An Unsatisfactory World For Reasonable People

From a young age, writing has always been my form of escapism.

I still remember my kindergarten teacher, Jo, giving me an award that read, “To Shelby, my little writer.”

For a long time, I rejected it.

I didn’t believe I was particularly good at writing. In fact, I suspect I had become far too comfortable living inside that familiar bubble of toxic self-doubt. The kind that convinces you it’s safer not to try too hard, not to take yourself too seriously, and certainly not to put your work somewhere other people can see it.

We creatives can be strange creatures.

We have a remarkable talent for turning inward, endlessly picking apart our own work while somehow forgetting to look beyond ourselves. There’s something wonderfully masochistic about the creative temperament, too. We can exist in a self-induced shame spiral, convince ourselves that everything we’ve made is terrible, and then, inexplicably, sit down and make something else.

Perhaps that’s part of the deal.

Perhaps it’s even a little delicious.

Living deliciously!

This blog is going to be a little different from my usual musical musings and observations. I’m deeply proud of the voice I’ve developed through music journalism - my own rhythm, cadence and way of seeing music. I’ve spent years learning how to find the right words for other people’s art.

But when I really think about it, I can’t remember the last time I wrote simply as me.

Not as a music journalist.

Not as a critic.

Not as someone analysing somebody else’s story.

Just as Shelby.

And, if I’m being honest, that feels both exciting and terrifying.

So I should probably warn you now: some of the things I write about in the posts to come might make you uncomfortable.

They might make me uncomfortable too.

That’s part of the point of doing this.

Because telling the truth about a life is rarely neat. It isn’t always pretty, and it certainly isn’t always easy to explain. Real lives are complicated things. We contradict ourselves. We make mistakes. We hurt people. We get hurt. We make choices we’re proud of and others we’d rather forget.

Like a lot of you, I have lived a full and messy life.

There are things I’ve carried quietly for years because shame has a funny way of convincing you that silence is safer. There are things I buried, minimised, rationalised or simply decided were better left untouched.

My therapist actually told me to do this years ago.

I laughed it off.

I wasn’t ready.

Maybe I was too scared of what people would think. Maybe I was still too busy judging myself. Maybe some stories simply needed more time before I could look at them without immediately wanting to look away.

But I’m finally ready to try.

There will be stories, memories and themes here that may be difficult to read. Some posts may touch on grief, trauma, shame, relationships, mental health, loss and the messier corners of being human.

Where I feel it’s necessary, I’ll include trigger warnings - not to sensationalise what follows, but to give you the choice of whether you have the emotional space to enter that particular room with me.

Because that’s what I hope this becomes: a room.

A safe one.

A place for honesty, expression, curiosity and, hopefully, a little community. I don’t expect everyone to relate to everything I write, and I certainly don’t expect everyone to agree with me. That’s not what this is about.

I simply hope we can meet each other here with a little compassion and without judgement.

Most of all, though, I’m writing this for me.

For years, I’ve carried things I didn’t know how to say out loud. Some of those things have held me back. Some have shaped me in ways I didn’t understand until much later. And some are simply stories that deserve to be told because they happened to me.

I’m not writing this to create a perfect version of myself.

It isn’t about redemption.

It isn’t about reinvention.

And it certainly isn’t about pretending I have everything figured out.

It’s about letting go.

I want to write myself out of the corners I’ve spent years putting myself into. I want to take some of the power away from the things that have kept me quiet. I want to stop carrying shame that no longer belongs to me.

Maybe writing is how I finally do that.

Maybe it always has been.

And if you choose to read along, I hope you find something here too - whether that’s recognition, comfort, a laugh in an unexpected place, a moment of reflection, or simply the reassurance that you’re not the only person who has lived through complicated things.

You don’t have to arrive here with everything figured out.

You don’t have to have the right words.

You don’t have to be polished or healed or particularly brave.

Come as you are.

I will.