Someone Else’s Dinner Time

Smelling someone else’s cooking from the hallway always makes me sad.

As I climb the stairs after a long day, every floor tells a different story.

In Poland, it’s often the smell of heavily fried onions, garlic too.

Sometimes the pungent aroma of Maggi seasoning fills the staircase.

The smell brings nostalgia, warmth, but also an air of sadness.

I don’t just smell food.

I imagine lives.

Maybe it’s a grandmother boiling pierogi for grandchildren, standing over the stove, ready to pretend they aren’t eating enough, and feed them more.

Maybe it’s a couple opening a bottle of wine while one of them stirs the same creamy pasta sauce they’ve made a hundred times - the repetition signalling routine, care, and familiarity.

Maybe it’s a mum, cooking for the kids, convincing them that vegetables aren’t really so terrible.

The smells become stories.

Each door is a passing chapter, echoing a life I don’t live.

A life I can imagine, can long for.

What’s strange is that the people inside probably can’t smell any of it the way I can.

They’re too close.

The smell of onions isn’t the same when you’re in the apartment.

Something about the wind carrying it changes its character.

It’s likely that my kitchen is exploding with wonderful smells, yet I’m nose blind to the sensations.

Garlic. Onions. Butter.

Garam masala blooming in hot oil.

Chicken fat melting into the pan.

Yet when I’m so close, when I’m in the experience, it seems hard to notice.

It carries less weight.

Not because the smell has gone.

Because my brain has decided it’s no longer worth noticing.

Because proximity has destroyed the illusion.

By the time dinner is ready, I’ve become almost nose-blind to the very thing that would stop a stranger in the hallway.

Everything that would impart a sense of nostalgia, of longing, of imagination, of loss.

All I can think of are the dishes.

A Metaphor for Life?

Often, I wonder how much of life works like that.

How much of my existence would be appreciated by others from a distance, and how much of that experience is killed by proximity?

Maybe it’s just me?

Do we stop noticing the things we’ve spent years trying to build because we’re surrounded by them every day?

The warmth of the space we’ve built in our own apartment.

The friends who always turn up.

The ritual of making coffee every morning.

The quiet bus ride home, after a long day.

When we’re inside our own lives, we’re too busy dealing with the hot oil and the washing up to appreciate the smell.

Yet somehow it’s effortless to appreciate someone else’s, to add a narrative, to add weight to an existence we’re not sure of.

I smell dinner through a closed door and imagine the life I want.

I see friends laughing outside a café and imagine belonging.

Distance edits reality.

It removes the over salted pasta water, or the argument that happened twenty minutes earlier, the stress of existence, the dishes waiting in the sink afterwards.

What’s left is the aroma.

What’s left is imagination

We experience other people’s lives the way we smell other people’s cooking: as a carefully filtered collection of the nicest parts.

Of what we can conjure up in our head, from a distance, through a closed door.

Perhaps that’s why nostalgia feels so powerful too.

Memory Works Like a Hallway.

Memory doesn’t remember the tears in your eyes from chopping onions or how exhausted you were after work.

It remembers the smell drifting through the stairway.

The warmth.

The feeling that someone was home.

The perceived warmth we feel when we see the lights on in another person’s apartment.

What Now?

Maybe the goal isn’t to constantly appreciate every moment while we’re living it.

That’s probably impossible.

Our brains aren’t built that way.

At least, my brain isn’t.

But maybe every now and then it’s worth stepping outside our own apartment.

Looking through the window.

Trying to smell our own cooking as if it belonged to somebody else.

Because there’s a good chance that the life we’re rushing through today would smell great to a stranger walking past your door.

A year ago I started writing this piece.

A piece about how everything feels temporary, forever.

I’d just lost my job, and had enough savings to cover approximately one month’s living costs.

I’d informed my landlord that I was leaving, after only nine months of living by myself for the first time.

I’d been sober for just over a year, working on my shit, saving as much as I could, struggling to get to the next payday.

And just like that, a year’s progress was gone.

Only one year, but the first year of trying.

Of sobriety, of financial responsibility.

The result? I could no longer afford my apartment, and would be without a home within a month.

After all that happened,I found myself sifting through my belongings, trying to minimize what I held onto, in order of both sentimentality and function.

That postcard from Thailand? Keep: it’s light and takes up no space.

The nice lamp I bought myself? Bin: it’s too big and I can replace it.

Things always felt temporary when I was doing drugs, it felt like part of the lifestyle.

But in sobriety? I (naively) expected things to patch themselves up quickly.

And so, in self-pity mode, I decided things were temporary forever.

I couldn’t accept that I’d lost my job due to my own failures.

But I could accept that life was unfair, and everything was temporary.

So, I started writing this article, and (apparently until now), never finished it.

July 2026

Fast forward a year later, and after a brief period of what I’d called ‘technical homelessness’ (not having a place to live but not actually being on the streets), things are going quite well.

I moved into an overpriced studio apartment at the start of 2026, accepting that I had to make it work somehow.

To grow my community projects.

To freelance.

The aim was to make 5000PLN a month: enough to pay rent and barely eat.

And, I made it work.

It’s July now and I’m doing well financially.

Well, not amazingly, but things are going well.

I can pay my rent, eat, and save something - pretty much the basic requirement for a satisfied life both physically, financially, and mentally.

In April, I decided to get a puppy - it was scary and cost more than I really had to spend, but it marked something important.

A more permanent decision. A longer term commitment.

So… dog, apartment, savings, income.

Do things feel more permanent, or less temporary?

No.

There’s still this creeping feeling inside of me that everything will collapse.

That one bad month of event ticket sales and I’d be back to square one.

That one bad financial decision and I’d be fucked again.

That my one month of savings still isn’t enough.

And, of course, these things are true.

I should save more, I should standardise my income.

But this post is more about a feeling, because the physical state of things doesn’t matter as much as the internal feeling.

I was never raised with financial stability, with long-term economic prosperity in mind, with mortgages as part of the conversation.

So how can I expect things to feel anything other than temporary?

Permanence is a state of mind, probably, something you work towards for more than a year.

Maybe that’s the work.

It’s teaching yourself that not everything is about to disappear.

A year ago I thought permanence was something you achieved once your circumstances were secure.

Now I think it’s something you practise while they aren’t.

I’m still saving. Still building.

But maybe permanence isn’t believing nothing will ever fall apart.

Maybe it’s trusting that, if it does, you’ll build again.

Not in some weird rebellion against chemically altering my cranium.

No big fuck you to fake healing or whatever.

I wasn’t throwing pills down the toilet and announcing that I WAS DONE.

I just forgot.

In the same way that I sometimes forget to eat before I leave the house, or wash my clothes in the evening when I get back.

It honestly happens more often than I wanna admit.

But, on day three I noticed something strange.

I felt... good?

Not manic good, I hadn’t entered a higher plane of consciousness, and wasn't ready to run a marathon.

I just felt… different.

More awake?

With a bit of energy?

Conversations felt less like administrative tasks.

The world had a bit more texture to it.

And then I was hit with a bout of dizziness - the usual sign that I’ve forgotten to take my meds for a few days.

So I continued taking them, not realising that maybe I felt better because I didn’t take them?

And then it happened again and again over the course of a few months.

And obviously, as someone clutching at the straws of feeling good, I tried to identify why I kept feeling so GOOD?

And then, about two weeks ago - I realised.

I’d tasted freedom, or something like that.

So, I just stopped taking them?

Or rather, I forgot for a few days and then decided to not continue.

Not some grand act of liberation, just pushing the boundaries of my own regulation a lil.

Lexapro, Oh Lexapro

I’ve spent around four years on antidepressants.

Or, more accurately, I’ve spent four years negotiating with antidepressants.

In some weird existential crisis about what I want my life to look like, and how I want to feel.

So it’s been a pattern of:

• Taking them.

• Reducing them.

• Increasing them.

• Adding other meds to balance out things,

• Removing other things.

• Convincing myself I’d finally cracked the code..

And then, changing my mind six weeks later.

The Psychiatrist or the Genie?

At some point I started thinking about those stories where a genie grants somebody three wishes.

The wish always comes true.

But there’s always some weird catch.

Everything you touch turns to gold and then suddenly your entire world is gold and you’re fucked.

You win a million quid but it’s actually blood money.

Something like that - you get what I’m trying to say.

With antidepressants the catch is usually less dramatic - or more dull.

You feel less anxious but your sex drive disappears (more on that one day).

You stop catastrophising but somehow stop feeling excitement too.

You no longer spend three hours staring at the ceiling bubbling over about one person that spoke to you badly.

But you also stop caring at all.

Again, this isn’t universal.

Antidepressants did give me my life back, helped me get sober, helped me with the emotional resilience I needed to succeed.

But my experience often felt like getting exactly what I asked for and then spending years wondering about the small print - the other side of the bargain.

Because the medication worked.

That’s the irritating part - that’s the hardest bit to wrestle with.

I wasn’t depressed.

At least not in the way I had been before.

My life became manageable.

The lows became less low.

The anxiety became less crushing

The endless mental noise became quieter.

Over time I started noticing something.

I wasn’t suffering as much.

Yet I wasn’t particularly alive either.

I felt content.

And contentment is weird because everybody tells you it’s the goal.

The Futility of Contentment

CONTENTMENT IS NOT THE SAME AS FULFILMENT.

Or, at least, not on a permanent basis.

At first, feeling content feels great, but eventually it feels like something is quietly rotting in a backroom of your brain.

Like things are passing, and you have your back to the wall, happy watching the paint dry.

The same applies to contentment and growth.

All things that are necessary to live a fulfilling, happy life.

I think I confused these things for years.

If somebody had asked me how I was doing, I would’ve said fine.

And I would’ve meant it.

I was fine.

Fine is a very underrated thing when you’ve spent years feeling terrible.

But eventually I started wondering whether I’d mistaken the absence of pain for progress.

Whether I’d confused emotional stability with emotional development.

Whether I’d become a calmer version of myself or simply a quieter one.

That’s a difficult question because antidepressants are so subtle and weird, especially after a long time of taking them.

Looking Back

I don’t regret taking them.

I suspect they helped me enormously.

There are periods of my life where I genuinely needed the support.

Without them, I had already spent years in a weird, stinky depression, and they were the only thing that pulled me out of that,

But I also think it’s possible for something to help you and still eventually stop being the thing you need.

A life jacket is useful when you’re drowning.

Less useful when you’re trying to learn how to swim?

Now what?

So I’ve stopped taking them.

And now I have feelings again, for better or for worse.

WOO.

I don’t feel happier.

Not exactly.

I feel more.

And I’m increasingly convinced those are different things.

Some days I miss the emotional smoothness.

Other days I’m sad that the rough edges have appeared again.

That the tension in my jaw is back.

But, at least these things are mine.

and I can deal with them.

Slowly and surely, between the grey and rainy spring days, the sun is showing itself.

No different to the preceding six years, I am expecting summer to fix all of my problems.

Particularly after a heavy winter.

Winter depression can be blamed on winter.

Autumnal blues can be blamed on the summer winding down.

Spring sadness can be explained by the indifference in the sky.

But, summer?

Happiness is due.

Yet, I am not radiating joy.

The first warm days served only as another factor in my overwhelm.

Hot, sticky, blinded without sunglasses, and waiting for the heat to disappear.

And then it disappears and I long for it to return - at least I have something to pin my sadness on.

The rain.

The scratch that can’t be itched

As summer approaches, I want to travel.

I spent many years of my life treating the season as an excuse for unfiltered hedonism.

Jumping from place to place.

Tokyo one morning, Hanoi the next.

Beers for breakfast, thai stick for lunch, valium for dinner.

And then it stopped working.

And I stopped travelling.

And my summers became less about running, and more about dealing with the reality of staying.

And so I began to enjoy summer - the seasonal fruits that pop-up on makeshift market stalls across Warsaw, the hum of the weekend along the river, the gentle breeze that runs through the city.

But this year, it feels different.

Warsaw feels like a city that’s nice in summer, but is not a summer city.

The local government does a great job at lining the streets with gorgeous flowers and preparing for the season ahead.

But, this year, more than ever, the post-communist patina can’t be hidden.

If anything, the brightness only brings it out more.

Dust flies around the city and the once charming retro trams become saunas for the unfortunate.

I dream of being in Italy and peruse skyscanner almost daily for affordable flights to take me somewhere that’s not here.

The stuffy heat of Hanoi won’t fix my problems, but from a distance, cheap pho and iced tea give me enough comfort to soothe whatever is bubbling inside of me.

