Here at last, we shall be free.

Dear You, 

I’m writing to let you know that the second book in my short-book project is out. It’s called What We Should Do When This Is Over and it follows an old man and a young boy as they try to navigate a world in which no one goes outside anymore and normal seems very, very far away. 

I wrote this book, with illustrations by my good friend and artist Rikus Ferreira, to deal with my own anxiety about the pandemic and to talk about the mundane, everyday things that I miss. This morning, my 3 nearly-4 year old asked me if we could go to the beach and I had to try and explain, again, about the really bad cold that’s going around and that’s why we can’t go to the beach. Or to the playground. In two weeks, I’m going to have to try and explain why she’s not going to have the birthday party I know she wanted. And her birthday is the day after mine. Remember the world where someone would blow on a cake and we would all eat it? Everything feels so far away. 

Between days when I could accomplish nothing and nights when I can’t stop working, I made this. The friends I’ve shared it with so far have responded positively to it and I hope my readers enjoy it too. 

You can buy a copy and read more here.

I’ll be doing some live readings on instagram and Facebook soon, so keep an eye out for those.

Thank you for your time. I hope you’re well out there and I send you my absolute best, 

Iain S. Thomas

I am mailing you today because the world is ending and I felt like sending an email was the only thing I could really control, the only thing I could really contribute in the end.

I am mailing you today because we are thrown apart and we are thrown closer and we are all in the same boat.

I am mailing you today because that is the only miracle here, at the end of the world, and that is that we’re all in this together.

I am mailing you today because I hurt so I know you hurt and by reaching out to you, I know someone is reaching back to me.

I am mailing you today because I am doing what I can.

(You can subscribe by clicking here.)

It is nurse month. It is doctor month. It is delivery driver month. It is the neglected month.

But it is not National Poetry Month.

It is national alone month. It is frustration month. It is how am I going to pay the rent month. It is why can’t I get anything done month. It is what is normal month. It is just trying to get through the day let alone the month month. It is I need an answer month. It is trying not to let everything fall apart month. It is desperately seeking structure month.

Just show me the poem that makes a sick person well. Show me the poem that stops every restaurant I love from shutting down. Show me the poem that makes the world normal again. Show me that poem and then tell me how this is poetry month.

Because otherwise, it’s just trying to find the bright side month. Because this is this month that has been a year month. This is what’s going to happen to my kids month. This is a million body bags month.

Any other month in any other year can be National Poetry Month. But not this one.

This is tightness in the chest month.

This is trying not to cry month.

This is the lonely month.

And this is not National Poetry Month.

 

This is my new book, the first in a series of short books that explore that human condition, what it means to be us, how we relate to each other and what loves means in all its different forms. It’s self-published and I’m really proud of it, if you want to support it, you can buy it as an ebook here and in print by clicking here.

Grab a free .pdf here or if you can afford it, buy it for $3 as an ebook on Amazon here.

 

I should be working on the book I’m supposed to be working on but instead, I’ve dropped everything to finish this over the last two days. My kids have been asking me questions about what’s going on, and where everyone is, and why they can’t see their friends.

So I made this book called “Where did everyone go?” as a way to talk to them about it. I’m giving it away for free as a pdf (the links are at the top) but if you have the money, you can also buy it as an ebook for $3 on Amazon  – if you grab a free copy, please leave a review on Amazon.

My best,

Iain

In 2007, I started making art on the internet because I had an office job and I wanted a place where I could share some part of myself that wouldn’t be controlled or manipulated by other people.

I had no expectations of it beyond the fact that it would be somewhere that I could escape to each and every day for a few minutes at a time and create, without any interference. It would be a place I could talk to myself, outside of myself, and people I could no longer talk to.

It was naive, innocent and incredibly productive and I think part of that was the fact that, while I did have a long term goal of eventually collecting everything I did into a book (which became the first I Wrote This For You book), I focused on the simple easy steps in front of me.

I told myself,

“I can write one poem today. I can write one short story or just one sentence. They might not be the best, they might be terrible, but I will try and if I fail, I will try again tomorrow.”

It is January of 2020 and I am trying to look not just at the year ahead but at the decade ahead and where I want to be and what I want to do.

I am paying even more attention to the individual steps I will need to take to get there, to what I want to do with my time and the days I have.

I want to connect on a deep, meaningful level with my friends and family, with the people around me, and my readers.

I want to make beautiful things that matter and move people, and move myself in the process.

I want to lose myself in good work, in talking about the things that we all need to talk about.

I want to learn and I want to grow and I want become more me.

I wish you all the same, and success, and growth, and intimacy and less fear and more love.

P.S.

Something I’ve been using since last year is, Skillshare (I get a few dollars in return if you sign up for a free trial through that link). Whenever I run into a creative problem, there’s always something on Skillshare.com that’ll inspire me, or show me how to accomplish what I’m trying to accomplish. It’s great and if you want to try it out for a while and January hasn’t been kind to your wallet, you can use it for free for three months and see if there’s something in there that inspires you to do more with your days in 2020.

P.P.S. All my books, artwork, clothing and everything else are now available in one place, here and if you want to support me, this is a great place to do that. You can also help me spend more time writing by making a small donation every month on Patron.

Growing up, the idea of being an artist, of living a creative life, wasn’t something that seemed like a feasible way to make a living and so I’ve always worried that I’m doing the wrong thing, that I’ve made a mistake and at some point, it’s all going to come tumbling down. I know it doesn’t make sense and I know it isn’t real but what my mind believes at the very back of it, and knows at the very front of it, are two different things.

