"Roads?! Where we're going we don't need Roads!!!"
I went stargazing on Friday night, did some time travelling, and found no stars but lots of hope.
At Heart Leap, I explore how to build a happy, creative, and simple life. At 9 a.m. on Tuesday and Thursday, I host ‘happy writing hours’ for paid subscribers. It’s for anyone who is trying to write a book, start a substack, or just have a little accountability for their writing practice. We chat for 5 minutes or so, and then we write quietly together for the rest of the hour. It’s strangely comforting and motivational to have a cohort of writers to support you and write alongside you. (Today’s link is at the bottom of this post; come and try it out for free today.) I also run monthly master classes on motivation and inspiration.
"Roads?! Where we're going we don't need Roads!!!" Doc Brown, Back To The Future
On Friday night, I went stargazing at the Stone Haugh Stargazing pavilion near Hexham, right in the middle of the Gold Tier Dark Skies Park in Northumberland, with Liam Reid, an astronomer.
It was a very dark, stormy, and unfortunately cloudy night, but luckily Liam was excellent company and took me on a journey to the stars and back.
In a hut on a hill, I discovered that:
We will soon be able to travel and live on the moon and even Mars.
Our houses on the moon will be built by 3D printers in space
We will grow our own food, à la The Martian (and we will be able to grow more than just potatoes).
We will be setting off for galaxies far, far away on space ‘arks’ which are built for generations to live and breed on as they boldly go where no man, woman, or child has gone before to find habitable planets.
I learned that the sun, our very own star that we revolve around, is 4.5 billion years old.
It certainly puts your life and worries in perspective.
Moonwalking
It was truly an enchanting and enlightening night.
Sitting on a hill in the pitch dark with the storm roaring around us without the sun or any twinkling stars anywhere in sight, I reflected on how the sci-fi TV programmes of my childhood were coming to pass.
In a few decades, so much has changed and much progress has been made.
When I was last in London, I went to see Tom Hanks’ Moonwalkers, a 360 film experience, which tells the story of the Apollo Moon landings. This century, there are new Artemis moon landings scheduled for 2025, where there are plans afoot to create a permanent base on the moon.
What once seemed like a fairy tale is now a reality that thousands of space scientists and engineers are working towards.
Watching the astronauts land on the moon on massive 360 screens in London, looking up at the black skies of wild Northumberland, and witnessing that big ball of cheese rise in the sky almost every night from my apartment in the rooftops of Alnwick, I can’t help but feel emotional, proud, and excited about what could be possible when you do literally reach for the stars.
If humankind can build new cities in the sky what else might be possible in the next few decades? There is so much doom and gloom out there in the news, but if we focus instead on the positive possibilities, it gives me hope.
We worry so much, we catastrophize, and we weight ourselves down with such gloomy stories.
What might happen if we told ourselves new stories?
What if we could send our future selves back in time to tell us about the most wonderful things and lives we have created?
Question of the week
Today, my official word of the week is ‘enouement’. This is a French word that describes an “emotion in which you finally see the outcome of the future and you have the feeling of bittersweetness since you can’t go back in time and tell your past self.”
If you think about your own life, and your future self could give a message to your past self, what would she say?
Here’s the link for the Heart Leap Writing Hour. We start at 9 a.m. today.
Suzy Walker is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Heart Leap Writing Hour
Time: February 6, 2024, 09:00 AM London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87026321338?pwd=SQlXXguZ3j3Lb6sh7TrM8pzC4guwlj.1
Meeting ID: 870 2632 1338
Passcode: 999413
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Amazing!!! Back to the Future GOLD! I did my writing hour this morning - I was too late on the school run to log in so just did an hour in Starbucks. ☕️
That sounds like such a magical evening, what an experience