Ryanair won’t fix me, either

Equally, I have grown to hate travelling.

The stress, the unfamiliarity of a new place, the deep expectation to have a good time.

The tension and sadness that I carry with me.

When I leave, I want to be home, Warsaw.

When I’m home, I dream of being sat on a cobble-stoned street in Italy, eating a mildly stale pastry and sipping on an espresso.

Maybe Calabria will fix my problems?

Probably not.

So, for now, I remain in stasis.

Not enjoying either.

Let me start very bluntly.

Warsaw is not a place you come and think kebab.

There’s no deep expectation of a world-class shawarma in this city.

But kebabs here are, in my humble and very arrogant opinion, foul.

I’ve had my fair share of kebabs in this city - places old and new.

I’ve chased the ‘craft kebab’ trend, regretfully ordered Kebab King late at night, and even tried the places that have had a queue every weekend for the past thirty years, outliving the viral restaurant era.

None of them have made me want to go back.

I can never quite put my finger on what makes the kebabs here so subpar, mainly because it differentiates so vastly.

Sometimes it’s the ketchup and mayo mixed, passed off as ‘łagodny’ or ‘mild’, it’s vagueness in name pointing to the one clear fact: it’s not spicy.

Garlic mayo? possibly. A more yoghurt-adjacent sauce? also maybe. Or ketchup and mayo mixed.

A heinous concoction at the best of times, let alone in a kebab.

Other times, it’s the surówka - again, vaguely pointed towards some concoction of shredded vegetables - most often white cabbage.

And lastly, the biggest variable - the bread (the most important past of any sandwich adjacent food).

Bad bread lets down even the best of ingredients, even though it has its place.

Let’s not go too deeply into what passes as ‘lawasz’ in Poland (a thin bread from Armenia and the surrounding regions).

I will tell you though - kebabs are not supposed to be made in a tortilla.

And yes, I am aware that I am from the UK, and our weird, grey, homogenous mix of sheep arse, eyes, and fat spinning on a stick does not put me in a position to claim kebab expertise.

The Toxic Relationship Begins

My local kebab place is located approximately one hundred metres from my front door.

On moving in night, after arriving late, I drove past it in an uber, its artificial yellow lights glowing in the winter snow.

The first thing I spotted - it’s open?

2am.

Dead of winter.

Not only was it open, it was busy?

And so, after travelling all day, I dragged myself into the cold and headed their way, hunger leading me.

Approaching the shop, you’re greeted with bright yellow, fluorescent signs, adorned with horrid AI art - that’s fine though, I’ve come to expect that.

Obviously the place is greasy and claustrophobic.

I place my order in Polish and realise that the worker either doesn’t understand or isn’t listening to me.

I try again in English - same reaction.

The worker stares at me, exhaustion in his eyes, barely registering what I am saying.

Regardless, my order is in the system and card has been tapped.

One XL kebab (for some reason the sizes start at large) - no tomatoes, no pickles, garlic sauce.

When I get home,I unwrap that kebab and discover two things: there is no garlic sauce AND there is, in fact, many tomatoes in the kebab.

I’ve since come to learn that this is part of the game, or gamble?

The kebab, by all standards, was not good.

I ate it anyway.

However, filled with resentment and dissatisfaction, I threw the soggy piece of tortilla at the end of the kebab, back in the bag.

Partly disappointed in the kebab restaurant, but also annoyed at myself for being naive enough to get excited about the prospect of a good kebab in Poland.

So, I never went back, right?

Wrong order, complicated service, terrible kebab?

WRONG.

Of course I have been back, in fact, I go back at least once a week.

Loyalty Without Reward

I am a regular at my local kebab place.

I am a slut.

Whoring my stomach out for a nasty kebab because I can’t be bothered cooking.

Venturing back to the same shop for the same mediocre kebab, risking it all.

Perhaps it’s because it’s so close, perhaps I like feeling like a regular, perhaps I am a disgusting pig that loves terrible kebabs?

However, I have learned a few things about the process:

1. Confirm your order many times, and then again. Point towards the sauce you want, and then watch them try to put the wrong one on your kebab anyway, opting to point towards the sauce once more.

2. Watch them make the kebab. Watch the tomatoes go in, feel too fussy to ask for them to redo the order, decided that you don’t really mind tomatoes, and leave with tomatoes in your kebab.

3. Go enough times to discover that the workers will give you a free drink if you give the place a five star review. Feel the dishonesty flow through your veins as you give the place a gleaming review in return for a lukewarm can of Pepsi.

Recently, I’ve discovered ‘kebab w bulce” or “kebab in a bun’, the ominous item on the menu that is very inconsistently available.

Often you can get your kebab in a bun in Poland, but often it’s overstuffed with pointless vegetable matter and is a messy eat.

However, my local place uses a bun that is so cheap and nasty, and is so skimpy on the salad that it actually makes for an okay option.

Light, airy, tasteless, yet crisped up in the sandwich press, it acts as a perfect vessel for cheap meat and garlic sauce.

Is it now enjoyable enough to finish? No.

Do I think about it far more than I should? Yes.

The Ritual of the Bad Kebab

Obviously, late night, cheap kebabs are not supposed to be good.

Yet, after being disappointed many times, I begun thinking to myself, what drives me to go back?

It’s not quality, or consistency, or customer service.

It’s something far more makes for a great substack article on culture.

Eventually, the kebab stops becoming food.

It becomes part of the weird infrastructure of my life.

A fixed point in my otherwise chaotic life, in an otherwise chaotic city.

A place that is always there, regardless of whether your evening was good or terrible.

There is something strangely comforting about a place with absolutely zero ambition beyond remaining open and serving steaming piles of meat until the early hours.

No marketing team, branding exercise, small plates, pet-nat wines.

Just a familiar menu, stale baklava, and enough space for delivery drivers to squeeze through and collect their orders.

In a world obsessed with food experiences, this weird fucked up ritual I go through to get my mediocre kebab is one.

Not because the kebab itself is remarkable, but because the process around it is.

It is weird, deeply unglamorous, strange, and a little bit disgusting.

But it’s my strange little ceremony that i’m sure is repeated thousands of times across the city at the same time as me.

The kebab never got better.

I just became part of the ritual.

No, I’m not leaving.

But I am thinking about it.

Not in a dramatic, fuck this I’m outta here kind of way.

I won’t get a flight out of Poland tomorrow, never to return.

It’s more like a quiet question that’s been following me around lately – looming over me.

What the fuck am I doing here?

I’ve lived in Warsaw for almost six years now.

Long enough that it’s no longer a chapter in my journey.

The city served as a foundation.

I grew up here.
Had my first serious relationship here.
Finished my degree here.
Started my career here.
Got sober here.

Everything that matters – at least to the version of me that exists today – was built here.

And lately, I’ve added something new to that list: I started a community here.

Which makes the question harder, not easier.

Because this isn’t about running away.

It’s thinking about what serves me and what doesn’t.

The Weight of Potential

In the last year or so, something woke up in me.

A need to do.

TO ACTUALLY FUCKING BUILD SOMETHING.

It didn’t come out of nowhere. It was sparked – accelerated - by meeting Julia, who is doing god’s work in Berlin’s Polish community.

And somewhere along the way, that energy turned into action.

I built a community – Warsaw Creative Club.

And then another – Warsaw Supper Club.

An attempt to bring something into the city that I felt was lacking.

Together, they now reach nearly 5,000 people.

People who are here, physically - but missing a framework for belonging.

This isn’t unique to Warsaw. Of course, loneliness burdens everyone, across every city.

But in a city changing as quickly as Warsaw, it feels especially visible.

Increasingly necessary.

And yet, building something from scratch, something that doesn’t quite “exist” yet in the cultural fabric, is so fucking hard.

Not because people don’t want it – people really do.

Every event sells out.

People show up.

There’s demand.

There’s momentum.

There’s even revenue.

But success at that level doesn’t automatically translate into support at other levels.

Growth needs partners.

Collaboration.

Support from people and institutions that can take it beyond one person’s energy.

Something bigger than me.

And this is where the friction emerges.

Because despite the traction, I keep running into a kind of quiet resistance.

A lack of enthusiasm that’s hard to put my finger on, but impossible to ignore.

I understand the practical side of it: people are busy, priorities compete, and money talks. And I don’t have much of that.

But it’s more than that.

There are moments where I feel overlooked.

Dismissed.

Where communicating with a sense of enthusiasm seems to be a barrier rather than a bridge.

Not rejected outright, but… not fully considered?

I could turn this into something bitter.

It would be easy to.

Clearly, I have a lot of resentment about it.

But that’s not the question that interests me.

The real question is simpler, and harder:

Have I outgrown this city?

Because when you feel a genuine pull to build something, and the environment around you can’t quite meet that energy: the question becomes...

Is it a signal to push harder?

Or a sign to find a place that can meet you there?

Struggle – why do I choose you?

There’s a version of this story me that frames Warsaw as a teacher.

A city that forced me to toughen up.

To stop taking things personally.

To realise that not everything is about me.

And for a long time, I believed that.

And partially, it is true.

Now, remember that I’m British, and being friendly is in our blood.

Despite this, I told myself that the emotional distance, the directness of communication, and the occasional sharpness in everyday interactions - it was all part of the process.

That this was just what it meant to live somewhere that doesn’t immediately make space for you.

That my ego could toughen up and learn a thing or two from this place.

And it’s true – at least partially.

For a while, I held that lesson with pride, walking around feeling invincible to the need for approval, niceness, or pleasantry from anyone.

But when I told my friend about it, in what I thought was quite a profound self-observation.

And his response?

“That’s a pretty rough way to learn, though.”

And it stuck with me.

Because there’s a difference between growth and endurance.

Between becoming stronger and just getting used to things that don’t feel right.

Recently, too, I rewatched a great Polish documentary called Listy z Wilczej (Letters from Wolf Street) - I highly recommend that anyone who feels stuck as a foreigner in Poland watches it.

There’s a moment where the main character and producer, Arjun, asks his sound tech, Mo...

“Why do you stay?”

And she replies something along the lines of...

“I don’t know. Maybe I like to struggle.”

And that landed harder than I expected.

Because it didn’t feel abstract or edgy.

It felt familiar.

Is Clean Enough?

Warsaw is chill.

It’s clean.

It’s nice.

It’s safe.

Public transport is modern.

BLIK is convenient.

etc etc…

And an increasing amount of people like it here because of that.

“Compared to London or Paris, Warsaw is _____”

There’s a calmness to life here that’s hard to argue with.

Things work.

The pace is manageable.

You can exist here in relative peace.

Or, without someone blowing crack smoke in your general direction on the way to work.

And for a long time, that was exactly what I needed.

Who doesn’t need that?

After everything: the growing, the mistakes, the sobriety, the rebuilding...

this city gave me stability.

It gave me space.

It gave me a version of life that felt… good.

But now, after everything I’ve tried to build, everything I’ve pushed for, everything I feel starting to open...

I keep coming back to the same, almost stupidly simple question:

Is that enough?

Is a city being easy to live in enough?

Is calm enough?

Is comfort enough?

Or is there a point where those things kind of stop feeling like a gift.

and start feeling like a limit?

Because Warsaw gives me a life that I’d describe as functionally working.

But maybe there’s more out there for me? If only I could deal with a little more grit (and crack smoke)?

Maybe I’m meant for big bucks in London, or Berlin?

Maybe there’s something missing?

I don’t have the answers, but I do have an increasingly uneasy feeling.

I’m Not Leaving

I’m not leaving Warsaw.

Not now.

Maybe not for a while.

There’s still too much here: too much I’ve built, too much I care about, too much that still feels unfinished.

This city has given me more than I can easily walk away from.

And I don’t take that lightly.

But something has shifted.

Not enough to decide, just enough to make me question.

I’m thinking about whether this is the place that can grow with me.

And maybe that’s all this is, for now.

Not an ending.

Just an awareness.

PEACE OUT X X X

Day one: the awkward intro conversation on whatever dating app you’re using.

Day two: you’re spilling previous relationship traumas to a person you might not even meet.

Yes, the coffee date is set. But the chance that it falls through is high.

Still, the conversation continues.

You feel like this person gets you: they’re present, responding with the right things, and it feels like there’s real depth.

And then it ends.

Messages become dry.

Responses become fewer.

You’re left with an emotional hangover that feels disproportionate to the actual timeline.

Sometimes it feels personal. Most times it feels like an inevitability of the process.

You’ve spent several days opening up to an online persona - someone you might not even recognise if they walked directly past you.

Nevertheless, it’s back to the dating app of choice.

