“Exploring life through fiction, together.”

98% of my atoms have been replaced since January 2022. 

98%.

We spent Dead Week (Post Christmas to New Year) with my family in East Yorkshire. There's always too much food and too many people crammed in overheating rooms. It’s been lovely to see them, and it’s got me thinking about what they see of me.

Because, sometimes, it feels like they just see who I was a few iterations back. Some of that is understandable; we don’t see them all that often. And sometimes I wonder if it’s because they’re not really looking.

Fiction Bite - Give her joy in her heart

When she was little, she’d smile every time she heard her name. So fitting, the neighbours would say, as she danced her way to school. Until the other kids started laughing.

By her teens, it was a stretch, but it was hard to say what was going on behind the silent stare. Gone was the girl with a dream.

Now it mocks her every time she logs in at work. She sees the three hateful letters and chokes down a scream. Anything to plaster over the void inside.

But she can’t, so she sends a shitty email to a colleague.

Regards,

Joy.

Quote of the Week

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera.

Book of the month

On the Shortness of Life by Seneca

One reason I love historical works is they shatter my misconception of what is a modern problem. Too busy, not sure if you’re wasting your one shot on this planet? Go read Seneca. Turns out they had the same problem in Ancient Rome (albeit with different window dressings). It’s a quick read at just over 100 pages, and it helped me reexamine the dross I let fill my life that stops me from truly living every day to its fullness.

Final Words

I have labels I can’t shake. Things people will always associate me with, no matter how much I have evolved since.

And I’ve replaced 98% of my atoms since last January.

98%.

So then I’m stuck. Am I my badly-remembered history? A smattering of events loosely strung through time to make a coherent story? Am I merely my atoms? And if so, who do I become when those atoms change? If I’m neither, if I get to pick who I want to be this year, who do I want to be? And how can I keep that identity in the driving seat?

Who are you this New Year? Who do you want to be? Who do you want to let go of? Would you be willing to hit reply? It’d make my day to hear from you.

With Love,

Josiah

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