Will you cry? Are you grateful?

With Joe
Sep 26, 2023
6 min read

Updated: Sep 27, 2024

I don’t really know what I have to say, but I just feel like it’s time we spoke again.

I’ve just got back to London from a week away.

I love London but there’s so much going on all the time, and there’s this underlying pressure to always be doing something.

I found this especially powerful over the last couple of months and even though I’ve been loving it, I felt exhausted.

And over the last few months a lot of my favourite people have left my work which has been slightly emotionally traumatic, lots of teary goodbyes.

I needed to get away from everything, just sit down, breathe in some cleaner air, be by the sea, and catch up on my sleep.

I went running along the sand listening to some Lorde songs pretending I was watching her live again jumping and screaming along; except it was just me and the sea.

It was feral.

My calves hurt for the next two days and I still have to clean my trainers from all the dirt and sand.

just before I went feral

I’ve been slowly working on the 5 tracks that I will be releasing next, but I’ve been struggling with them a little lately.

Maybe I’m sitting with them for too long, but they feel like they are getting further away from me, and the inspiration is coming less easily.

But I’m being kind to myself.

I’m not forcing anything too much.

I’ve been being pulled to some new material that’s sort of just pouring out of me.

I had this realisation that writing for me is a way for my feelings to reveal themselves.

I sit down at my piano and I know that I want to write something true to how I’m feeling, but I’m never quite sure HOW I’m actually feeling.

So it normally goes that I just sit there, eyes closed, playing some random chords and letting words come out of me with no intentional direction.

If they work it clicks, if they don’t I keep playing around.

I don’t think about it too much.

I was in the middle of this process a couple of weeks ago when I had just written the last line of the chorus and suddenly it hit me that what I’m writing is an intensely sad song.

It made me cry just a little bit, but I’m also in a sort of disbelief.

‘I guess this is how I’m feeling’ I think to myself.

And maybe the fact that it’s in song form exaggerates the sadness but it feels true so I guess some part of me feels like this.

And it’s a song about relationships; or the lack thereof.

See, I’ve been dating a little bit more recently.

Which is relatively new to me.

I’ve been single for so long, and I absolutely love the personal growth journey I’ve been on all this time. Since my last relationship, I feel like I’m a whole new person.

Actually, more like I’ve been at least 3 completely different people since then.

I just keep changing, and it’s amazing.

When people say ‘Oh your 20s are your best years’ or something similar,

I don’t really believe them.

Like, I’m loving my 20s, but I never want to be in a mindset that my life is only downhill from a certain point.

I’ve got this theory that my life is going to get better and better with every decade, a sort of exponential curve.

Anyway, back to dating.

It’s strange, I feel like I’ve got a little bit of this yearning to meet someone to be with, but when I actually think about it some more I don’t think I’m ready.

I’ve got so much going on with my life, so much I’m planning to do, things to achieve, and I guess I feel like if I’m in a relationship that will slow down.

As I’m writing this I’m realising a therapist would probably respond to me saying that I have a distorted view of relationships or that I have commitment issues or something but idk I can’t help how I feel.

So I’ve been dating, and I’m great at getting a 2nd date, but so far, I kind of lose interest after that.

I’m super picky.

I love my single life so much, I know I’m going to have to meet someone who really makes me feel like I’m flying until I say yes, so it’s real tough competition out there.

God, I feel like I’ve been rambling and absolutely emotionally dumped in this email apologies, but long story short, I wrote a song, it made me realise I kind of want a relationship, but scared it might never happen?

Here’s a snippet:

DIE LONELY

In other news, a friend asked me recently a question:

“If you had unlimited money, what in your life would you fix?”

And it made me think, isn’t the concept of ‘fixing’ your life peculiar?

There are no rules to life really, apart from social constructs and expectations.

So how are we expected to fix something that can’t really be broken?

Yes, we may have dreams for things in our life to be different, but to view it as broken feels like a disservice to the very fact that we are alive.

I have 1 (one) tattoo which I got shortly after I left university which is an outline of the window that was above the front door in the house I lived in for 2 years.

For those 2 years, I had the time of my life, loved friends like I never had before, and had many many days and nights that I will forever cherish.

But I knew that I would never have an experience like that again.

By now you all know that I’m prone to sentimentality, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the past and how quickly time passes.

So this tattoo is a constant reminder to be present and grateful for the moments that we are living in.

Because no matter how good or how bad it is,

there will never be another moment like it.

We get so used to wishing our time away, looking forward to the next weekend, or the next season, or the next year.

At some point we will run out of years to look ahead at, and I don’t want to get to the end of my life realising I’d spent most of it wishing time would move faster.

So I’m always trying to find the aspects of my current life that I love.

Yes, I dream of the days I am a full-time artist, travelling the world, writing and performing music I love, about things I love, for people I love.

But I know even then I will miss the days I had at university, or the 12 hours shifts I worked in restaurants where my feet are killing me, but I’m also having the time of my life laughing with my coworkers because members of the public are ALWAYS more stupid than you believed possible.

(Shoutout to the man that asked me, 15 minutes into him eating the pig’s head, which is so blatantly the head of a pig and asks “Is this a pig’s HEAD??” -

yes sir, the ears and teeth are Right. There.)

Remember at the start of this email when I said I didn’t know what I was going to say?

Well, I guess I found a couple things didn’t I.

Oops.

And I’m not finished.

Because I’ve been thinking about social media (again 🙄) and as much as I try and want to, I can’t seem to escape the thought that when I do release these songs I’m working on, I’m going to HAVE to make a return.

And how can I do that with as little contact with it as possible?

It’s been almost a year since I deleted Instagram and I don’t at all want to get it back.

So part of me has been planning ways that I can promote my music and connect with people with as much distance as possible.

My barber (I know, a little rogue) and I have been discussing it, and he strongly suggests using AI to basically do everything for me, which honestly is probably the option at the top of my list at the moment.

However, he does do everything with AI, including planning and booking an entire holiday, down to all the restaurants he will go to.

So maybe I should take his suggestions with a pinch of salt 🤔

Maybe I could enlist you to be my social media advocates somehow?

I could make posts and ask you to post in my absence aha.

Anyway, these are just thoughts, if you have any ideas please let me know.

Here are some pictures of what I’ve been up to lately.