Welcome to Letters From the Knot, a free newsletter, primarily built as an outlet for a fiction writing project I’m working on. On the weeks I’m not publishing fiction, though, I’ll be sending something a bit more freeform and personal. This is one of those.
At this time of year, I’m dragged in different directions. January is a time of remaking yourself, of reassessing your life and ambitions and plans, of making grand statements of intent for the future. For the most part these are statements of change, or growth, or betterment. It’s always onwards and upwards. Do more, get healthy, be happier, optimise yourself, move, move, grow.
Very rarely do I hear people talking about staying the same. Or if people do decide they don’t want to change anything about themselves, it more often comes from a place of resignation than contentment (though I accept possibly I just hang out with especially discontented people).
I started 2024 on an optimistic track. I was eating fractionally more healthy, and trying to drink a little less. I was learning to drive, and I’ve got a Big Opportunity coming up. I fooled myself into thinking I was on some kind of pre-ordained trajectory, and that everything would align and that this time next year I’d be living in a different country, driving around in a car with a six pack.
Unfortunately, however, I failed my driving test* and, this week, a fresh case of covid has stopped me in my tracks. It’s hard to feel like the best version of yourself when taking the bins out means you need to sit completely still and sweat for the next 45 minutes. It’s been humbling to be forced to stop like this, and it’s prompted me to wonder about this nagging tug towards growth and betterment. This time last year (and undoubtedly many times since), I wrote about my scepticism regarding self-improvement. Noble an instinct as it may seem, it tracks so closely to the logic of capitalism that I can’t help but feeling like I’m being tricked.
Of course, you only have to go on Instagram to see this relationship quite explicitly, with discounted gym memberships, and writing masterclasses, and fucking Huel adverts being shoved into your consciousness, carefully designed to a) make you feel like a worm and, b) make you spend £100 a month to overcome your wormy ways. But even if you look a little deeper than this, ignore all the ads and delete all the apps, the capitalist logic persists.
Why do I even want to improve myself, if not for the fact that I’ve been indoctrinated to strive for more in every part of my life? I simply can’t feel relaxed if I don't feel like I'm progressing. Now that I’ve got covid, and can barely walk five metres, my first draft of new years resolutions for this year suddenly look completely insane - get publishing deal, pass driving test, start super club, write experimental novella, move to new york, actually get fit this time, eat spicier foods. Who was this man? What sort of discontent does this list speak to? Why do we always want more? It feels especially perverse, even callous, to strive for so much when there are people in Gaza or Ukraine or Sudan or Myanmar or countless other places who are striving even to see another day.
There’s nothing wrong with resolutions. It’s gratifying to learn new things and go to new places, but what I fear capitalism has robbed from us is the joy of just being still. Capitalism (along with its cheerleaders, almost all politicians) is part of a system that doesn’t want you to stop. It wants you to believe that survival and growth are two sides of the same coin. It wants you to think that stopping means death, that in a world of globalisation, we have no time for stasis.
And it’s not a pressure that applies equally. I’ve spoken before about the unique and awful challenge this overriding cultural dynamic presents for ill and disabled people, who are under intense pressure to be well, to be working, and then on top of that still to improve, not just by dispassionate insta algorithms this time, but by the fucking UK government!
So this week, forced to stay in the flat again, I’m trying consciously to be still and to be grateful. I can look around and think, yeah actually quite a lot of nice stuff in here isn’t there? Quite a good life. Quite an incredible partner I’ve got, a nice home we’ve made together. People probably don't need Huel at all. It probably doesn’t matter that those Sichuan noodles were too spicy for me.
The point I’m slowly coming to is that it’s fine to improve yourself, but it’s also just fine not to. It’s completely fine to stay still and stop wanting things. I’ve lived in cities of increasing size for most of my life, including almost a decade in London. I’ve always had this drive to go bigger and have more. But for the first time, perhaps ever, I’m starting to see the appeal of striving less and, with any luck, wanting for less.
All of this is to say I’m not going to give myself such a hard time if I don’t realise my ambitions this time around. I can’t afford a stupid car anyway. This year is about just having what I have, and then if, this time next year, I do find myself cruising around New York in a convertible with enormous arms, well, bonus I guess.
(*Still reeling from failing my driving test, btw, but several of my less inherently capable friends have assured me that it’s actually much cooler and sexier not to pass the first time.)
Cultural Indigestion
Grub’s up.
Cooking - Look, despite literally everything I’ve just said, I am still trying to cook more and to get better at it. Recent highlights have included making a chicken pie from scratch including not only a velouté but also my own shortcrust pastry. Sure it looks a little cobbled together, but it tasted really v good. The grubby subtext to the pie is that it's a Thomas Straker recipe, but I promise I made it before I knew he was an absolute knob head. If you don’t know about him, I’d recommend reading this article because he’s so much more of a ding dong than I could have imagined.
My latest cooking revelation has been to overturn an almost life long disdain for the American “cup” measurement system in cooking. For years I thought this was just some classic anti-metric nonsense but I now realise there’s something quite liberating about cups. It saves you getting bogged down in tedious milligram specific measurements, and instead think about the relationship and interaction between the ingredients. It also helps open the door to the style of vibey, freehand cooking that so appeals to me. Speaking of which, if you also like this kind of cooking, I highly recommend reading my friend Cat’s substack, Since No One Asked. Her recipe writing is the exact right combination of instructive and permissive that makes you feel like you know what you’re doing.
Listening - Every once in a while, you listen to a song and, before you’re even halfway through it, you know it’s going to be one of your favourite ever songs. This happened to me a few weeks ago with Our Mutual Friend by the Divine Comedy. Just listen to it, if you haven’t before. There’s something so pleasing about the juxtaposition of the subject matter and the music. The story itself is something so universal it’s almost pedestrian and yet! The music just soars and soars! It’s the perfect encapsulation of how enormous these feelings - desire, heartbreak, betrayal - can be, especially when you were young and could fall in love in the space of an evening.
Reading - Everyone should read my partner Kelli’s substack. A funny and incisive exploration of self, music, bodies, class, and so much more!
Cancelling all my new year’s worm subscriptions 🪱 😪
re: Huel. how have people’s lives become so busy they don’t have time to eat actual food anymore? that’s sad, right? *buys huel and savours the chocolately concrete mix