But what did we lose: the person, or the intensity?

Subscribe now

Digital Closeness vs Real Intimacy

Opening up mimics closeness.

Frequency feels like depth.

The “good morning” and “good night” rhythm creates attachment.

But without embodied interaction, without friction, what is it really built on?

We need the walk home after a date to decompress.
We need silence across a table.
We need space to reflect.

What does emotional escalation without physical presence actually equal?

Often, we finally meet, and it falls flat.

The rhythm doesn’t translate. The persona built online doesn’t quite match the person sitting across from you.

And this can happen for many reasons.

In-person presence reveals compatibility in ways digital interaction simply cannot.

So does intensity trick us into believing compatibility exists before it’s been tested?

And what impact is this having on our ability to connect?

When time is compressed into multiple reel-sending, emotionally vulnerable conversations across a few weeks, we begin to lose track of what real closeness feels like.

The awkwardness of it all.
The nervous first coffee.
Only knowing someone’s name.
Waiting for a message about a second date.

Without mystery, without longing, can we really expect romance?

The Collapse Pattern

This pattern feels cultural rather than personal.

It reflects our short-circuit dopamine cycles.

Digital connection operates like a feed: rapid stimulation, quick burnout.

It starts with swipe right, swipe right, swipe left, swipe right.

DING.

MATCH.

It ends within a week, or two.

Most importantly, it leaves us wanting more.
Leaving us with less tolerance for ambiguity.

Amid idealisation, we’re still left wondering:

Is this as meaningful to them as it is to me?
Am I the only one?
Am I speaking to a person, or to a projection?

In a world of digital gratification and constant speed, this model of closeness feels inevitable.

One collapses, and we move on to the next.

The Death of Mystery

Romanticism served a purpose.

The allure of mystery.
Waiting.
Uncertainty.
Gradual discovery.

These were part of becoming known.

Now, the newer model of romance includes full archive access and immediate psychological transparency by day three of chatting.

Can romance survive total transparency?

I’m not advocating for games or emotional withholding.

But when everything is revealed immediately, nothing is discovered.

In a culture increased psychological awareness, reflection, talks of vulnerability, trauma, attachment styles, it feels fitting to be honest, open, and straight up.

But there has to be a balance.

And it begs two questions.

Does knowing eliminate fantasy?

And is fantasy necessary for attraction?

Transactional Vulnerability

Even if the romanticist angle is naive, the core tension remains.

When everything is revealed, nothing is discovered.

And what we consider intimacy shifts.

Can early vulnerability truly count as intimacy - or is it emotional acceleration?

When everything happens at hyper-speed, emotional intensity becomes currency.

We begin to exchange trauma quickly. To signal depth. To prove seriousness.

Vulnerability can start to feel like an audition.

A demonstration of self-awareness.

But when vulnerability is repeated over and over in early-stage digital connections, it risks becoming rehearsed.

It begins to lose meaning.

We learn which stories land. Which wounds make us appear reflective. Which parts of ourselves are safe to package.

Oversharing doesn’t necessarily deepen connection - sometimes it simply artificially accelerates it.

And acceleration isn’t the same as intimacy.

Is Romance Even the Right Model?

One central question here is whether we’ve confused digital chemistry with compatibility.

Romance has always involved idealisation. But in a fast-paced digital sphere, that idealisation intensifies.

When we’re met with an online persona, we allow ourselves space to imagine who we’re talking to, to shape them into the person we want to be talking to.

And when it doesn’t work out, we’re left feeling like disappointed or empty, perhaps even cheated.

Or perhaps we feel nothing, and we move on.

Nevertheless, the intensity and high of the entire process becomes addictive.

We begin to seek intensity over sustainability.

And yet, the connections that often last tend to be slower, more ordinary, even slightly boring.

They involve inconvenience.

Friction.

Growth.

What if we’re pursuing something that mirrors the speed of society rather than the depth of connection?

The Bigger Cultural Layer

The rise of digital dating feeds what feels like disposability culture.

We are always one swipe away from novelty.

The attention economy has begun bleeding into intimacy.

Dating becomes shaped by an infinite options mindset.

One slight mishap, awkward moment, or social misstep - and we’re tempted to move on.

In moving from one digital connection to the next, we may feel autonomous, decisive, self-aware.

But we’re also be reducing our tolerance for emotional discomfort.

Spilling your guts to a stranger four miles away feels vulnerable.

But repeated often enough, it becomes patterned.

Curated.

Dating risks becoming performance - selecting which vulnerabilities to display, which stories to tell, which flaws feel acceptable.

We appear emotionally open. But we may also be protecting ourselves from the slower vulnerability of lasting connection.

And if another option is always a swipe away, does that matter?

Maybe we’re mirroring the temporary nature of modern life.

Everything else around us is temporary, refreshable, endlessly updatable - why would romantic connection be any different?

When the wider culture rewards speed, optimisation, and constant upgrading, it becomes harder to believe that something slow, inconvenient, and enduring is worth staying for.

The Digital World Can Be Okay

I don’t think the problem is digital presence itself - but how we use it.

Instant connection has real advantages.

It expands our social circles.

It creates opportunities that never existed before.

There are relationships that begin online and genuinely last.

This isn’t nostalgia for a pre-digital era.

It’s a question about how current dating structures shape our expectations, our pacing, and our tolerance for depth.

What impact is this having on our ability to find suitable romantic partners?

And when we repeat the cycle again and again, what happens to our capacity for the inconvenience of real-life growth?

I Don’t Have the Answers

And so we return to that rapid connection.

The confusion over whether it was real.

The tension between intensity and intimacy.

I don’t have the answers.

Maybe longing isn’t necessary.
Maybe hyper-speed connection does help us cut straight to compatibility.

But what does depth become when we accelerate it, package it, and repeat it?

Maybe slow connection is scarier than something immediate.
Maybe it asks for patience we no longer practise - or vulnerability we can’t control.

Or maybe the issue isn’t digital presence at all, but what we’ve come to expect from romantic connection: constant access, constant validation, constant feeling.

And maybe the real question isn’t whether digital presence is ruining romance - but whether we’re willing to tolerate the slowness that real intimacy demands.

Today is Tłusty Czwartek in Poland, or, Fat Thursday.

For those that don’t know, I’ve lived in Warsaw, Poland for just over five years.

That means I’ve experienced five February mornings watching people standing in queues for pączki.

A few times I’ve been in the queue, a few times not.

Five years of powdered sugar coating my red-raw frozen fingers as I bite into my second doughnut only 500m away from where I purchased them.

Five years of watching old ladies carry boxes of sweet, filled pączki home from the supermarket.

Five years of watching as every bakery and cafe in town competes for the most trendy, inventive take on a very yeast-forward fried treat.

Today was no different.

Some friends woke up early before work to secure theirs.

Some stood in line for hours for the “best in the city” - classic bakeries that have survived several periods of Polish history and still pump out delicious doughnuts to the masses, particularly today.

Others opted for modern interpretations - pistachio cream, matcha, salted caramel, even a savoury one filled with egg and mustard (yuck).

Lidl was selling them for five groszy (like two cents or something). Practically free.

And yet something felt different this year.

There’s a subtle political charge in the air.

Because Tłusty Czwartek isn’t just about sugar and rose jam.

Has it ever been?

The Past

The word pączek is closely related to the Yiddish ponczik (פּאָנטשיק).

Or the Russian ponchik (пончик).

The Russian version is lighter, often unfilled.

The Polish one is dense, yeasted, generously stuffed – fucking delicious.

The Jewish version typically fried without lard according to kosher rules.

Before the war, Jewish bakeries were a major part of urban food culture across Poland - especially in cities like Warsaw, Łódź and Lublin.

This means that the cultural cross-pollination was constant.

After WWII, with the destruction of Jewish communities, many of these shared culinary origins became “nationalised” without the Jewish layer being remembered.

Or, even if it is remembered, without it being spoken about.

Polish jews transported recipes for pączki to Israel, where they are now known as Sufganiyah (סופגנייה).

So, in many ways, questions of ownership, origin, and politics have always surrounded the humble pączek.

Like many foods in Poland, pączki bring up questions about national identity., cultural ownership, erasure, mythology.

Who gets remembered. Who gets absorbed. I’m sure you get the gist of it.

And that’s not even including the religious aspect.

Tłusty Czwartek sits in the Catholic calendar just before Lent - Poland’s equivalent of Mardi Gras or Shrove Tuesday.

Whether we’re eating fat, or pancakes, or doughnuts, the historical reason remains similar: fill up before you can’t for the next month or so.

So you end up with:

• A catholic calendar date

• A shared frying tradition

• Jewish bakers

• Polish customers

• And a pastry that sits somewhere in between

Which is kind of Central/Eastern Europe in edible form.

That layering is why it has always been political.

Religion, nationhood, memory, disappearance, survival - all folded into something that leaves sugar on your fingers.

Even in its most nostalgic form, the pączek has always carried history inside it.

The Present

This year, I’ve noticed something more contemporary attaching itself to the day.

A rejection.

Not just of bad fillings or supermarket quality (classic), but of American doughnuts.

Across social media and in conversation, I’ve seen variations of the same sentiment: no American chemical-filled ring doughnuts.

No hole.

Only proper Polish pączki. Rose. Candied peel. Tradition.

It’s subtle, but it’s there.

And when food starts being framed as ours versus theirs, you’re no longer just talking about taste.

You’re talking about identity.

Poland’s political landscape is permanently mid-argument.

At the same time, the United States is going through one of its own strange cycles.

Many Poles, young and old, are watching American politics with a mix of horror and distance.

The culture-war export feels less aspirational than it once did.

Right-wing outlets abroad often present Poland as a conservative stronghold, resistant to immigration and “woke ideology.”

The reality on the ground is more layered.

Urban Poland, particularly among younger generations, feels increasingly European-facing rather than American-facing.

And geopolitics matters too.

Tariff threats, tension with the EU, rhetorical friction around NATO -all of it filters down into how Europe feels about its transatlantic relationship.

When you feel rejected, you sometimes reject back.

Sometimes that rejection is loud and legislative.

Sometimes it’s quiet and cultural.

Sometimes it looks like choosing a filled doughnut over one with a hole.

What Now?

Maybe Fat Thursday hasn’t become political.

Maybe it’s simply reflecting the moment it’s sitting in.

Food has always carried politics quietly.

It holds migration and religion, capitalism and memory.

Even Lidl selling pączki for five groszy isn’t neutral.

It’s mass production undercutting craft.

It’s accessibility and commodification in powdered sugar form.

Nothing about that is apolitical.

The pączek sits at the intersection of Catholic ritual, Jewish history, national mythology, cross-cultural traditions, post-war erasure, EU anxiety and American cultural influence.

That’s a lot for a pastry to hold.

But maybe that’s the point.

With food, nothing is ever just one thing.

Everything has layers (just like an ogre).

Even dessert.

And maybe this year, more than most, those layers feel closer to the surface.

English Town, Polish Community

Recently, I visited home: Corby, England.

Corby is a post-industrial town like many others across the country.

Forgotten and neglected.

Bus stop adverts are dulled by years of grime. Potholes outnumber reasons to visit.

The air smells faintly of abandonment and weed.

Corby is close enough to London that it feels like it should be doing better, but far enough away that it’s not.

A familiarity across the Midlands.

There isn’t much to do there.

Every return trip follows the same rituals: one of them a slow walk around the town centre, a mix of nostalgia and reconnaissance.

However, this time, I noticed something new.

Shops that had been boarded up were open again. A few new businesses had arrived. A positive sign of economic life.

And then there were the Polish shops – they’ve been there for years, but they almost go unnoticed.

Even to me, someone living in Poland, it’s easy for these shops to blend in.

Or rather, they’re not ‘Polish shops’, they’re “Eastern European” shops.

The kind that collapse half a continent into a single retail identity.

Catering to the vast community that live in the town.

Inside, aged shelves bend under the weight of foreign produce, open barrels of pickles, cleaning products, chocolates, beers and dairy products.

Outside, windows are plastered with low-resolution images of food you’re expected to recognise, even if you don’t.

I counted four within a five-minute walk. One occupied a former mattress showroom.

The flags tell their own story: Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, sometimes all at once.

The message is clear - this is not for you, but you may enter.

The shops are here - but they’re not.

Vittles has already written incisively about the role of Polish shops in Britain’s food ecosystem, so I won’t repeat that work here.

What interests me is something adjacent, and more uncomfortable.

A Visible Invisibility

At the post office with my mum, I stand in the queue and hear Polish spoken four separate times.

