My house has been feeling a bit... spooky lately. There’s a weird presence I can’t quite put my finger on.
A few weeks ago, an audiobook spontaneously started playing on my phone in the middle of the night. Roxie Nafousi's Manifest, chapter 2: remove fear and doubt.
No explanation. No accidental button press. Just darkness and then suddenly – a disembodied voice telling me to challenge my anxieties.
But maybe it's not my house that's haunted. Maybe it's me?
My intuition has sharpened to a point since becoming a mother. I consistently wake up exactly two minutes before my baby cries out for me. Like some internal alarm clock synced to his consciousness.
Last month, I was out for the evening when an overwhelming feeling washed over me – I needed to go home. Right now. My partner thought I was being neurotic (fair enough), but when I started the car, a text lit up my phone. It was my parents saying the baby was awake, wouldn't settle, and could I please come home to help.
Separated by distance, I was still acutely in tune with what he needed.
Skeptics corner…
I know what you're thinking. Felicity, you're CLEARLY partial to a bit of woo because you've bought an audiobook about manifestation. You've also been bingeing The Telepathy Tapes, so you've completely primed yourself for this.
(Priming, by the way, is how our brains become more receptive to certain ideas once we've been exposed to related concepts. Watch a horror film and suddenly every creak in your house becomes a spooky spirit rather than settling foundations.)
And yeah, you might be right. But also... booooo, so boring. Imagine if something else was happening here? Something we can't quite explain?
I'm choosing to lean into it because, frankly, I need a bit of magic and mystery in my life.
The magic of being alive
As everything becomes quantified, optimised and algorithmically determined, I fear we’re losing touch with the nebulous, inscrutable magic of being alive. AI can't feel the inexplicable tug that pulls you from sleep moments before your baby needs you. Or the thousand other feelings that rush through your body every day.
Cold efficiency has its place. But when everything gets flattened into data points, we lose the texture of human experience – the goosebumps, the gut feelings, the strange coincidences that make life rich and strange.
So I'm making a choice to listen to my intuition, or whatever it is, and see what happens. Just for fun and to make life more interesting.
Listening for signals
I'm doing this by looking out for signals – things that catch my attention – and recording them in a notebook. Then thinking about how they're connected. Why they're catching my attention. What it could all mean.
I suspect this practice will sharpen my work too. Because when you're attuned to the subtle, the strange, the barely perceptible, you develop an uncanny ability to read a room. To detect the mood in minute detail. To pick up on verbal quirks that add texture and richness. To translate feelings into words people feel in their bones.
So excuse me while I go a bit spooky. While I listen to that quiet voice that says "something important is happening here”. While I jot down dreams and coincidences and moments of knowing that defy obvious explanation.
I'm betting on the human magic algorithms can't replicate. Fancy joining me?
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