Celebrating the power of noticing life's tiniest joys
One year of sharing our everyday magic on Notes - my favourite weekly community ritual!
This VoiceOver was recorded unedited in my home so there may be a couple of throat clearings and word jumbles along the way, possibly a dog or a cat in the background. Whether it’s something you need or prefer, I hope you enjoy it regardless.
Hello lovely
I love Substack Notes - really, really love it.
Honestly, I probably spend too much time on there when I should be doing other things but that’s a conversation for another day. I’m not sure exactly what makes this space different to other platforms, maybe it’s just because it’s new and we haven’t ruined it yet or maybe it’s because we’ve seen a negative tide sweep into those other spaces and we’d like to try doing it differently here. Maybe it’s because so many of us are looking for an online home that’s cosier and kinder than the others. Or perhaps it’s because it feels like genuinely social social media - there are real conversations, we check in with each other, and share ideas and interests in a way that I’ve not experienced before. And it’s fun. Either way, I’m glad it is the way it is and I’ve enjoyed using it ever since it was launched a few months after I joined Substack.
As a side note, the recent addition of video has made many people understandably anxious about Notes turning into TikTok or that the focus is being moved away from quality writing onto other types of content creation. But, from what I’ve seen so far, we’re choosing a more gentle use of moving images here and, as someone who likes to experiment with all kinds of creative forms, I’m all for it. Here’s a short video I shared this week from the local flower park (tap to play, if you’re need of a nature fix):
But this letter isn’t about video, it’s about celebrating our everyday magic threads and the community that’s grown from those weekly Notes. On the 20th April 2023, about ten days after our Notes feeds appeared, I shared a photo of some trailing plants in a sunny patch of my kitchen and invited people to share their own examples of everyday magic in the comments.
I was delighted that people started to share photos and stories straight away and decided to do it again the following week. Since then it’s become one of my favourite Saturday rituals and I’ve done it every single week since - one whole year of sharing magic! Over that time people have shared some milestone moments - new houses, meeting grandchildren, beautiful holidays and swimming with dolphins - and those are lovely to see. But more often than not people have shared the quiet joys that are present in the everyday, the mundane, and the domestic: coffee in a favourite mug, the sunlight on their sofa, a moment in nature, or time out with a book. Accessible magic.
Writing this post made me wonder what types of photos and moments I’d shared most often so I decided to sort through them in search of common themes. Peggy, my cat, is the most regularly shared closely followed by nature and flowers. There’s a fair few of cups of tea and coffee and some books scattered throughout too. While I tend to take photos most days the ones I share in these Notes aren’t necessarily my “best” photos, they’re just representative of a moment in time I wanted to capture, something I loved seeing, or a way to show how I spent time on a particular day. Sometimes I edit them, sometimes I don’t. Either way, it’s not really about the photos - it’s about the wonder I felt in that moment and the desire to document that feeling so I can remember and relive it later.
So, here are a few of my most-shared subjects from the last year gathered together from my everyday magic Notes.
Peggy: she’s always nearby when I’m cosied up in bed reading, writing or just resting. She’s here with me now, curled up sleeping. She’s a constant source of soft cuddles (balanced out by high-pitched screeches) and loves a good book. It’s a bonus that she’s so photogenic but I’ve yet to meet a cat that isn’t…
I love having flowers on the kitchen table and I always take loads of photos of them. Some of these were given to me, some I bought, and some were in my Mum’s kitchen since she does the same thing. I do love a falling-apart-gracefully tulip.
I’ve written before about taking photos of shadows and patches of light. That obsession continues so of course I shared a few slices of light and shadowy shapes; there were even a couple of rainbows that made an appearance on the bed.
My kitchen table is the centre of our home - I know it’s the same for many of us - it’s where we eat, work, chat, host, and it’s more often than not covered in bits of projects, cooking experiments and books as well as the aforementioned flowers. A few months ago I wrote about trying to sort out my insomnia by having a regular wake up time so the kitchen table is also where I now sit bleary eyed with coffee before anyone else (apart from Peggy) is awake.
