The beauty of the unremarkable

Notes on traversing the mundane

Wait! Just Listen is a weekly Sunday newsletter on living a purposeful and meaningful life, in a digitised world of opinion polarisation, gratuitous commentary and click-bait.

Included in today’s newsletter, (as a supplement to my usual essay) is a review of a book that I wholeheartedly regard as the most important work ever published on the writing craft.

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Illustrated by: Anzhelika Tretyakova

The startling shrill of the alarm clock signifies the start of a new day, a war-cry of sorts catapulting me out of deep slumber into the rigours of everyday routine; a somewhat brutal re-introduction into the messiness of life. In a mindless trance, I glide across the surface of existence, performing the needful, no more, no less, insulated from the chaotic present while living in it.

As I sit in my home office, I’m greeted by the incessant churn of news feeds featuring a cacophony of mixed metaphors, dramatised pronouncements and grandiose windbaggery. People misquoted and soundbites challenged, so the wisdom can be superficially presented as sage correction; the media in a nutshell for you.

If the above sounds like a rather bleak extract of Orwellian dystopia, then I can’t disagree. It does.

But there is catch. There always is.