Curiosity (and misplaced confidence) pushes me to show off my basic Polish. A conversation follows.

And then the question lands: why, for the UK’s second-largest immigrant group - nearly 800,000 people - do Poles feel so culturally absent?

This isn’t about numbers. It’s about texture.

Indian food is so embedded in British life that “going for a curry” barely registers as multiculturalism.

Jamaican patois has reshaped British slang.

Polish food, by contrast, remains enclosed.

It exists behind glass, behind language, behind a certain reticence.

The shops are there, unmistakably so.

Their deli counters smell of smoke and fat and fermentation.

Their shelves are full. Their customers loyal.

But most Brits don’t know how to shop there.

Which sausage do you buy?

Why are there six versions of the same thing?

Is that meat cooked, cured, smoked - or something else entirely?

Why is this shop selling Moldovan farm eggs?

And Poles, often stereotyped (sometimes accurately) as private, pragmatic, uninterested in performance, rarely step forward to explain.

The shops do not translate themselves.

The service is rarely given with a smile: maybe after a while, maybe after gaining trust.

Maybe if you ask.

But on your first visit, expect to be reminded that the minimum spend for card is £5, and that’s it.

When I raised this online, Poles were often quick to blame themselves.

“We keep our heads down. We don’t integrate enough. We stay within our own circles”.

But that explanation flatters Britain more than it deserves.

The Cost of Being Seen

Polish migration to the UK eventually moved into hostility.

Brexit sharpened this into something uglier, something more racist and weirder.

Visibility came with consequences.

I remember old women shouting at Eastern Europeans for speaking their own language in public.

“SPEAK ENGLISH UR IN ENGERLAND”

I remember how “Polish” became shorthand for threat, for competition, for cultural dilution.

When visibility attracts punishment, withdrawal becomes strategy.

So Polish culture in Britain survived in self-serving forms: shops rather than restaurants, delis rather than dining rooms, labels untranslated, interactions minimal.

A presence that sustains itself without inviting interpretation.

The Polski sklep becomes both lifeline and boundary.

You can enter, but you are not expected to understand.

Everywhere and Nowhere

And here’s the reality:

Poles didn’t just arrive in the UK; they contributed to it.

They filled labour shortages, kept towns like Corby functioning, opened businesses where others saw none.

And yet, culturally, they remain oddly peripheral.

Allowed, but not embraced.

Present, but not absorbed.

Visible, but not influential.

A Polish shop is acceptable.

A Polish accent is tolerated.

A confident Polish cultural presence - less so.

So, the question isn’t why Poles failed to reshape British culture.

It’s why British culture never learned how to receive them.

Because a society that only accepts difference when it stays discreet doesn’t integrate - it manages.

Brits in Poland

And even now, the imbalance holds.

British tourists arrive in Poland in growing numbers.

They eat well.

They photograph pierogi and overpriced funnel cakes.

They post about vodka bars and “unexpectedly good food” and return home impressed, surprised, enriched.

But very little of that comes back with them.

It doesn’t translate into curiosity on the British high street.

It doesn’t turn into Polish restaurants, Polish menus, Polish confidence.

The admiration remains private, temporary, souvenir-sized.

Poland is consumed abroad as experience, not carried home as culture.

So, the paradox persists.

Poles are visible when they serve, work, or supply - but not when they shape.

Their food is enjoyed elsewhere, their labour relied upon here, their culture kept neatly contained.

Everywhere and nowhere, still.

I promised myself that I would write on here every two weeks: I stuck to that for the largest part of the year, but then I blinked, and two months had passed.

Anyway, I’m back.

2025 Has Not Been Kind to Me

If you haven’t already read my previous posts, I’ve been sober for nearly two years.

(at least, that’s the next milestone).

One thing I expected with sobriety is that everything would fall into place.

In some ways it does, it has.

Mentally, spiritually, it has.

But there’s also some expectation that once you stop pissing your money away and wallowing in the depression of addiction, things might come together.

And so, I entered 2025 hoping for a few things: a career advancement, a healthier financial situation, a new apartment.

Instead…

I lost my job

I lost my apartment

I burned through all of my savings trying to make it work

I’ve spent the best part of 2025 in a state which I like to call ‘technically homeless’.

I haven’t spent a night on the streets, but I also haven’t had my own place for over six months.

A night or two here in the cheapest Airbnb in Warsaw, a week or two on a friends couch whilst they’re out of town…

To tell the truth, it’s been ROUGH.

I haven’t been sleeping on the streets, but I haven’t had my own space for enough time that I understand the stress of having nowhere.

Of having to minimize my belongings to a rucksack that’s suitable enough to carry enough.

Of losing socks (sounds trivial I know), belongings in the constant moving, of never being able to fully relax in any living space because it’s temporary.

And I’m not asking for sympathy here because…

I lost my job because I was a bad employee: high when I was high, napping on company time when I was sober.

So, What Did I Build in The Empty Space?

I guess this is the point of the article.

Typically, I am terrible at being proud of myself.

It’s not like I don’t try – I just don’t feel the pride.

Usually I just feel a relief that the thing I should be proud of achieving is over.

But this year, I feel proud.

Rather than spending the year resentful, sad, angry that things had turned out so shit.

I built something.

It started with a few Substack meetups.

And then I was convinced to start a creative community.

The first meetup had 16 people, out of a LinkedIn group.

But everyone hated LinkedIn, so I moved it to Instagram.

And then I put everything into growing it.

My time, my money, my energy.

And it worked…

Things just kept growing and growing.

And now we have over 2000 members in the community.

Things are going REALLY fucking well.

All of this from a single nudge, a single push.

A decision to spend my time doing something – creating connection.

No bullshit tech-bro app that links ur childhood trauma to a dinner experience.

Just low-cost, accessible events that felt safe.

A place for people to meet, with a premise, and get to know each other.

Later this year, I also decided to start a supper club.

14 people around a table, eating together, talking, connecting over food.

It’s not perfect yet, but the idea of cooking for a group of strangers would have been too much for me a few years ago, even if I am arrogant about my cooking abilities.

AND NOW ITS FUCKING HAPPENING.

I guess I chose value over abstract success.

Meals over metrics.

Real conversations over LinkedIn updates.

Warmth instead of security.

The Paradox

The reason for writing this came from the many coffee conversations I’ve had in the past few months.

When people find out that I’m basically homeless and skipping around the city to meet people, waiting to check into the next cheapest option, they’re always shocked.

I guess the expectation is that this kind of energy would come from someone in a stable position.

Well…

NAH.

And I still find that paradox kind of weird, thinking about what I’ve built in the empty space.

I didn’t get the life I thought I would get by doing the ‘right’ things.

But I did get a life that suddenly feels real.

In a way I though sobriety would give me structure, and it has in some sense

But more than anything, it’s given me space – and I apparently filled that space with people.

By the way (hehe), if you enjoy what I write, you can buy me a coffee right here - (hehe).

Picture this: you’re scrolling late at night…

Suddenly a grainy video appears on your screen: familiar household items from the early 2000s, a grainy video of a Blockbusters store - shelves full of DVDs, accompanied by melancholic music.

L’Oréal bottles shaped like fish.

Blue’s Clues notepads.

For a second, you’re transported somewhere else.

Filled with warmth, memory, nostalgia.

Desperately longing for a time that no longer exists: pre-internet, pre-smartphone, pre-digital.

It feels holy, doesn’t it? Like touching a relic from an unforgotten past.

You pause on it longer than you meant to, radiating with melancholy.

The sound, the blur, the camcorder camera shake.

Really, it’s nothing special, but it’s designed to make you feel like what you’re watching is sacred.

You don’t just remember that world, you miss it, even if you barely experienced it.

And you’re not alone.

Millions of people are watching the same clips, yearning for the same half-remembered places: the glow of Gameboy screens, the crunch of gravel under childhood bikes, the simplicity of the bygone eras.

Be it the 80’s or 90’s or 2000s.

Entire digital congregations gather beneath these posts.

“I wish I could go back.”

We label it nostalgia, but it plays out like faith.

A quiet, collective prayer for a past that feels purer than the present - even if it never really existed.

Even if 2008 was filled with economic collapse, or our parents were divorcing and losing the house, we’re soothed by the perception of nostalgic memory.

The smell of Dominos arriving in the pre-Uber Eats era.

The issue is, nostalgia isn’t just a slice of the pie, it’s fast becoming our entire belief system.

Nostalgia as a Belief System

We no longer remember the past - we worship it.

Just as with religion, our belief, our perception matters more than reality, than facts, than rationality.

We’re soothed by an unexplainable force bigger than ourselves.

Societally, nostalgia has become our most powerful shared faith.

It offers comfort, belonging, even moral guidance.

Like religious systems, it tells us who we were, who we are, and who we want to be again.

It tells us that salvation lies not ahead, but behind us.

In uncertain times, nostalgia becomes a map for the lost.

When the future feels horribly and increasingly unstable, and the present too fragmented, the past offers a weird form clarity, and illusion of what was, rather than having to face what is.

The world made sense back then, we tell ourselves.

But nostalgia is rarely about the past itself. It’s about the stories we’ve built around it.

It’s not memory, it’s myth.

But that doesn’t matter.

We rewrite it, sanctify it, strip it of its contradictions until only comfort remains.

Pure nostalgic comfort.

The past becomes desirable, and the present, by comparison, feels like exile

You can see this trend everywhere: in the regurgitation of analogue media, in the endless reboots and remakes, in the reutilisation of camcorders to create a ‘feeling’.

Entire generations kneel before the altar of “simpler times”, basking in fragments of a world that is built up on belief, rather than reality.

Was the 90’s really better?

Or the 2000s?

Does it even matter?

The Modern Church of Memory

It’s strange how much of our cultural output now revolves around remembering or memory.

Not history, exactly, not facts, - just remembering.

The past has become an aesthetic, a moodboard, a kind of emotional shorthand.

We don’t just recall old things; we re-stage them. Re-live them. Seek comfort in them.

Everywhere you look, something is being revived - fashion, film, media, sound, art, politics.

“Make America Great Again” - you get the point.

Even “progressive” movements lean on nostalgia now, rebranding the past as a time before neoliberalism - of shared community, solidarity.

On both sides, it’s the same emotional pull: the sense that something essential has been lost and can somehow be retrieved if we believe hard enough.

It’s that belief that mirrors religion.

And nostalgia is our god.

Online, nostalgia functions like a soft ideology.

Those lo-fi edits of early 2000s shopping centres, playgrounds, and 2000s bedrooms aren’t just wistful; they carry a quiet politics - one that deeply yearns for a version of life that felt simpler, slower, more certain.

More grounded.

The irony, of course, is that it wasn’t.

Again, I could draw back to how I felt in 2008 as an 11-year-old watching Madagascar 2, or Marley and Me, completely oblivious to economic collapse around me.

Or 2001 being the year I watched Shrek, not the year of 9/11 and the rapid change in global security, or invasion of numerous countries, or deaths of 1000s.

Maybe nostalgia smooths over the cracks?

It flattens history until all that remains is a vibe we can agree on.

And maybe that’s why it’s become so seductive.

Everything about the present feels slippery - truth, work, intimacy, financial security.

Hell, we probably won’t be able to buy a house, but at least we can ease ourselves into the warm memory of Tamagotchis.

In a sense, I feel we’ve lost faith in forward motion, so we turn back, convinced the map behind us was clearer.

It’s more than comfort, it becomes a form of control.

That’s why it’s everywhere, from marketing campaigns to political.

We’re not just reminiscing; we’re rebuilding the world in the image of our collective daydream.

The Transaction of Longing

If nostalgia is faith, then capitalism is its church.

Every brand, app, and streaming service has learned how to monetise our yearning.

They sell us fragments of memory: the simplicity of the early-web era, the warm glow of certainty, the taste of discontinued snacks suddenly “back for a limited time.”

Of course, I’m not going to expect them not to do this.

People gotta create value to sell shit to make money.

Instead, I’m looking at what this says about culture as a whole, as a symptom of an unhealthy society.

The past has become a profit model, repackaged in cycles that promise comfort on demand.

You can see it everywhere.

Netflix announces another reboot.

Fashion houses mine their own archives.

Tech companies coat new devices in retro design. I

t’s all the same message: the future may be unstable, but we can sell you a version of the past that never disappoints.

The irony is that nostalgia used to be spontaneous - a memory triggered by smell or sound, a personal moment.

Now it’s curated, packaged.

It arrives pre-formatted.

And yet, we buy in.

Perhaps it’s easier to feel something again than to adapt to something new.

No one likes change.

