REMa Grace

Delusional, Dreaming, Decomposing

random journal entries, mycelial mess, capturing moments

(Journal, Mar 06, 2025)

---

Delusional is a funny word. It seems to attach itself more to certain types of work and people. Every artist, visionary, inventor with big dreams was once ‘delusional’. But then they did it…

the whole world is absurd, I’m just harnessing the madness…colluding with the chaos. drifting with the mischief. snarling at the darlings. crawling and scrawling around in this ere cesspit of late stage capitalism, trying to find some kind of meaning that isn’t completely insane,

c’mon ‘BE REALISTIC’

What you mean, be more like a bunch of man-children trying to run a country? Get them back in their pen they need a boxed milk & a nap. I vote for smacking to be allowed in this circumstance.

*sighs*

•········•◐•·········•

random journal entre

There’s a thin line between sanity & insanity, and I just keep running past it, oh well, it’s overrated and in rare supply these days. More bothered about scoring a high-end cheese for half-price in the reduction section.

No, you’re right. Don’t think I’m recovered. I’ve went from depressed panicky slug to a hypomanic-anxious state fuelled by precarity and crisis

I’m sharpening myself whilst loosening myself. I cocoon, but I’m in the process of learning how to transform. I’m nobody really, but that means there’s not much expectation

This isn’t a rags to riches story. This is a recluse to rooted story.

•········•◐•·········•

I’m about to click publish on the most significant project update of my life. At a time where I’m riddled with the worse anxiety and paranoia. Last week I got in a right state & thought almost everyone I knew truly hated me for absolutely no legitimate reason. I’m the most financially insecure I’ve ever been in my life. I went to my GP again today, and was left with absolutely nothing useful. They were chewing gum extremely loudly. A sound which irrationally triggers a volcanic rage inside me. Again, they agreed to send more letters to the various waiting lists I’m on, in the meantime all they could offer me was medication to basically slow my heart rate down. There’s horrific metaphorical richness there…but that’s for another journal.

It’s surreal to be pushing forwards again with a campaign for a mycelial-minded arts hub for cultural transformation. There’s this stubbornly ‘delusional’ part of me that’s an old-fashioned warrior. This is a time in history where we need to stand up for ourselves. We’re pretty screwed by my honest estimations, but our downfall could also be the most liberating time in our history. We could be the last generations who get to be legend-makers, storytellers, dreamers, visionaries. It’s strangely liberating.

If we’re fucked, then all that’s left is a challenge: how do we want this story to end? Do we want to end it with a group of men-children, who need to be put back in their playpen, running the show? Or do we want to finally rise up together and be the legends that we already are?

•········•◐•·········•

This New Land is where we all find that perfect intersection between what we’re good at, what we enjoy doing the most, and what the world needs. We’re not visitors here; we’re all rooted to each other and to the land. We’re working side-by-side with each other, artists, philosophers, fungi, insects, traditionalists, compost bins, craftivists, young activists, old eco-warriors, queer ecologists, people like us, people different to us, abled, disabled, neurotypical, divergent…No matter how exclusionary & oppressive the wider world is, this is a safe place to mend, grieve together, and transform pain into building, connection, and regeneration.

Pinterest

•········•◐•·········•

Excerpts from ‘Opening Letter’ (full ‘New Lands’ article here)

“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Lilla Watson

I want to be an instrument for change, an absolute weapon for mass construction; but not the director of. I want to vocalise; but only to be an expression of exactly what you, we need to hear. And to be honest with you. I’ve been losing my voice. So many wounds are being opened up. I’ve been drenched with narratives that people like me, that people from all kinds of ex-centric groups, are unworthy of leadership positions, are wrong-uns, incompetent, stupid, lazy, and without real merit. Most people like me already battle with feeling inferior, but recently having it repeated openly by many others has degraded my confidence, made me self-conscious of my skin again, and surfaced old scars I worked so hard to heal. It isn’t just the spiteful comments that speak to parts of myself & people I love, it also pains me to see trans people, refugees, and mentally unwell young people so viciously targeted.

