When people ask me when I started writing, there are many answers I could give them, but I usually refer back to my 19-year-old self.
I was in my second year as an Economics & Politics undergraduate student at the University of Bristol. I’d thrown myself into life in a new city and had fun, but I was overindulging to a self-destructive extent. Lost in a haze of raspy dubstep basslines, drug-fuelled afterparties and clunky, shallow relationships with women, I stopped turning up for my degree and started dissociating. I became someone else.
When I returned home to the grey Heathrow suburbs for Christmas at the end of 2010, my nurse of a mum and doctor of a dad saw right through my fickle, inflated bravado and exhausted demeanour. They challenged me to confront what was, after a reluctant trip to my GP, labelled as depression. The independence of moving away from Greater London had overwhelmed me, as it does for so many young people when they first fly the nest. I would never have admitted this at the time, let alone paid attention to it, but looking back, internally, deep down, I was gripped by the fear of what I saw as my parents’ impending separation. Years later, their divorce would rock my world to its foundations. I think I foresaw a destruction and rebirth.
I was not a victim — if anything, my behaviour was a brand of self-indulgent complacency that only privileged middle-class men are capable of — and this is not a sob story. But there is no doubt that, on return to Bristol in the early months of 2011, I required a remedy with which to find myself again. While deciding to retake my academic year, hanging out with my then-girlfriend and now-wife, Yasmin, and taking up a full-time job as a waiter at an Italian restaurant on Whiteladies Road, where I would sneak olives from the fridge to keep myself fed during shifts, I sought a habitual cure for my waywardness, and came up with two, for body and mind, respectively.
First, I signed up to the boxing society. I passed the intense initiation and attended trainings religiously, hitting the bag until my wrists ached, sparring at the gym with fellow novice students as well as hardened local Bristolians who, revelling in the free chance to pummel a bunch of neeky university boys, dealt punishing bruises to my face that gifted me quick, necessary lessons in humility and resilience.
Second, I started a diary. Beginning on a cold night in January 2011, I set myself the goal of writing a page down by hand every day. I committed to never missing an entry. It didn't matter how busy I was or how lazy I felt. If I couldn’t think of anything to write, I would sit in silence until I came up with something: mundane descriptions of dishes I’d eaten that day, rants about injustices I read about in the news, recollections of funny or painful conversations with friends and family members.
In soft ritualism, on the same day I stopped taking anti-depressants in the summer, after six months of writing the diary, I ripped up its scribbled-on pages, shoved them into a metal bucket in the garden and set their papers alight until they burned to ashes.
The next day I bought a fresh notebook and started again, not realising that I was paving the way for my future career.
My practice had ripple effects beyond helping to cure poor mental health. Writing with my hand became an adaptive, malleable answer to different types of questions. It forced me to slow my thoughts down when I needed it to. I began articulating my feelings more wholly and with greater clarity. I would often start a page with a problem and finish it with a solution, travelling, in a matter of minutes, from frustration to elation.
No matter what happened — not that I experienced any great tragedy or injustice throughout this period — I knew I could retreat inside the sanctuary of my diary to make sense of and create some distance from life outside of it.
Entering my final year at university, sensing my daily entries become more confident and analytical — conversational observations about trends in society, reviews of new releases in music culture, self-conscious reflections about being mixed-race — I typed some of them up into weekly blogposts and shared them with my handful of Facebook friends. I opened the portrait of my private world up to be seen by a public gallery.
In 2013 I graduated from Bristol, returned to London and worked in advertising for a year to save up money before traveling across India and Central America. In 2014 I returned to London again to complete my master’s degree in Political Theory at London School of Economics. In 2015 I moved out of my family home to start working as a youth and education worker (which is how my book, Cut Short, starts), and began pitching my ideas for pieces of journalism to magazines and newspapers, which soon turned into a side-hustle writing career, then, by 2018, a nearly full-time one.
And here I am, in 2023, writing these words to you.
Throughout it all, my daily diary has rooted my writing practice like the stone floor of a temple roots meditative prayer. It now centrally exists as a dark green Italian leather-bound cover protecting exchangeable wads of thick lined paper that I cover in sprawling thoughts every day. I only allow myself to write in it if I’m in an appropriately focused headspace and physical setting — my kitchen table with my morning coffee, in silence at the library, over a pint of beer at the jazz bar, or on some remote picnic bench in one of London’s bigger parks. Only fountain pen ink touches its pages. I have other journals and notepads for other purposes: a small one that fits in my jacket pocket if I'm leaving my backpack at home, a scrappy one if there’s a risk of it getting lost, a plain paper one if I want to sketch a drawing, too.
Most of my published writing starts in my diary. It informs the first pieces of advice I give to younger aspiring writers. If I miss a day, or occasionally a whole week, I take it to mean that I’m travelling too fast, and I take measures to steady my pace.
I keep meaning to invest in a therapist. I am fully committed to doing so very soon. I know that I need it; that nothing can be a substitute for professional support. But until I take the plunge, my diary pages will have to be the next best thing.
ALL CITY aims to document or inspire social impact and change through storytelling.
If you’re interested in learning how to do this, I teach a monthly short course, ‘Writing for Social Impact’, at City, University of London.
The next course is Friday 14th & Saturday 15th April 2023.
A fully-funded place is available for a young adult (18-25 years-old) from an underrepresented background and/or facing financial difficulty.
You can find out more and book your place here.
Love this!
A beautiful challenge to find my pace and a pen Ciaran! Thanks