Especially when it’s rapid, full-force, endless, and everywhere.

In that sense, nostalgia is the perfect product.

It requires no imagination, only memory, or the illusion of it.

But there’s something deeply fucking tragic in that.

We’re living through an era that’s more connected than we may ever be.

Still, our collective imagination looks back.

Backwards? Warm, comfort?

Forwards? FIRE, BURNING, DECAY, ROT, COLLAPSE, WORSENING, WORSENING.

The Personal Cost

Nostalgia rests on comfort, but it depletes the present.

The more we scroll through reconstructions of the past, the harder it is to feel alive in now.

We drain any colour in the present in exchange for a single toke of glistening nostalgic comfort.

Everything becomes a pop-culture reference, a nod to the past, an attempt to recreate.

I’m guilty too.

So are you.

Nostalgia hits, then fades.

UPPPPPPP. Then down…

What lingers isn’t connection, but absence.

Nostalgia promises warmth, but it only momentarily delivers.

It loops instead of leading anywhere.

We keep circling the same emotional cycles, hoping they’ll still mean something.

And maybe that’s the real cost.

We stop facing the present.

We cling to what we’ve already known, calling it comfort when it’s really avoidance.

The past feels safe because it’s finished.

The present never is.

A lot has changed in five years.

I never planned on living in Poland, it wasn’t part of a bigger plan, but a series of quick decisions led to me being here, firstly temporarily, and then permanently.

And then I stayed.

For five years.

I spent the first few years hating it here.

I wasn’t ready for adulthood, maturity, to face myself.

I expected an entire country to shape itself around a small town British boy.

But then I learned the hard way.

Nothing changes for me, I have to change my expectations.

I grew up here.

I got sober here.

I got my first post degree job here.

I had my first serious relationship here.

And my first serious breakup.

I picked up a sense of fashion here.

I discovered how to cook here.

I pushed against the country, the city.

And then, I learned to embrace it.

To love it.

To spot beauty in every moment here.

People often ask me why I stay here, why not somewhere else?

I struggle to answer.

The truth is; it’s home.

In every dirty Biedronka, or gorgeous minimalist cafe, beaten up building, pristine metro system, crowded Żabka…

Is a part of me.

A part of my story.

So, here’s to five years in Warsaw.

In Poland.

And to a fucked up relationship with what we call home.

Thank you to everyone that has been part of my story here.

Nothing was the same, so it had to be worse.

People didn’t smile like they did at home, so they had to be rude.

Placing the blame on the place was easier than facing the parts of my identity that were most damaged by being away.

Easier than facing my issues in my own country?

Probably.

Easy? Absolutely not.

The search for belonging didn’t start for me in the UK.

Nowhere came before it, I just never tried in the UK.

And so, starting in a foreign country was like wading through the mud.

At first, I searched in expat communities – people I felt I could relate to, but the belonging never came.

Everyone around me was equally as lost: we didn’t need to integrate, learn the language, face the usual challenges of immigration.

In a sense, we weren’t immigrants, our country of birth had afforded us the opportunity to escape the pressure placed on ‘othered’ peoples.

To prove our place in society.

Our worth.

Still now, five years in, people still approach me to understand one thing.

Why Poland?

Why not the UK?

This question bothers me.

Not because it’s rude or intrusive.

But because I don’t have an answer.

Were things ever easier for me than in the UK? No.

Were they more difficult in Poland? I’ll never know.

I never tried in the UK.

What am I?

I’m never particularly comfortable with the term ‘expat’.

In short, it separates the Global North and South.

Privilege displayed in a fucked-up way.

True, I’ve never expected to perform.

I received a residence card with virtually zero barriers.

I dossed about in Poland and lived on savings for years, without really contributing to society.

These are the privileges that I am always thankful for.

But ‘expat’ feels temporary.

A quick jaunt to Bali whilst it’s winter in Europe, raising the rent, living in a Western bubble.

I’ve been here for five years, I’m not far from permanent residence.

So, what am I?

An immigrant? An expat?

Some weird convergence of both, floating in the middle?

Truly I have tried to integrate: I speak enough Polish.

(Shamefully not enough for five years here, but enough for it to not get in my way).

I pay taxes. I live my life based on Zloty. I rage when butter reaches 9PLN for a block.

So, what does that make me?

The Metropolitan Bubble

Expectedly, I live in the capital city of Poland.

Why? Because this is where my ex lived when I moved here.

This is where the money is.

And most importantly, this is where my privilege shines through.

Poland is the second largest country for outsourced service labor in the world.

Undoubtedly, my British accent and overaccentuating my Ts has allowed me to shine a bit more.

But it’s 2025, speaking English isn’t exactly a unique skill.

I hail from a small, British post-industrial town.

Think decline, potholes, shuttered shops, addiction.

Finding belonging in a city was a car crash.

Loud, busy, dynamic.

The struggle to adapt was like an endless battle.

I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

True, Warsaw doesn’t have the same intensity of class inequality like the UK or US.

But feeling like I belonged, like I was good enough, fucking rough.

Would’ve been rough anywhere, really.

Working in an office, skyscraper, in a suit, that kind of life was limited to television for me.

So, how do you wrestle with that in a different country?

Answer: fuck knows.

Stay in one place long enough and you’ll find out.

What I thought, and What I know

Time for some honesty.

I’ve written about British superiority before.

So, how does this play into my sense of belonging.

Well, the truth, even though I wasn’t conscious of it: I thought I was British, therefore better.

Poland: further behind Western Europe, not progressive, less money, homophobia, alcoholism.

Even though I spent wonderful summers in Poland as a child, I still couldn’t rid myself of these innate stereotypes.

Even when I arrived and saw it was a lie, I still had to find a place to put this perception.

One person doesn’t smile?

Fuck this, this entire country is miserable and grumpy.

Enter a store that resembles the 70’s?

Poland is obviously stuck there.

Still, after five years of living here, my friends are shocked to see that Warsaw is a modern European capital.

It’s true, wages stink.

But they mostly match the cost of living.

Who isn’t wrestling with rising prices?

In the next few sentences, I wanted to write about the idea of proving myself in Poland.

About finding belonging, in this sense.

About struggling, fighting against something that wasn’t in my control.

But the reality is, Poland couldn’t have been kinder to me.

True, people don’t smile like back home, service sometimes sucks.

But where in the world will you not find rudeness, impoliteness, and grumpy people?

This isn’t a trait of Poland, it’s a trait of being human.

Of living amongst other humans.

It’s me that had to do the adapting, not the country.

Yet to Have an Answer

If you read until the end, you might be expecting an answer.

Surprise: I don’t have one.

After all of this: the homesickness, the stereotypes, the privilege, the mud, I still don’t have an answer.

The only thing that I can say is that I’m trying.

Trying to feel at home in somewhere that wasn’t always home.

Trying to find belonging.

Trying to learn the language.

I’ll never feel fully Polish, but after five years here, I feel increasingly estranged in my home country.

Emotionally stateless.

Maybe the whole point of immigration is not arriving somewhere new.

It’s carrying the discomfort with you until it softens into something like acceptance.

That probably counts for anyone arriving in a new place, somewhere foreign, somewhere that isn’t home.

What I do know is that Poland gave me the space to exercise these feelings.

To wrestle with these questions.

To try and find an answer.

To rage at butter prices.

To wander the city and feel lost.

To feel at home when I arrive back in Warsaw.

To decide on my favourite brand of kefir.

To slowly learn the language and find a community.

To find a space where I belong.

It has been kinder to me than I have to it.

And if that doesn’t resemble the foundation of belonging, then what does?

It’s my birthday today and I am ridiculously unemployed hehe - wanna spot me a coffee?

Here’s the link to throw me a buckaroo or two for a cuppa Joe. Te-he.

"SŁUCHAM" is the first response I get as I approach the counter at Bar Thienly, a Vietnamese cafeteria in Warsaw.

To the outsider, "słucham" (translated as "I'm listening") might sound rude, or abrupt.

For Poles, however, it is a standard greeting. There is no need for enthusiasm or small talk; it is direct and to the point.

Tell me what you want - this directness is just one part of the optimized ordering process here.

For anyone who knows my opinion on the urban landscape of Warsaw: Stary (old) Mokotów is a hellhole (think Clapham or Park Slope).

Despite being a relatively fancy, middle-class area with plenty of overpriced cafes and restaurants, the area lacks decent-sized supermarkets and cheap eats.

In short, there is a food accessibility issue at hand.

Aside from falafel stands and the occasional lunch deal, options are limited.

Back to Bar Thienly.

My first impression as I scan the interior is that it is spacious and relatively modern.

Neon signs decorate the walls, and the design looks freshly updated, which surprises me.

This is totally not necessary for a small takeout restaurant. I respect the choice anyway.

When you are paying the equivalent of five dollars for a plate of food in any country, you do not expect luxury or space.

Yet Bar Thienly stands out for both: it has a lot of room, modern décor, and a clearly lit menu.

What does not stand out is the menu itself.

It is divided into five or so rigid categories: beef, turkey, seafood, chicken, rice dishes, and noodles.

The setup is not so different from the Chinese takeaways scattered across the Western world.

Here, familiarity and consistency take priority over experimentation.

Not a criticism, just how things are done.

I order kurczak chrupiący, a safe choice that translates directly to crispy chicken.

It comes with the standard sides that Polish diners expect: rice and surówka (side salad), in this case a lightly pickled sweet-and-sour cabbage.

I pay 34 PLN (around nine dollars or seven pounds) for the plate and an iced tea.

"Na miejscu czy na wynos?"

The question, "for here or to go?" is familiar in every country when ordering takeout.

I choose to eat at the restaurant, doing so with a sense of doubt: I know that the food will arrive burning hot.

Ready for someone with a bit more patience than I usually have.

Once the food is ready, you collect it yourself and head to the counter where jugs of sauce are lined up together.

Łagodny is mild and sweet, ostry is spicy.

I always choose spicy, driven by a kind of deep-rooted toxic masculinity. I must suffer.

My heart wants the sweet tang of łagodny, but I ignore it and suffer through the spice, convincing myself I enjoy it.

Chopsticks are optional here, just as cultural customs are.

No one is aiming for full authenticity, only a light twist on Vietnamese classics.

The Vietnamese and Chinese-inspired dishes are adapted to local ingredients.

There is no Shaoxing wine or galangal here, just large, tasty meals at prices people can manage.

When my plate arrives, I am shocked at the size. I immediately regret choosing to eat in.

In front of me is enough food for two people: two pieces of bright orange, crispy fried chicken sliced into even strips, a mountain of rice, and a mound of surówka, all coated in a starchy sauce that evokes comfort and nostalgia: it mirrors the Cantonese style food served in Chinese takeaways across the uk.

Even though steam is rising from the plate, I make an (expected) fateful mistake.

I dig in immediately and burn my mouth on the crispy fried chicken.

Patience is a lesson I will never learn. Gluttony wins.

If I had taken the food home, the twenty-minute journey would have allowed it to cool to a reasonable temperature.

Instead, I eat at a speed that can only be slowed down by the sheer heat of the food.

I admit defeat at around seventy percent.

There is simply too much food for one person: in the current economy, that is hardly something to complain about.

After picking at the last bits of crispy batter, still holding up against the sauce, I follow the final step of the process.

Beyond the cashier, there is a hidden nook with a metal trolley where you place your finished plate.

There are no servers here.

Every saved złoty matters, and keeping staff numbers low helps keep prices down.

The Bigger Picture

Like in many places, food and immigration tell a bigger story than what is on the plate.

This is a story of the Vietnamese community and its role in Polish cuisine.

Poland is often misunderstood by outsiders.

While much of the country remains monocultural, change is happening.

Poland is becoming an attractive place to live and work.

The type of racism now most often echoed by Poles is imported from the West: fears of a migrant "invasion" and the idea of Poland as one of the last bastions of a "white Europe": an idea encouraged by far-right sentiment across the continent.

Despite this, more people are moving here at a steady pace, and contributing to the cultural fabric of the country.

Wages in Polish cities are increasingly competitive with other European cities, and far exceed those in much of post-communist Europe.

Like most immigrants, I ended up in Warsaw. Though, my passport privilege paints a different picture.

The Vietnamese community, however, is already well ahead of the trend.

They are now in their fifth decade of integration with Polish society.

Poland may look affordable to visitors from North America or Western Europe, but living here tells a different story.

Prices have risen sharply in recent years (a global issue, I know).

Grocery prices often match those in Western Europe, and eating out is no longer the bargain it once was.

