ALONE, TOGETHER

FOMO / Saying No

Office party, dinner party. Garden party.

So many reasons to celebrate and gather and so much work - here is Nicola Toulson-Clarke making Pavlova for a function I hosted at my house last week.

Last night I hosted a dinner and today a lunch: work and life mingle best over food, connection, ideas. We know this.

I can imagine someone has a good gig catering for @substack’s own “summer fete” to which I was generously invited this evening in London.

But I just could not go.

At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others – poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner – young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

In working life we often feel alone, and sometimes the party makes it worse not better.

In times of grief you work and carry on living and then suddenly you stop short. Your inner voice just goes, no, I won’t go out after all.

Even to the most marvellous party.

Ever seen a dog who doesn’t want to go into a dark shed? They just STOP.

Me and the toothache-surgery-recovering dog Dapple have just called a stop to any more hosting, schmoozing, schlepping for a little while, even when delicious pavlova-like events beckon.

Once upon a time the summer season would beckon and the idea of missing a party was…unthinkable. Classic FOMO.

I did go out to see other people’s work last week when a girlfriend took me to a Members’ Preview of The Summer Exhibition - the fabled Royal Academy Show where in amongst modestly placed Tracy Emin and Julien Temples there is work in search of a red sale sticker by complete or relative unknowns.

The quiet anonymity appeals to me: hosting and organising is in fact a way of hiding or controlling - it’s the being out at the party unprotected which is more like hard work.

So i’m writing this and then washing up (hard work) and reading and thinking (listening to Apple’s brilliant history of classical music).

That’s more than enough right now.

Here’s a post I made about living with grief, and working with it, six months in.

That said, see you soon!