I’ve lived with a fear of scarcity, of not having enough or being equipped to find enough for my entire life, and it’s something I’ve always run from, no matter what I’ve accomplished or done. But I found a way to beat it this last Christmas. Instead of worry about not having enough, I gave something away.

Instead of getting myself any presents, I asked my wife to make a small donation on my part to givewell.org (this is not an affiliate link, they’re just a really good charity). And on Christmas day, instead of having something else that I needed to worry about scratching, or trying to figure out where to put it, I had nothing. And then something strange happened. That constant gnawing inside of me that I didn’t have enough, went away.

I think giving something away sent a message to that stubborn part of the back of my brain that refuses to listen, and it got through:

How can you not have enough, when you have enough to give some of it away? 

I didn’t make a Bill Gates level donation, just what I personally could. And of course, there are people who are really struggling out in the world, who live hand-to-mouth and worry about the roof over their head, so this message isn’t directed at them. It’s directed at the people who might be able to help them, who in the process will be helping themselves because if I’m honest, I don’t think I’m alone in this experience, this worry that chases me late at night.

The ghost of Not-Enough haunts this entire planet and to fight it requires us do the unthinkable: To spit in its face, and say, “I have more than enough. And I will share.”

I wish you more than you will ever need, and I wish you the wisdom to know what to do with it.

I have gone on twitter and made the mistake of scrolling down a little bit further than I should’ve because that’s that’s when the anger starts, and that’s what the machine does, it makes us angry. And who am I to question that anger? Anger is what changes the world isn’t it? But all I know is that I don’t want this feeling in my chest today.

I just want to make something beautiful and real and honest. This has always been about trying to be honest for me and the most beautiful things are the most honest. And I find if I scroll down anything too far, I get sucked into another world and I start to ask the wrong questions, “Am I writing the right things?” or “Is this what people want to hear?” Instead of the only question that matters –

“Is this true?”

Every good thing I’ve ever written has come from that place. The world is frustrating and I am struggling to remain a whole and good person in it. This is true. I am a parent and like all parents, I constantly questions whether I am doing the right thing. This is true. I am not always sure what I’m doing with my life but I worry that if I don’t project an aura of authority and confidence, the things I want to happen won’t happen. This is true.

If you are a creative person that would be my only advice for you today: Ask yourself: what is true, and what is everyone too afraid to talk about? Listen for the answer and then go and make something that matters. It will resonate and it will touch people. Thank you to everyone who reached out to me yesterday and made the day feel a little less lonely, I appreciate each and every one of you.

This is true.

And my uncle. And my cousin. Each a year apart, from completely unrelated things. Maybe the universe is just trying to be efficient and let me have one really shitty day instead of a few spaced further apart. I am doing the only thing I can which is writing about it. Art for me has always been a way to allow emotions to leave my body. I know if I sit down and write, or paint or play a song, or just run for long enough, the thing will leave me and I will be able to feel something new, and maybe the new thing will feel better than the last.

I have this dream where my father meets my daughter and my son, and she’s obviously shy and she hides behind me. He’s in a wheelchair and I think that’s strange for kids. He’s in a hospital, some kind of asylum or something. After we finish hugging, he looks at me and says, “Can I come home now?” I don’t know what it means but I do know there’s a kind of weight on me because my kids will never meet him and so in some way, I have to try and translate some part of him from the past, into the moments I have with them. I have to tell the stories he couldn’t, try and do the jokes and the bits he did.

It’s just a day for being sad. The strange thing is, I forget. I forget for a few days around the anniversary and I think to myself, “What the fuck is wrong with me?” And I try and work out why I’m feeling anxious and depressed and like I’m swimming up river and then I remember, someone says something or I see something and then I remember, oh yeah, today’s the day I got the phone call from my mother, “Your father didn’t wake up, I need to the number for the priest, the one who married you, do you have it?”

We were married in the backyard of my parent’s house two weeks before he died, so that he could be there. Which makes it sound like we knew he was going to die, we didn’t, he’d had multiple sclerosis since I was born and so I grew up watching him go from cane, to walking sticks, to a wheelchair, to a bed, so he was always dying in front of me but you forget about the things in front of you when they’re always in front of you. I am not religious, just spiritual. As I wrote somewhere, a wave does not stop being a wave when it crashes against the shore. The wind does not stop being the wind.

So I like to thing he’s here in some small way, in a joke, a smile, a photo. I miss him. And my uncle. And my cousin. And I’m just going to spend today missing him, and resting my head on his feet when we watched tv, and his dumb jokes and his presence and the fact that sometimes he’d just come into a room I was reading in and he’d just sit there in the same room as me, doing nothing, making me feel uncomfortable and I didn’t understand why he’d do it, but I understand now dad. I understand.

I miss you. We all miss all of you.

Where do you fit?

Not here says the forest and the valley.

Not here says the page and the publisher.

Not here says the math and the machine.

Not here says the coach and the field.

Where do you fit?

Not here says the river and the rain.

Not here says the bench and the park.

Not here says the street and the traffic lights.

Not here says the coffee shop and the drive-through.

Where do you fit?

Here, says the silence.

Here, when you close your eyes, in quiet rooms.

This is the only place you fit.

When you are barely even here.