Berlin is now comparable in cost for a lot of things, but without Berlin wages.

Living on the złoty means finding ways to be frugal.

Lunch menus at upscale restaurants offer a taste of the high life at a lower price.

Happy hours make cocktails affordable.

Grocery discounts are chased with competitive zeal, and on the shelves of Biedronka (Poland’s biggest supermarket chain) promotions are stripped bare by babcias (grandmas) by mid-afternoon.

So, the Vietnamese community stands out for its ability to offer affordable, tasty food at a fair price.

This is a story repeated in immigrant communities around the world.

Places like Bar Thienly are busy even at 7pm on a rainy Monday in a quiet corner of Mokotów.

People come for the reliable quality and the comfort of a familiar menu.

As an outsider, you might easily walk past a place like this.

Google Maps did not even show it to me when I searched for dinner spots nearby.

I chose it deliberately because I walked past it, enticed by the smell.

In my opinion, the ability to be overlooked reflects how the Vietnamese community exists within Polish society.

They are essential to those who benefit from it, but largely unrecognised by the wider public.

Again, another reflection that is common across immigrant cultures in all countries.

Why Poland?

The story begins in Poland’s communist era.

Educational exchanges and trade agreements, such as Poland exporting flour to post-war Vietnam, opened a path for migration.

To address labour shortages, the Vietnamese government sent young people to train and work in socialist Poland.

Over time, between 20,000 and 60,000 Vietnamese people came to Poland, setting up small businesses and becoming a permanent part of its immigration history.

Nowadays, Vietnamese populated villages adorn the outskirts of Warsaw, and their business ventures sprawl across the city, recognised or not.

Given the relatively small size of the community, especially compared with migration from the post-Soviet sphere in more modern times, their impact on Polish food culture is remarkable.

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

Bar Thienly, in many ways, is Polish.

The service style, the cafeteria format, the inclusion of surówka all reflect local habits.

Yet, it’s also Vietnamese. The decision to use a sweet, light ferment for the cabbage.

Vietnamese culture has embedded itself into Polish culinary life so firmly that it doesn’t need a marketing budget, Instagram presence, or brand strategy.

It doesn’t even need me to explain it; it would exist regardless.

While Polish cheap-fare equivalents have closed or changed with the times (such as the old version of Bar Prasowy with the grumpy babcia behind the glass window), Vietnamese cafeterias carry on as they always have.

Their survival says something.

Perhaps the food simply offers variation from the standard Milk Bar (cafeteria) menu.

Milk bars in Warsaw’s centre have adapted to tourist demand and modernised their approach.

They now use digital menus with English translations, issue receipts with order numbers and specified collection points, and even franchise.

With those changes come higher prices and an altered atmosphere, which drives away some of the city’s working-class and older customers who prefer familiarity and affordability.

*there are still some ‘untouched’ milk bars, which I will write about at some point.

Still, survival is not only about avoiding modernisation, franchising, gentrification, or remaining competitive.

It is about being an anchor for a community.

That is why restaurants like Bar Thienly deserve praise, even if it is in a small newsletter that will hardly surpass 500 views.

They have secured their place in Polish cuisine by staying true to what works best.

They consistently provide warm, satisfying meals at fair prices.

They offer something valuable to the community without ever asking for recognition.

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I’ve been sober for 15 months now.

No drugs, no alcohol, no gambling.

Nothing that gives me any type of buzz.

I am the lab rat.

I will press the button until starvation.

I do want the dopamine.

So I’ve chosen to rid myself of all forms of buzz.

In this journey, I’ve run through the twelve steps of AA.

One thing I’ll say: they’re actually fucking difficult.

In one step, I ask my higher power (in my case, the AA community) to help rid me of my character defects.

One particular defect that came with addiction: dishonesty.

So, I set it as my task to be as honest as possible.

At all times.

Obviously, there are times when lying is necessary to avoid hurting someone’s feelings – no one needs to know their breath stinks.

Just let it be.

In trying to be free from dishonesty, I find myself abiding by the basic moral standards of society: being a relatively upright person.

Paying for public transport. Not cheating money out of people or things. Not shoplifting.

I’ve also started being nicer with my gestures: tipping regularly (I’m not American, we don’t do that).

You get the point.

I’m just trying to be a decent person.

Deep breath.

Do right.

Be honest.

Maybe deep down I’m trying to seek some kind of salvation for years of shitty behaviour?

Maybe I’m finally learning how to live like an honest person.

Nice for what?

At some stage you realise that being nice doesn’t get you very far.

And I’m not talking about the system or inherent structural inequalities that get nice people down (of course those exist, acknowledged)

I’m talking about being nice in the way we’re told it’s supposed to pay off.

Be kind, and get rewarded.

Be generous, and it’ll come back around.

Do the right thing, and the universe will notice.

Maybe. Probably not.

Now’s not the time for a pity party.

I’m not owed anything for doing the bare minimum of being decent.

(If you’re religious, ignore me: I’m envious. I’d love to be religious, believe in something, but I don’t).

Neither do I believe that some karmic force exists.

There isn’t a reward for being nice.

No one owes you anything.

Niceness shouldn’t be a currency.

Sometimes, if I’m honest, I’m not nice for the sake of being nice.

There’s an ulterior motive at hand.

I’m hoping things might run smoother if I’m a good person.

That maybe I’ll get the things I deserve.

Recently, I lost my job.

I am unemployed and broke.

I found out I was losing my job about two months before it ended.

And after so much ‘niceness’, I retained a deep belief that things would work out immediately.

They haven’t.

They will, but not yet: and not because I am ‘nice’.

Things will work out because I’m qualified, proactive, and trying my best.

Niceness doesn’t work like that.

Not reliably.

Not in any predictable sense.

The more I grow, the more I realise that being kind doesn’t function like a moral investment strategy.

You can do everything right and still get hurt. Still get ignored. Still be misunderstood.

Still be in the face of bad fortune.

Why even be nice?

These thoughts occasionally float around my head.

I’m broke, barely hearing back from jobs, putting all of my expectations into a few precarious opportunities.

Sometimes, I consider whether I should go back to cheating money: being dishonest, adding extra hours onto outstanding freelance contracts, not paying for the bus…

If there’s no cosmic hand to reach me and save me after I’ve been so decent for so long, what’s the fucking point?

And the answer is painfully simple.

Being nice is who I want to be. Being honest is who I want to be.

A clear conscience is the reward.

My guilty head doesn’t hang heavy on my shoulders.

This isn’t a pity party. I’m not claiming to be some doormat or a martyr.

I just enjoy living with a balanced moral framework.

The rest - the job, the money, the opportunities - those all require actually getting out there.

Nothing to do with being nice.

All to do with being visible.

Of course, if people meet you and you’re nice, doors will open.

But that’s not a reward, it’s an outcome. It also requires confidence, capability: a full package.

Try the other way if you want.

Life is full of possible shortcuts, lies, easier ways out.

I’ve lived a fair few of them. Quite a few tricks up my sleeve.

But the truth is, they cost more than they give.

They rot you from the inside.

Weigh you down.

So maybe being nice doesn’t get you very far.

But being dishonest gets you lost.

And I’d rather be broke than broken.

Your boy is out here mad unemployed, so if you’re feeling like a philanthropist, here’s the link to throw me a buckaroo or two for a cuppa Joe. te-he.

I’m in someone’s car – but I don’t know their name beyond the app.

We speak, or we don’t.

Often the only exchange of words is basic formalities.

Either way, every Uber ride is intimacy masquerading as neutrality.

Occasionally the driver is particularly chatty – we discuss our shared experience as immigrants in the same country, but from different backgrounds.

We share intimate details of our life – often one of loss, leaving family behind to work in Europe, working long hours: the reality of the gig economy’s impact on migration.

And then I get out of the Uber, we exchange a goodbye and mutually thank each other.

In a city of nearly two million, there are approx. 45,000 Uber drivers – how can I expect to see them again?

There’s a subtle choreography to being a ride-hailing passenger, something we most likely learn through social osmosis and repetition.

We slide in, offer a quick greeting, and then settle into the routine neutrality of ride mode.

Yet, something lingers. A strange form of intimacy.

I’m sitting in their car, their space, their office.

I’m close enough to see the back of their neck, to notice the messages popping up on their phone, or the half empty can of Red Bull wedged between the two front seats.

Yet, I’m detached. Politely ignoring the human presence that sits half a meter in front of me. Staring into my phone, out of the window.

Occasionally, our eyes make contact when we both stare into the rear-view mirror – a quick glance, not too long, not too awkward.

We are both pretending, performing in a weird state of mutual invisibility that the gig economy has normalized.

Sometimes the driver is on their phone, calling someone in a language I can sometimes make out, often not.

Calls don’t bother me; they take away the pressure of a quiet shared space. Yet, they do add to a sense of invisibility.

Sometimes I share the taxi with a friend, and we talk throughout the ride, practically pretending that the driver doesn’t exist. Does he speak English? I don’t know.

We share intimate details, gossip, future plans; we talk as if it’s just us there.

When I’m on my own, I am silent.

I stare at my phone, the floor, the city passing me by – sometimes I even stare at the driver’s phone, watching the minutes count down until I arrive at my destination.

I am human cargo, flesh and bones, transported from A to B for a price point that has been set by an algorithm, a corporation thousands of miles away – in Mission Bay, California.

The driver earns 30% less than what I pay – and probably resents that.

I pay more than I would like to, but convenience wins.

Rumour spreads that Uber charges more when your battery is low.

Mine is low, so I’m convinced that’s why I’ve paid double the figure I had in my head.

But the day has been long, and two buses + a 25-minute walk seem less appealing than paying a surge fare.

I resent the surge fare; the driver resents the commission.

We’re both dissatisfied, but we participate anyway.

But in continuing this dance, I find myself questioning the unspoken rules we follow.

How much of this space is mine?

How much of this presence do I acknowledge?

What’s the correct way to feel, sitting in the back of someone else’s car?

This is liminal space – a threshold between movement and stillness, stranger and guest, presence, and absence.

That’s what Uber journeys feel like.

We are in motion, a shared goal, yet we are not connected.

Present but disengaged.

I’m in your car, but you won’t remember me out of the many customers you have today.

You’re driving me, but I won’t remember your face, your story, even the space we shared for 22 minutes.

Ride-hailing apps like Uber sell us convenience, but it’s actually trading in borrowed space.

Rented time.

It doesn’t aim to create detachment, though this is undoubtedly a natural product of the gig economy.

Still, it’s impossible to detach the humanness of it.

I sit in their car, breathing their air, surrendering to their decisions in real time.

Then the app thanks me, and we both disappear.

Sometimes, their phone dings with an offer from Uber.

Another customer wants a ride.

The sound penetrates the entire car loudly, three or four times, reminding me that I am disposable.

There one minute, gone the next.

And I wonder, what is this doing to us?

What it means to repeatedly enter spaces where we don’t fully belong, where we’re neither guest nor customer nor friend.

To treat each other as part of the infrastructure.

To confuse convenience with neutrality.

To move through the world like this, smiling, quiet, rating five stars and forgetting.

I wonder how it impacts the way we connect.

And whether we’ll notice what we’ve sacrificed in the name of convenience.

Your boy is out here mad unemployed and that so if you’re feeling like a philanthropist, here’s the link to throw me a buckaroo or two for a cuppa Joe.

I try not to speak about politics too often - truth is that it makes me feel self-righteous.

Like I know better than everyone, that my moral position is the superior one.

That, and the fact that I’m often wrong.

No one likes being wrong.

Politics can easily become a game of prediction, of overlooking geopolitics, destruction, war, and seeing it as something to be debated.

A hot discussion over a coffee, a morning reflection of the news.

Besides, I’m white, I grew up in the UK, a product of post-colonial thinking, I have nothing special to add.

None of my hot takes on the conflict in Ukraine, Sudan, Palestine, even in America, are going to cause a single ripple in the sea of opinions, voices that matter more than my own.

As someone shaped and raised in by post-colonial Britain, I’m almost certainly entangled in the very dynamics I’m critiquing.

I could be accused of:

• Caring for select periods of time.

• Reacting to the news cycle.

• Shouting when it feels important

• Forgetting the next day.

This isn’t me hating on my own skin colour, or regurgitating performative white guilt…

I just think we’re better off starting with an acknowledgement of the conditions and privileges I was born into.

Silence can look like complicity — but performative outrage online doesn’t feel like the answer either.

*White man shouts about injustices in Myanmar*

Another harsh reality of the world we live in is that atrocities happen daily; so frequently that they risk being perceived as a ‘normal’ part of life in regions that have been historically othered.

