I have mixed feelings about voluntary redundancies. Was an employee smart to accept a payout, or ‘deadwood’? And in accepting one, would a stigma follow me?

Some called me brave. But I’d had health issues — an MRI to eliminate dementia — and rationalised accepting a payout made sense. I’d lost the taste for work; I’d write. Like ‘The Alchemist’, the universe was leading me to my heart’s longings! 

When the writing expectations joined forces with the shame, the paralysis arrived. I couldn’t write. I struggled to do anything. 

Of course, no one could know. So I’d head off to my cafe, like I had my shit together, swapping lazy adjectives for nouns with grunt, wrestling with voices saying I didn’t deserve to spend my fixed income on an editor because my writing was shit. I was in a bind. I couldn’t will myself forward, and I couldn’t go back. I stood perfectly still, taking shallow gasps. 

Without work, this world was lonely, surrounded by neighbours I’d ignored. Easier to rush, head down, from driveway to door.

The thing gladdening my heart was my succulents, forcing me to use my hands, choosing design, colour, pattern. I did with my succulents what I couldn’t with my writing, longing to display it. After all those COVID years out back, something drew me towards the front garden.  

I followed my nose, joining my local ‘buy nothing’ group, collecting pots, demanding cuttings, dragging a table out front. 

And one day, I decided to invite my neighbours over. 

The entry price? Succulent cuttings!

I talked myself into adding my mobile number to the invites, brushing off the neighbours’ texts: ‘Sorry, busy’. I breathed deep, baked a cake and dressed the table. Even if just me, it’d be worth it. 

But I was never so relieved as when the first of seven households arrived, in our street of twenty. 

Tibetan nun Pema Chodron writes that ‘hot’ loneliness keeps to itself, feeling shame, wanting no one else to see your insides, while ‘cool’ loneliness accepts what is, creating space for other lonely souls to enter. 

There is no shame in ‘cool loneliness’. Only the hope that a loneliness warrior following their nose might, in the next breath, encounter another lonely warrior.

And guess what? The nation’s capital, Canberra — my home — records the highest levels of loneliness in Australia.

Breathe deep, fellow loneliness warriors, for we have work to do.