Here are some favourite kitchen table scenes I’ve shared: candles and wild garlic, freshly baked sourdough, a lovely letter from
along with a garland of prints all the way from Canada, and some rhubarb and eggs from a friend’s garden.Getting out in nature is one of my most-loved things to do and I know most of us feel the same way about fresh air and green spaces. Over the last month I’ve been stuck inside (shakes fist at chest infection) so having these photos to look back on does cheer me up. I’m looking forward to days of calmer, warmer weather soon so I can get out and capture some more, Shetland ponies included.
Taking bubble baths, visiting art exhibitions, and going out for coffee are also among my favourite ways to spend time so I’m glad they’ve all made at least one appearance in these Notes. I also love a stroll around the town, especially the pier or the rocky shore (anything to be near the sea) and a stomp in the snow whenever it appears. It’s amazing how much the same view changes through the seasons, isn’t it? I love that this practice has helped me to notice that.
Most often of all - whether or not I share it in a photo - my everyday magic comes in the form of the people (and animals) I share my life with.
Our home is still in the midst of ongoing renovations and for years now it’s more chaos than calm with boxes, half-done projects, and stuff that doesn’t yet have the home it needs, so it’s a fairly stressful environment in that sense. To find solace amongst the to do lists and to soothe my irritation that I can’t walk freely around any of the rooms without tripping on something or having to squeeze around some out-of-place furniture, I tend to zoom in on tiny corners that are pretty and focus on the almost-done bits rather than sharing the rest.
But, just in case anyone looks through these photos and thinks my house is tidy, my life is organised, and that everything is magic all the time it’s absolutely not the case. If anything, I look for the magic because my life isn’t like that - I don’t imagine anyone’s is, not really, despite what we might see and believe based on what’s shared online.
Hard days will still be hard even when you’re looking for moments of joy, this practice doesn’t remove the pain or the grief or the frustration. What it does do for me, though, is remind me day after day that there are still good things even on the worst days, even if they only last a moment. Looking back at these photos - as well as others I’ve shared here and the thousands more I’ve taken - I can see the moments behind the magic, the hard times lingering just out of shot or the challenges that I didn’t explain here but I still know were present. But it doesn’t make me any less glad that I still tried to find something good that day and it certainly didn’t make me feel worse at the time.
This practice, that we’ve joined in together over the last year, is there to remind us all to keep looking even if we don’t think we’ll find anything worth capturing. The lesson I’ve learned is that as long as I’m willing to look there’s always something there worth finding. Seeing other people find those moments too is the best gift of all - it’s a community reminder that there’s still beauty in the world no matter now dark it seems. Looking back through these Notes has been so comforting: we’ve captured and shared and celebrated hundreds of tiny moments and that’s a kind of magic in itself.
Thank you so much for sharing your moments with me - with everyone - and I hope you’ll continue to join in the Notes thread over the coming year. And if you’ve seen the thread but haven’t shared a moment or photo of your own we’d love to see what you’ve noticed each week but, equally, there’s no pressure to do that unless you want to. I’m just glad you’re here enjoying it with us. If you haven’t seen the thread before or would like to join in this week, here’s the Note I shared yesterday for you to scroll through and add to, if you’d like. I’d love to see a corner of your day:
Have you enjoyed these posts on Notes? Have you shared any moments there this past year? If you have, what’s a favourite of yours? Does it help you to tune out some of the chaos and find a minute of calm like it does for me? I’d love to hear whether you’ve found yourself looking for more everyday magic lately - let me know!
Take good care
my favourite weekly Note - your Saturday note! Thank you Charlene! Isn't it beautiful how people love sharing beautiful and fun things - so different from other social media platforms. 💛
Your weekly notes have made me look out for everyday magic during the week, so thank you for making me notice! This was a lovely post, and as always I enjoyed listening too! X