As I write this, I’m feeling so many mixed emotions. There’s rage, defiance, and also the urge to take safety in corners again. Despair and devotion. Pessimistic hope. Total anxiety and absolute certainty. I know very well that statistically people like me don’t get to do projects like this, but, still, I’m stubbornly hanging onto my dreams. There’s fear of standing out, looking stupid, and being unable to follow through. I’m a dreamer, creator, carer, lover, fighter, but I’m also painfully rooted, somewhat unhinged (sometimes funny, often not…), and I’ve forgotten to eat my tea, again. I’m unable to bring this project into reality without pragmatists, organisers, managers, and people who actually have a fully working part of their brain known as executive function.

Many of our broken bodyminds are a symptom of decaying times. This place would listen to grief and pain as messengers—without always trying to heal and purify. We keep approaching healing as if it’s mostly individualised, inside-out. It also works outside-in through the toxic structures we uphold, the places we choose to build, and the spaces where we gather together. I’m growing tired of the wellbeing industry. How can someone as receptive as me be well on a sick planet? I want liberation. I want to be one small part of a legendary movement.

So-called ‘marginal’ and ‘underrepresented voices’ are the global majority, but we have to all come together, resist being turned against each other, and find allies with power. This project has to bring together the ‘margins’ with the mainstream; without falling back towards the ‘safety’ of the status quo. The centre and comfort zone is where stagnation happens. This project wants to call-in the people who desperately need liberation, alongside everyone who wants it. Many of despotic world leaders are trying to turn us against each other at a time we urgently need to stand together.

•········•◐•·········•

mycelial wisdom on ‘failures’ – everything can be recycled

I capture my worse moments in videos, pictures, or journals. I tend to catastrophise when things ‘fail’. The below picture was taken January 2025. This was the day I found out the main core funding apps for our CIC, including the New Lands project, were both unsuccessful. Both results arrived on the same day (this is unusual considering they were from different funders and sent at different times). I’m sat in my mums living room, because this was a week where we all had a brutal flu strain, and I was helping support her & my sister. I hadn’t been able to eat properly for around 7 days. Still recovering from the worst burn-out I’d had in over 5 years, and the failed Art Council project grant was a main contributor to that.

Every time I look back on these from enough distance, I see that any experience, no matter how intense, is temporary. Over the years this practice has strengthened my resilience. In the past a perceived failure or mistake, could tip me into severe depression, and take weeks, months, even years, to recover from. Now I take a serious slam to the psyche and can get back to The Work within days. After nearly 4 years of running a small CIC, I’ve got a pile of unsuccessful job applications, failed grant apps, successful funded projects that didn’t achieve everything hoped. Every single ‘failure’ taught me a lesson. Sometimes it took three attempts, but almost every project I/we set out to do ended up happening, just sometimes in a totally different shape.

& so maybe this New Lands project won’t happen, yet. But I’ll find a way to recycle that ‘failure’ into something else.

•········•◐•·········•

journal

I’m a gut driven creature, and my ‘mind’ might be in turmoil stirring in the nomad land of anxiety, uncertainty, and self-doubt. But as someone who has always absorbed too much, I know the best course of action is to allow myself to be fully in this pain, to listen to it, and then to weaponize it. I’m holding it inside too much, it needs to find an artful shape to escape my body. The stronger the pain I take in, the stronger my wrath and force will be when I work out how to return it back into the world.

•········•◐•·········•

this random jumble is what this space will receive.

final words inspired by the endless wisdom of Sophie Strand, whose book launch I just enjoyed yesterday,

let me be good soil

let my biggest ‘failures’ slowly build me into a masterpiece

let my deepest pain be transmuted into the sharpest blade for change

my worms need feeding, no really