Hi,
I'm Nanya. Welcome to my mailing list. I hope this week finds you nourished and loved.
If you're getting this, it's probably because I have at some point shared my writing with you and you responded favourably. Your mistake.
But you’re here. You made it. Welcome again!
First, some housekeeping:
What exactly is this?
This newsletter is born out of wanting to give form to the thoughts running around in my head more consistently and create a conversation with people who care about some of the same things I do.
What should I expect?
Once a month or so, I hope to share with you a small piece of writing, other fun stuff and things I found interesting on the interwebs. For me, this is part practice and accountability, part letting go of writing, part evading the inertia of perfection. For you, I hope it will be like a postcard from a friend that you like but don't get to see very often. Though we should write/see each other more often!
What will it look like?
Usually a combination of:
Reflections
What I've been up to
Links and things
Questions for you
But we'll figure it out as we go along. (Suggestions welcome!)
Ok. Now that’s out of the way, here we go!
A beginning
On finding roots
I used to want to be a floatingperson. I thought I would land up living in a Japanese house in the middle of a rice field, dyeing clothes, writing poetry on parchment, soaking in mineral salts in a square family bathtub, and discovering the joys of natto and mackerel for breakfast.
Now, in the year I will turn thirty, I am living in a far-flung corner of the world in Mexico, married to a musician I met in a bar one rainy night, having just released a book of poetry, starting this massively public missive of sharing my inner life with the world again. I have a job, I have a husband, we have a dog, and for the first time in my adult life, I own more things than can fit into two suitcases. Terra firma feels like a strange place to stand.
And yet. And yet. Having roots allows me to expand, too. I have built myself a family completely new to the one I grew up and that was the only solid, safe thing of love in my life before this. I, former floatingperson wannabe, found and figured out how to do that all on my own (ok, with a little help from my friends). Am I... adulting?
Who knew that having stability and unconditional love would be so beneficial to flourishing? Who knew that having a room to call your own, being forcibly loved beyond measure even when you don’t quite know how to love yourself, and being with a person who in your absence builds you the perfect reading nook - hammock, hanging plants and all, would make me feel finally so at home I could finally take flight, knowing I could always return?
Who knew that given sunshine, soil and love, a seed could grow into a tree?
Question
Are there ways about how you are living a different now than one you imagined for yourself? How does that make you feel?
(Leave a comment, or just hit reply)
What I've been up to
Hawking my book on poetry to loved ones; writing this article on the farmer protests in India; reading this stellar Q&A on how the system is set up to use renewable fuels - even when it's becoming cheaper and faster to build your own sustainable smart grids/green grids (and remembering this 99 Percent Invisible episode on how difficult it is to literally live 'off the grid'); stalking Matt Goulding's revivifying food writing again, this time on the power of rituals in a life without routine; and laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of the millennial aesthetic (even if you don't read all the way through this, definitely do read through the piece on the 'Peggy' sofa).
Not the end
We start here, on a hopefully long journey of sharing together. Its path may be changing, its form may be shifting, but I hope you’ll stay awhile with me.
Invite a friend. And write in any time.
Next time
More about me, a brand smashing new website, and hopefully more tinywriting.
PS: If you’re seeing this in your ‘promotions’/‘bulk' email’ tab, and would prefer to have it in your inbox where you can give it primetime, use the ‘move to’ option to move it over!
PPS: Don't like what you're reading? Unsubscribe any time. No hard feelings.