How do you write when everything is awful?

(This is a rhetorical question.)

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I don’t want to write about how terrible the world feels right now. We all know. And yet I somehow keep forgetting. I find myself thinking God, I feel awful, anxious, I don’t know what’s… Oh. Yeah. Of course.

It’s hard to write in these circumstances. It’s hard to do anything. And yet I do. I read brilliant books and I watch Friends with my eldest (one episode a day from the start), and I watch Friday Night Lights with my youngest and I buy a blood orange cheesecake reduced to £3 and I see two films in a row at the cinema and I listen to my Spotify Daylist (80s Movies Golden Oldies Sunday Afternoon) while I make dinner and I text memes to my group chats and I cuddle Noodles and laugh at her irritated face when I try to take a photo of her toe beans and I stand under a too hot shower and I think wet world good, dry world bad.

And in between all of the above, I think about the book I need to start promoting and the novel I need to finish writing and I think What’s the fucking point?