Time will make me bolder

A reflection for the New Year.

Hi! I’m Josh, an aspiring writer, trainee journalist, and, most importantly, massive nerd. Welcome to Cloud Illusions - a little haven for me to share moments of self-reflection on love, growth, loss, ambition and my fear of failure. Hopefully, if you’re anything like me, it can be a safe space for you too, to feel seen, and reminded that, even when you don’t know life at all, it’ll be fine in the end. If you want to know a bit more about me, and what to expect from Cloud Illusions, check out my about page.

I decided to launch this Substack in November, after heavy encouragement from a few people who really inspire me. The same month, I also bought my first manual camera. Both remained untouched for most of the remaining year.

Labouring tirelessly over a ‘first post’ nearly wrung out my creativity, and inspiration. I could only question myself - my intentions, my talent, my perspective. Do I have anything worth saying at all? While I pressed my cheeks between the keys of a dying MacBook Air, other graduates from my cohort were escalating into their professional careers, both creative and corporate. I was dramatically wasting away, shunning any skill or talent I may have demonstrated over the past twenty-one years. Was I even worthy of a voice, let alone a platform to use it?

All it took to shake off my inhibitions was the turn of the year - the easiest excuse for a reinvention, or revitalisation. “Oh, this year I’ll start exercising; this year I’ll pick up the piano again, and I’ll read more and stay in contact with everyone I’ve accidentally neglected.” Call it optimism, or call it delusion, but it keeps me going. 

And so, this ambiguously driving feeling has given me the final slap in the face I needed to get off my arse and start writing. I realised I was sick of making noise. I want to breathe into my words again, and make them dance. I want to learn to sing again, and scream life into my surroundings. It’s a small step, but even as I’m watching these words come out of nowhere, I feel some stirring.

Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled album. It’s silly but I once saw a tweet (is that the word anymore…?) that said “One day you’re young and the next, ‘Landslide’ makes sense”. 

I’ve reached the age when everyone tells you life is just beginning - I’m fresh out of an English degree and training to be a journalist. 2023 brought me unimaginable beauty and change, in my educational and personal life. Yet somehow, I found myself sinking - as the autumn passed me by, I was sinking lower into self-degradation, endlessly criticising my own feelings of purposelessness and my inertia. By the time I started writing this for the first time, I’d been drowning myself in pity and watching my abandoned ambitions float to the surface to be collected and cherished by others.

Now, I feel as if the world is helping me piece things back together - but, even then, I’m carrying this debilitating fear that it’ll all crumble before my eyes the very second I stop to look at my reflection. My reconstructed self-worth, the path I’ve finally laid out for myself, my passions. It’s a little dramatic, sure, but the sentiment of ‘Landslide’ resonates with me. 

The photograph at the top of this post is the second last photo I took in 2023: the penultimate shot from my first roll of film in the first camera I’ve ever bought for myself. My partner, looking a little boyish, was prancing around a field and I couldn’t help but try to capture the moment. It would almost look silly, if he didn’t seem so joyous, so liberated and so bold.

For all the time I’ve known him, I’ve told him that I want to be more like him. More creative, more audacious. Though it got lost somewhere along the way, I was once like that. It isn’t so easy to find the parts of yourself you think you’ve left behind for good, but when the complete image of every person you’ve ever aspired to be stands before you in a single figure, you can’t help but begin to dream again.

With him always in my mind, and with my joie de vivre reignited, I have faith that it’ll all come back to me - not immediately, but in time.

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Thanks for reading this first post! If you enjoyed my ramblings, it would mean a lot to me if you subscribed or shared the word. I’m intending to put out a post every other Sunday - so keep an eye out!

I’d also like to give a special thank you to Suyin Haynes and Millie Jackson (both of whom have their own wonderful newsletters: Ginkgo Leaves and Airhead, respectively) for giving me the push to get on with this. I also want to thank Liam, my partner, for providing me with endless support, encouragement, and inspiration.