“10 killed in Kyiv drone attack” - *scroll*

“15 shot in North Nigerian school kidnapping” *scroll*

“25 aid workers killed in Southern Gaza *scroll*

Things come and go quickly, and by the time we’ve scrolled past the next tragedy, we’re already complicit in the culture of numbness.

Witnessing Gaza from a distance

Among many in my generation, there is a widespread concern for the situation faced by Palestinians, alongside a desire to see justice and human rights upheld in the region.

I have yet to encounter anyone around me who doesn’t have serious concerns about ethnic cleansing, violations of international law, or the use of starvation as a means of exerting control over civilians during conflict.

Yet, me and my peers will never understand what it’s like to feel the ground shaking as bombs rain down on us, or what forced displacement feels like, or having to traverse conflict zones under threat of gun fire to prevent starvation.

We can actively witness the most brutal things imaginable, all through our iPhone.

The worst of the world plays out on my screen, as I lie in the comfort of my bed, of safety, of peace.

Maybe I’ll donate a few pounds to a good cause tomorrow – what else can I do?

Do governments listen? A little pressure in the back of my head.

A moment of guilt for not caring, a share amongst friends, a brief feeling of anger and injustice, and then…

Onto a video of someone making roast potatoes in a muffin tin, maybe a short ironic sketch about matcha, or another dachshund video.

Sweet bliss, an escape from the violence.

From the pressure.

From the heaviness.

From the weird powerlessness.

In no way am I trying to victimise myself for experiencing slight discomfort, more detailing the process of how cognitive dissonance works in relation to the constant cycle of violence we see but don’t experience.

Watching will never be the same as experiencing.

I was born with an innate privilege that keeps me at a distance from the madness and violence of political instability and war.

That same distance is what makes accountability feel so out-of-reach;

As our governments make decisions that will never affect us, accountability isn’t decided by what happens, it’s decided by who cares, who controls the narrative.

Most people hope that in the end, countries that cause mass destruction, death, and violence will be held accountable.

Perhaps in the court of law, perhaps in a historical sense.

For that to be the case though, evidence is needed, hard facts, the truth has to prevail.

Gaza, Violence, and the Algorithm

Recently I saw an article from the BBC detailing an aid worker’s account of seeing his colleagues shoot innocent people.

Chances are you probably know about the GHF (Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) if you don’t, a little research will bring you up-to-speed.

The UN accused the organisation of weaponising aid (in response to over 200 people dying in or around their aid collection points).

Since then, a further 600 people have died as a result of collecting aid from them.

In response, the GHF said that the accusations were “categorically false” and that the worker was bitter due to being fired for misconduct.

The worker then provided payslips to show that he had received salaries for a further two weeks after leaving, suggesting that he had in fact “left the post on good terms”.

This got me (rather naively) thinking about the ‘truth’.

What is the truth here? GHF claim that these incidents happen at sites that are not their own, the UN argues different.

In all of this, where is the societal responsibility to be accurate, tell the truth, be held accountable?

Where is justice for those shot trying to collect aid, regardless of who did it?

I call myself naive here, mostly because the truth has never existed during conflict.

“In war, truth is the first casualty”.

What is the ‘Post-Truth’ Era?

After doing a little research about Gaza and the ‘truth’ behind what is happening, I found this great piece by the Ground Truth Project.

The article does quite a good job at breaking down the contesting of ‘truth’ within the conflict in Gaza – circling its analysis around the ‘post-truth era’.

An era in which false media can penetrate news cycles faster than accurate reporting can.

“Most of all, it seems to arrive with unrelenting speed via social media and so when a false report enters into the algorithms of platforms such as Twitter, now branded as “X,” and TikTok, the global impact is almost immediate”.

But first, let’s define this era in more concrete terms:

- the ‘post truth era’ is defined as “an environment where objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

And when did the post truth era begin?

- “this phenomenon gained prominence during events like the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election, where campaigns often relied on emotional rhetoric rather than factual accuracy”.

But, how can we live in the ‘post-truth’ era, if the ‘truth era’ never existed?

The Truth Has Always Been Contested

Before we begin, I’m not going to dive into a deep anti-imperialist theory about how the West is inherently bad and constantly lies (I promised no moral positioning or superiority here).

Neither do I have the education to be talking about Enlightenment Europe or Ancient Greece.

However, I do know these were periods that increasingly valued reason or science: even in those societies, there were competing ideologies, propaganda, and misinformation.

The difference between old-timey Europe (yep, I really called it that) or Ancient Greece is exactly what I’m trying to make my overall point about: who has control over the narrative (in these times it was the Church, the state, or the elite).

Even in the 20^th century, particularly in the post-war period, there was a widespread belief in objectivity, reason, and the power of universal fact.

Such a scientific approach undoubtedly brought with it massive changes in society, from the pushing of secularisation over religion, science-based advances, technology, industrial progress - you get the point.

All of these things are irrefutably a product of valuing objectivity, progressivism, and scientific reasoning.

But this didn’t bring the ‘truth’, particularly when we speak about politics and conflict.

The post-war to early 90s period was dominated by Cold-War thinking, Western narratives, and institutional biases.

In this, I find the Vietnam war to be a particularly pertinent example.

60% of Americans supported the US’ invasion of Vietnam, motivated by a fear of communism (the Domino Theory).

A feeling.

The truth of violence and invasion didn’t prevail.

Even now, it is estimated that less than 30% of the US population knows the exact figure of civilians killed in the Vietnam War.

2 million.

74% of US Vietnam vets said they would fight again, even when knowing the outcome.

So, did the truth rule here? No.

A fear of ideological dominance in contrast to the west ruled instead.

Fear. A feeling.

Even if we move past the Cold-War era, what percentage of Brits supported their country’s invasion of Iraq?

55%.

The fear of WMDs ruled.

Okay, some believed the evidence presented to them by their government, news organisation etc…

But this wasn’t the only factor involved in shaping public opinion.

Think about domestic fears in the post 9/11 post 7/7 era, think about islamophobia, think about feelings of loyalty to the US-led coalition.

Again, a feeling.

Of course, public opinion changed over time regarding both conflicts, and I’m not making a moral charge against the USA or UK

Instead, I’m using these two examples of a time before the supposed ‘post-truth’ era – a time when fact also mattered less than feeling.

Particularly the feeling of fear (surprise surprise).

Not such a new phenomenon.

So, when it comes to trying to define a ‘post-truth’ world, I think people are right in assuming something is different.

I’m just not sure that the fact over feeling and vice versa is the correct explanation.

Instead of the ‘truth’, I think what we had before was relative consensus.

This was due to straightforward splits in ideologies via the bipolar nature of geopolitics.

West or East.

Communist or capitalist.

Aligned or non-aligned.

Global South or Global North.

You get what I’m saying.

Nowadays, multipolarity rules.

Shared consensus is not always a given.

From Consensus to Chaos

In addition to the collapse of shared consensus in real-time geopolitics (think ideological battles within the EU and NATO itself), we have also seen the collapse of a complete central authority on information.

Before the internet era, our sources of information were limited to newspapers, radio, and television.

All of these are ruled by a more central authority (don’t worry, I’m not going to get the tin foil hat out).

I feel sick using the term, but mainstream media ruled.

In 2003, 90% of Brits got their news from watching TV.

All of the biggest TV channels reported that Iraq had WMDs.

Again, I’m not going to charge these news channels as complicit in reporting this.

They were just reporting with the info they had.

But the information was false.

In 2024, internet platforms overtook TV as the main source of news.

So its true that we do live in an era where false news can find itself spread across the globe in seconds.

It can become a ‘fact’ before it can be confirmed and verified by independent sources.

However, this is not a new phenomenon.

In regards to the invasion of Iraq, it took the UK government 13 years to produce a comprehensive report on their own failures in analysing sources and reporting the truth.

So, not new.

But what makes it feel different?

Well, it’s obvious really.

Anyone can be a publisher.

Anyone can command authority.

Anyone can work with the algorithm, prioritizing engagement over accuracy.

The truth, as it has always been, is fractured: subject to being mish-mashed and viewed through the lens of culture, history, and subjectivity - all of this at hyper-speed, global, instant.

Still, the ‘truth’ aspect that I’m focusing on isn’t new.

We didn’t go from ‘truth’ to ‘post-truth’ – we moved from a more ‘controlled’ form of truth, to a contested form of chaos.

It’s too easy for accountability to be reduced, for the solution to be redefining something, to claim we’re in a ‘new era’.

This is what the ‘post-truth’ era is to me – an attempt to reclassify something that has always existed.

The ‘post-truth’ era is just another attempt to understand.

Knowledge gives us a sense of control.

Theories give us an idea that we have a grip on things, especially when they often change rapidly in front of our eyes.

But is it new? Does it need to be redefined?

Have emotions ever mattered less when compared to the objective truth?

Do we even understand the reality of violence, destruction, impact, of pushing for truth and objectivity?

Is it possible?

Even if it was, wouldn’t our emotional reaction to such horrors then be the basis of our opinion, even if it conflicts with the truth?

Does Truth Still Matter?

Well… here we have to define a clear difference between truth and consensus.

Truth is a principle, an ideal, a pursuit of objective fact.

Consensus is social - a compromise, an agreement on a shared version of events.

This is very often blurred by history, society, culture, politics.

The problem is, we often conflate the two.

When we assert that the ‘truth’ is out there, we should instead accept that this means ‘most people believe this version’.

But belief is a weird thing.

It’s shaped by power, by history, by trauma, by access.

It’s why we either believe a news report…

Or label it Western propaganda, or Russian propaganda, or Israeli propaganda, or Hamas propaganda.

All depending on what position we’re coming from.

The ‘truth’ here is dependent on our collective experience.

But still, the search for objective truth matters.

Even if it is practically impossible to get everyone to believe in it.

But not because it wins arguments.

Not because it lets us point fingers or feel morally righteous.

It matters because, without it, accountability is impossible.

Where do we go now?

Truth matters.

But it doesn’t mean we can take my incredibly reductionist analysis, probably not even an original take, and suddenly magic up the truth.

Or even all agree with what is ‘the truth’.

I’m sure you could show seven different people the same video of a school being bombed and get seven different versions of what the ‘truth’ is behind it.

Maybe the school was hiding terrorists?

Maybe the school was full and 200 children died?

Maybe the school was given adequate warning beforehand?

Maybe the video is AI, fake news?

Maybe it was a misfire?

And this is exactly why I think the reality of the pursuit of truth is much darker.

Instead of more truth, we are seeing less trust.

When we realise that no one is accurately representing the truth, we trust less.

We don’t trust the internet, we don’t trust the news, we don’t trust government sources.

All because all of these sources have all misreported the facts, regardless of intention.

And yes, often the intention is entirely to obscure the truth, to try and justify bombing a hospital, to reduce deaths, to avoid accountability.

The result of this is that things become more and more fragmented; the truth becomes hard to understand.

This is also why I believe that people Like Russell Brand (suspected rapist) or Andrew Tate (suspected human trafficking, rape) are now seen as a trust-worthy source of information by millions - an escape from what they claim is the matrix, from the establishment.

We can’t just ignore those types of people, we have to ask why they’re so popular.

It’s not because there isn’t a ‘truth’ out there, but because it’s always been elusive.

Only now, it’s hidden beneath bias, algorithms, outrage cycles, moral positioning, and endless attempts to assert opinion as objectivity.

Finding out the ‘truth’ feels easier than ever, but remains as difficult as it ever has been.

More and more divided, we end up curating and creating our own truths, selecting the narratives that feel most comfortable or align with our identities.

But comfort, as I have mentioned before, is deceptive.

It dulls our ability to think critically, to tolerate not knowing, to even admit that we don’t know.

I wish I had a more positive ending…

But the reality is…

We go nowhere, probably.

We scroll, perform, signal, distrust, overload ourselves with info – all until apathy sets in.

Has this not been the way it’s always been?

We care until we don’t, whether it’s the news cycle telling us to do so, or the latest activist page.

Truth has never won, attention has.

Thirty years ago, news channels got our attention through feeding us exciting stories, emotional triggers, sensationalism, visual design.

Nowadays, we call that engagement.

The method has changed but the goal remains the same.

What differs now, though?

The more fractured things become, the easier it is to give up.

Not just on pursuing the truth, but towards the idea that anyone even wants to pursue it.

Here, I usually dump my buymeacoffee button, but this week it feels appropriate to use the space to ask for donations to Doctors Without Borders.

