possible. Please forgive me
Yes, life after trauma can feel like time travel as we literally just try and get our shit together, whether that is mentally, emotionally or physically, never mind organised. When a trauma bomb has arrived it can feel like our whole bodies are wading through electric treacle that overstimulates, overwhelms and can leave us numb. It’s hard to find ourselves. Hard to feel ourselves. Hard to hear ourselves. And most often hardest to embody everything that we truly feel and would rather have or be instead. So I’m back to one day at a time while stuck in seventh gear.