love notes 10: escaping the real world with stories
a stream of consciousness on stories as an escape, what i read this week and more recommendations
This week I’ve been obsessed with: daydreaming, reading and sun-bathing, coffee in bed, re-outlining my book, my guilty pleasure playlist, peanut butter chocolate, morning walks, candlelit showers, baking cookies and social media free days.
I ran some errands Friday morning and rediscovered my personal struggle in dealing with the negativity of other human beings.
I don’t like going out often. I’m a solitary creature by nature — a little socially anxious and a perpetual homebody — and so you bet the hustle and bustle of everyday life that exists outside my front door fills me with inexplicable dread. I’m not really sure why. I just hate the closeness of other bodies as I shop. And being forced to interact with other people who have no time or kindness for other human beings makes me feel uncomfortable. I feel myself getting sensory overloaded easily and I feel myself getting anxious even quicker. I try to get in out and fast. But, like on Friday, I sometimes find myself face-to-face with people who are so rude that I cry in my car on the way home.
I got home and just splayed across my couch like one of those women in an old painting, feeling overloaded and overwhelmed and, honestly, just plain over it. I’m tired of dealing with all the negativity outside my front door. It feels never-ending, suffocating. Especially when all you’re doing is just dropping something off or shopping for groceries. And as I curled up on my couch, staring down at my phone and all its social media apps, I realised I’m also exhausted from all the negativity inside that too. I don’t want to open Instagram or Facebook or Threads. Even when it’s not directed at me — the hateful, abusive and entitled comments on other people’s content are tiring enough. The constant barrage of negativity just feels inescapable lately.
My little homebody heart is constantly yearning for the quiet my own four walls give me. This place I call home is where I exist as I truly am and can connect deeply with my beautiful family; it’s a place where my books are stacked and I can lose myself in other worlds; it’s the place where my own stories come to life as my fingertips dance across my keyboard.
My home, and the stories that reside there, are how I escape the real world.
I sometimes dream about a life of slowness.
Sometimes these daydreams are of countryside living — a field of wildflowers stretching out towards the horizon and a shaded tree to read under as I wear the palest white dress and have a complicated braid trailing down my back. There’s a small town with a cosy coffeeshop to write stories at, and everyone who wanders its cobblestoned streets is friendly. Other times my daydreams are in my own city and feel more realistic — the renovations on our family home finished, the everyday stresses no longer plaguing us, and the moments we leave our home are for family adventures. I have time to read in the morning as the sun rises and time to write during the night under the twinkling stars and moonlight.
Where this dream existence of mine inhabits changes — depending on the day or my mood. But the thing that remains the same in these daydreams is that I consume and create stories. For me, when everyday life or social media gets more difficult to navigate, and my anxiety rises to the point my nerves feel like they’re on fire, storytelling has always been my way to escape the real world.
Books are a place where my current dissatisfaction with life and people and the world seems to just disappear. I’m lost completely in somebody else’s life, dissociating perhaps, becoming them. Writing is the same way — but with a much larger intensity. I guess this is because with writing I have more control over my escape. I can carve out these specific worlds and characters and stories from my own imagination. I can shape them to fit whatever vision that I have.
As I’m writing this stream of consciousness, I’m not really sure how else to combat these feelings I have about the real world and social media, as well as the negativity/hatred that exists so freely in both. But I feel like this weekend showed me that spending time away from it all helps.
I spent this weekend quietly with my family and focused on just being with them — it’s them who bring me joy. I also stepped away from all social media, not wanting the loud voices of people I don’t even know infiltrating my mind and darkening it. I read my books and worked on my own story. I baked cookies for the kids and played games they themselves crafted from their own imaginations. I had a candlelit shower as I listened to The Tortured Poets Department. I read even more because I can’t stop myself. I don’t feel like myself unless I’m hungrily devouring words — or writing them myself.
And the most remarkable thing happened. I felt all that sensory overload, the anxiousness, and the stress, all slowly fall from my shoulders. I realised that this is the slowness I find myself daydreaming about. I don’t need to discover a field of wildflowers or a small country town to move to. I can find it here, I can find it now. In my home. In my books. In my stories. I feel recharged and reborn, ready to face the world again next week.
The real world is so incredibly hard sometimes. But I know deep in my heart that I can’t avoid it forever — I can’t lock my door and never venture out. I must step out into it every now and then. I must try to see the beauty alongside the ugliness no matter how hard that can be.
At least I have my stories, my own and others, to heal my heart and soothe my anxieties when I come back through my front door or close an app though.
I hope this stream of consciousness made sense. Does anybody else feel this way?
part i: what i read this week
Like I said, I took a break from social media this week — so I managed to read a lot. I finished Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and I loved it. The story of Frankenstein’s monster is so incredibly heartbreaking, you can really feel the loneliness and desperation dripping from the book’s pages. It brought a tear to my eye. If you’re looking to devour more classics, I definitely recommend giving reading Frankenstein.
I also started and finished The Wicked King by Holly Black. This is the second book in The Folk of Air series and was a reread for me. I read it when it first came out in 2019 and it’s still as good as I remembered it. The enemies to lovers romance between Jude and Cardan is my favourite.
And today, I started reading one of my most anticipated reads for 2024: Funny Story by Emily Henry. She’s become my favourite romance author, so I can’t wait to delve into her newest book.
And finally I only have two article recommendations that I found particularly interesting and inspiring this week:
part ii: what i wrote this week
Since losing everything on my computer, I’ve spent every night this week working on re-outlining my dark contemporary fantasy book.
I was hoping to start actually rewriting this week, but it was like my mind was brimming with so many ideas and I continued reworking my outline until I was happy with it. I’ve even worked through some plot holes I’ve struggled with since the conception of this story. So even though my outline is now obnoxiously long, it finally feels finished. I like writing extensive outlines while still having a lot of wriggle room to be as creative as possible as I write.
Next week I finally get to start writing again!
part iii: what i watched this week
Because I’ve been reading and writing a lot this week, I actually haven’t watched much.
I finally finished watching the last season of Vice Principals with my husband. We loved it — Danny McBride and Walton Goggins were a hilarious duo, and the ending was so unexpected that my stomach hurt from laughing so hard. We’re now watching Invincible on Amazon Prime, which is surprisingly good. Is this show my new obsession? I think so.
And if you’re looking for some good YouTube videos to watch this week about books and reading, I recommend checking out Dakota Warren’s latest video report of all the literature and film she consumed in May and Jack Edwards’s very entertaining video on which modern books he thinks will be classics in the future.
And that was this week!
I’ve really enjoyed my break from social media. Losing myself in books and stories rather than the endless doom scroll has made me actually feel like a real human being again. I feel like my creativity is recharged and I’m ready to tackle rewriting my book next week.
If you have similar feelings from my stream of consciousness, let me know. I’m so eternally grateful for the Substack community — there’s so much kindness and support here.
Until next time,
- Madeline
This is so beautiful. I prefer to stay at home too but sometimes it gets so monotonous, I just have to go out for a while. I'm proudly not on social media, just on Substack. It's the best decision I've ever made because social media is so frustrating! Anyway, good luck with your book!
This resonates deeply; I feel so overstimulated when I step outside, and from social media, that I find myself running on a numb autopilot until it eventually comes out in tears or some type of frustration. Books and writing have always been a saving grace for me too. I hope more kindred spirits can find each other, and the world can take time to slow down & be kind to each other more often. I'm not exactly sure how we get there as a collective, other than bringing attention to it like you have here. So important to discuss and realize so many of us are feeling the same!