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2025 so far, and a brief ‘Hiraeth’ update

Laura James
Mar 15
3 min read

This blog is way overdue an update! I pay monthly to keep this website going so I should really use it…

2025 so far has been pretty good though it doesn’t really compare to 2024. This time last year I was travelling to Boston via Iceland, then visiting my cousins in Ohio. I also had the Fallout TV Show premiere in London to look forward to, so….yeah. No. It absolutely does not compare!

If I don’t travel for a stretch of time I get a bit restless. I’m a bit inconsistent really - simultaneously a homebody who loves to work on the house and make it look colourful and cosy, but at the same time the anticipation of getting up at 3am to drive to the airport to visit a new country is my biggest serotonin boost. How can someone chase familiarity and routine, whilst constantly chasing ways to mix things up in her life?

It’s all about balance I think. Perhaps. I don’t know.

Hiraeth update

Anyway, Hiraeth has taken priority when it comes to my creative pursuits. It’s an evolving story and I’m still trying to figure out what I want from it. It’s heavily influenced by my childhood in the 90s (with fantasy themes) but I’m afraid of being mentally stuck in my past. It’s gone from being a story about childhood experiences to one of ‘letting go’ but that’s just how these things go with creative projects sometimes. They evolve, change, you learn things about both it and yourself as you write and prepare which ‘course-corrects’ your work. For me at least, I need to find a hook or theme that speaks to me personally and that I feel others would relate to. It’s interesting scrolling TikTok lately as I’m seeing a lot of millennials regressing in part to their childhoods. Getting into 90s music again, buying themselves the things they would have loved as children, playing old nostalgic games and so on. It’s a very common theme and while I do regard the 90s as one of the ‘better’ decades (some say millennials had it best as children but worst as adults, which I completely get!), I don’t want to spend the time I spend writing ‘Hiraeth’ stuck in a timeframe/frame of mind that I’ve since outgrown. It’s important to recognise the impact of my childhood and the wonderful memories I had, whilst also understanding that it’s okay and even beneficial to move on and recall the other amazing memories I’ve made since then. College, university, drum and bass gigs up and down the country with friends, the places I’ve travelled, etc.

Basically, to me, ‘Hiraeth’ is about the joys and pains of growing up and the unpredictability of life. How, out of nowhere, you are presented with situations that fundamentally change who you are, and how you navigate those situations; Grief, family break up, moving away from your childhood home where you have made so many core memories. Situations that push you far out of your comfort zone in life can cause people to clamber for familiarity which (for me anyway) is the memories of my childhood in the 90s.

The fantasy twist running through it all is a reference to how I used to draw, write stories and imagine up amazing scenarios, characters and stories as a child, which is something so many of us do. It’s a break in the story from some heavier more realistic themes.

Hiraeth is a hard one to describe to people when they ask for a summary of your ‘work in progress’ book. Because it is from the heart, you know where you want to go with it but you’re still figuring out the best way to express it all. As it’s my first book too, I’m still figuring it all out from a technical point of view (I’m even talking an online class to make sure I’m structuring the whole thing as best I can) - all while working a full time job and dedicating free time to other things I enjoy.

I might start to use this blog as an outlet for my creative thoughts and feelings. I keep a personal journal on my iPad but…that’s for my eyes only ;D

Since I know my website brings in a lot of Fallout fans, here are some photos from last year’s Fallout TV Show premiere in London. I can’t believe this was almost a year ago. Where the hell has the time gone?!

Fallout TV Show Premiere photos