Arisaig
A diary entry
“There is so much here for smart, creative women from this smart, creative woman, plus I have only just discovered Lindsay reading extracts from her powerful memoir – I am already hooked (and now a complete fan of her work).”
anna wharton, Sunday Times bestseller, The Orwell Prize longlisted writer and writer of The Spectator’s Book of the Year 2023
Hi friends,
If you’re new here, hi. You are so welcome. Hop on over to this post for more on what to expect each week:
Start here! Welcome to What Now? with Lindsay Johnstone
Today’s words and images are behind the paywall because I feel they belong there.
I’ve also shared the link to the Sparkle on Substack Expert Session I recorded last week with
on the power of audio for connection and growth, and I so hope that you enjoy it. You can watch by clicking on the link at the bottom of today’s post.I’m sharing a diary entry and photos from Friday evening when we arrived at Arisaig on Scotland’s west coast. We’re still here now and will be heading back to Glasgow tomorrow. I wanted on Friday night to capture the specific feeling of arrival. The jitteriness and dis-ease that I often want to push down or will away in favour of settledness and ease.
Don’t we all?
Reading these words back and typing them out, though, I’m left wondering whether I’ve really written about departure. A kind of pre-emptive homesickness, maybe? What does it mean to leave everything you know and set off from home – as we will in a month’s time – placing trust in others that when you get back, everything will be as we left it?
And what a privilege to have this freedom of movement. Freedom of opportunity. Of near-certainty that our home and our loved ones will be waiting for us when the adventure is over.
But will we be the same? Or changed in some way? And if so, how?
I think many of us are struggling right now, and it doesn’t sit entirely comfortably with me that my focus narrows to the personal when the global is what it is.
And yet.