Once a year, we’d clean out the freezer, unearthing long-forgotten scampi bites, the last of Christmas’ pig-in-blankets, and bags of Asda Smart Price chunky chips that were doomed to spend their life cycle weighed down by better, newer options.

The yearly freezer clean out was a time of joy in my childhood – it meant a dinner compromised of odd bits and bobs that would otherwise be binned.

Potato waffles, two fish fingers that had somehow found their way out of their brick packaging, a stray bag of steamed veg, and about thirty Smart Price mini sausage rolls that were never going to be eaten anyway.

Even as an adult, there’s something oddly comforting about open it. The squeaky sound of plastic shelves (we’ve since upgraded our freezer) being pried open, frosted over, and stuck in place.

These were the foods I grew up on. The ones that waited quietly in the drawer, ready to rescue a long day.

In a world of hyper-access to internet recipes, globalized food choices, and an ever-expanding list of viral ingredients to buy and try, we don’t tend to talk about this kind of food in the culinary world. When it is spoken about, it’s often framed through irony, disgust, judgement, or disdain.

Think supermarket tabloids and those awful Channel 5 shows about how “the other half” live. But for working-class households, this kind of food is normal, it’s a Tuesday evening.

The comfort of beige

The idea of eating “badly” isn’t always about health. In Britain, it’s often about class.

Clean eating, carnivore, gluten-free, avoiding ultra-process foods – all of these have become shorthand for ‘doing it correctly’. In a sense, they signify care, knowledge, effort, and status. The choice in itself becomes a badge.

You’re seen as thoughtful and financially responsible if you buy local; an irresponsible scrounger if you do your weekly shopping in Iceland. One suggests abiding to values, the other suggests a lazy shortcut.

But what gets called a shortcut depends on who’s doing the microwaving. A chicken in white wine sauce from M&S is indulgent - something naughty after a long day.

On the other hand, a £1 microwave lasagna from Farmfoods is the pinnacle of tragic and low-class.

If your freezer is full of batch-cooked, vaguely ‘south-Asian’ cooked chickpea stews, you’re smart and thinking ahead. If they’re full of frozen mixed veg, chips, and fish fingers, you’re lazy and careless.

Of course, there’s something to be said about health: this is unavoidable throughout this discussion.

But often it feels like it’s not about salt, fat, or sugar - it’s about who gets to eat conveniently without being looked down on.

And who doesn’t.

Slop and Snobbery

Having been raised in working-class communities, I never felt ashamed of the food I ate growing up. In fact, now, I feel more shame about the fact that I don’t enjoy those types of food anymore - it represents a big crisis in me - I feel like I lose touch with who I am, with nostalgia, comfort…

Maybe it’s because I’ve been outside of the UK for a while and detached from it.

Maybe it’s because it’s truly not that good.

If anything, frozen food in my childhood felt normal—routine, unremarkable. We had what we had, and it was what we had.

That was enough. Nothing more to note. Nothing to give extra thought to.

The first time I felt the bite of judgement wasn’t in my own kitchen, or even my own country.

A few years ago, in an old office, I tried to connect with my manager from the UK over food. I mentioned British Chinese food, potato waffles – anything to find some sort of conversation catalyst.

To my surprise, they referred to “council house food” as “slop”. In the same exchange, they also told me that “Britain’s biggest issue is that no one wants to work hard”.

It stuck with me. Not just for the snobbery, but for the casualness.

Like this was common sense. Obviously, we (as a class), love eating slop from the trough, and HATE a hard day of work. We’re all work-shy, scammers, benefit frauds, draining the system.

That moment taught me more about class differences and food in Britain than I’d ever acknowledged.

Because frozen food isn’t just about taste or nutrition—it’s about visibility. It's the shorthand for laziness, for apathy, for not trying hard enough, for being an idle, work-shy class.

The shame around it is quiet but present.

It exists in phrases like “real cooking” and “junk food mums”.

It turns what might be care, or survival, into something to be judged.

But we’re not cooking for show, we don’t have Mandy and Peter from finance over for dinner parties, with bottles of South African Pinot flowing (literally know nothing about wine) – we cooked for convenience, for budget, for comfort.

Sometimes frozen food is the only thing between you and hunger.

That doesn’t make you a failure.

It makes you human.

Convenience as care

It’s odd, really, how much suspicion is still inherently attached to convenience.

As though ease and comfort is something only the wealthy deserve.

But in working-class homes, convenience can mean care. It means providing a hot meal.

It means keeping food in the house that won’t go off in a few days.

It means knowing your child will eat something—even if it’s just beige.

The idea that cooking from scratch may exist, but it ignores some key pieces of content.

Worries about the cost of electricity, having a dodgy old oven, a small fridge, when your rent takes half of your wage – in these circumstances, cooking fresh meals every day is straight fucking hassle.

It’s not about a lack of care, it’s about budget, and a lack of societal incentive to ensure that everyone can have equal access to nutritious food.

Frozen food doesn’t pretend to be aspirational.

It just does its job.

Putting a warm meal on the table each night is an act of care in itself.

How frozen got framed

Frozen food permeated British culture for a reason: it’s cheap, convenience, and reliable.

It’s specifically engineered to save time, to last, and to make the most of otherwise stretched budgets.

For most, it’s a practical solution rather than a guilty pleasure.

Frozen veggies, ready meals, and Birds Eye chicken fillets help to balance life’s pressures without breaking the bank or spending a long time in the kitchen.

Literally try to make a Chicken Kyiv from scratch after a 10 hour shift on your feet. You’d have to either be extremely dedicated to cooking. It’s fucking hassle.

I’ve seen enough episodes of This Morning with out-of-touch presenters calculating the cost of a bag of carrots, chickpeas, tinned tomatoes, and stock cubes.

“You can’t really complain, can you. £1 for six portions of lentil stew with carrots… try swapping your ready meal for scrambled egg with avocado or overnight oats”.

It takes time, effort, years of time to adjust diets and habits and cultural change.

And the reality is, this food isn’t always comforting.

It’s fucking bland, and the thought of being recommended to eat overnight oats and chickpea stews makes me feel like a Victorian peasant - clearly it ignores some bigger systemic issue. Some weird out-of-touch-ness that these TV celebs have.

Plus, on a massive tangent - tell me the last time you’ve felt an avocado in the supermarket that doesn’t need ripened for a fortnight to be edible?

MATE, GIVE ME RICE KRISPIES AND BUTTERED TOAST, YOU FUCK.

Back to the point: is there an expectation that we don’t deserve comfort?

Suddenly, convenience becomes gross, unhealthy laziness.

Stretching a budget becomes about cutting corners and bad spending.

The same bag of frozen peas that might be championed for retaining their nutritional value and being a meal prep ‘hack’ can quickly turn into a ‘bad habit’ when they’re served by working-class folks alongside nuggets and potato waffles rather than inside a Tuscan red-wine and sun dried tomato stew with Waitrose Chorizo (lowkey sounds fucking fire though).

Like so much else in Britain, the class context decides the morality and validity of what we do—turning the exact same choices into virtue or vice depending on who’s microwaving them.

Who gets to eat what, and how

Cuisine itself has become a target of class-based judgement in the UK – rebranded and repackaged over and over again.

If you look at classic ‘council house’ or ‘working-class’ staples like chips, sausage rolls, pies….

When they show up in frozen form, or in Greggs, they’re the food of the idle class, slop, junk food.

But when well-marketed restaurants put them in instagrammable form with a side of seasonal veg and some Herefordshire pork…

They’re trendy, nostalgic, even “heritage” dishes that evoke a sense of pride in Britishness.

These dishes get an aesthetic makeover when served up in a well-designed London haunt, or Instagram feed.

A 3-in-1 stir fry kit from Waitrose, with pre-chopped veg and a starch-ridden black bean sauce is suddenly a convenient hack for the dignified classes.

Meanwhile, ordered in Chinese food with the same veg, same starch-ridden sauce is a sign of idleness and bad spending if the wrong person orders it.

It’s never just about the food.

It’s about who gets to make life easier—and tastier—for themselves, and who gets judged for doing the exact same thing.

The performance of health

We also shouldn’t forget how much of contemporary food culture is performance.

We perform status through wild garlic, virtue through salad, taste through curated slow fermentation practices, discipline through sustainability and ancient grains.

However, very little of that has to do with hunger.

People without metropolitan taste, without financial access to slow food practices, without the means to access fresh veg at reasonable prices – we’re not trying to be impressive or fit an aesthetic – we’re just trying to eat.

The class performance of food culture means that some people are fortunate enough to turn dinner into a statement.

Others just want to get through the week.

What’s in your drawer?

Sometimes, when I go home, I open the freezer for a quick bite and see the same things that mirror my childhood – potato waffles barely squashed in – cardboard crumpled because they’re half empty and have been meticulously stacked amongst other things, off-brand fish fingers, baby carrots – bag torn at the corner.

Not only do I feel a sense of nostalgia in the smell of breadcrumbs, ice, and grease – I feel grounded.

These foods might not be fancy, trendy, globalised, or moving with the times.

But they are one thing, resilient.

We didn’t always have much, it wasn’t always fresh, but Mum always knew how to put something warm and comforting in front of us.

Frozen food has held my family together throughout my 27 years, no matter the circumstance.

Potato smiley faces have absorbed our panic and softened our stress.

It’s not about being too lazy to cook – it’s about many other factors: limited time, money, energy, and lastly – comfort.

Sometimes it’s about finding comforts that actually work – even if that’s found in beans, Chicago Town Mini Pizzas, and chips (fire meal iykyk).

So, what’s in your drawer?

If it’s beige, familiar, and kept your belly full for less than a pound, there’s no shame in that.

There’s dignity in making do.

There’s comfort in reaching for what you know will get you through. And that deserves recognition—not judgement.

By the way (hehe), if you enjoy what I write, you can buy me a coffee right here or throw a few bucks into the virtual donation tin (my BuyMeaCoffee page is actually really funny as well).

Let’s face it, nothing we do is unique.

In a world of infinite possibilities, I genuinely think uniqueness is impossible.

Even if we reach the peak of what we consider individuality, it’s likely a cut and paste of an aesthetic that has been done before, done to death.

A hybrid of cultures and influences that may seem on the surface to be a unique, fresh take, but has already been done, repeated, died out, come back into fashion ironically, and is now here to stay as a subculture of a culture, a micro-trend, an aesthetic, a symbol of post-modernism - something – just not unique.

Even if I searched a bunch of random words like plastic, dolphin, piss, fetish – I’M SURE THERE IS ALREADY A BUNCH OF FUCKING PLASTIC LOVING DOLPHIN PISS FETISHISTS.

At this point, you might think this article is about piss or piss fetishes or dolphins.

BUT OH, YOU ARE WRONG.

I actually want to discuss travelling (but I’m seemingly unable to just start talking about what I want to talk about).

I too am not unique in my travelling experience.

• of course I’ve been to Southeast Asia

• of course I’ve been to some more ‘edgy’ places like Belarus and Russia

• OF FUCKING COURSE I couldn’t just go to Istanbul: I had to visit the ‘parts unknown’ of Turkey (or, at least that’s what I thought).

Speak to most young people with disposable income and a level of passport privilege: they’ve likely travelled in similar patterns.

Everyone’s been to Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey, Paris, Bali - maybe a quick jaunt to Laos for thrill of it?

None of us are unique in the way we travel, but we all probably like to think we’ve done it in the right way, authentic way - we’ve all discovered a little more than the average traveller.

Preface: nowadays, I don’t really travel – some distance has allowed me the presumed moral authority to question global travel practices.

Maybe not? Either way, I got a point to make - so hear me out.

TODAY’S HYPOTHESIS: NO TRAVEL IS REALLY UNIQUE AND WE’RE JUST MANUFACTURING A SENSE OF AUTHENTICITY.

OR PAYING A THIRD PARTY TO DO IT.

Now, you could stop reading now and walk away with a piss-loaded paragraph and strongly worded hypothesis.

BUT.

Usually my articles are a stream (pardon the pun) of consciousness.

This week I’m going to actually try to write something a little more put together*

*note: I totally fucking failed at this: read on anyways.

The Hunt for Authenticity in a World That’s Seen It All

Traditional forms of travel discovery are absolutely fucking obsolete.

No longer do we watch Bourdain as our ‘escape’ from the Hollywood, orientalised depictions of the far-east, or Latin America, Africa, Oceania, even EUROPE.

Instead, we can turn our phone on and watch some semi-viral backpacker annoy locals, presume everything is a scam, and talk about how cheap everything is, all whilst behaving horribly obnoxiously to everyone they encounter.

Does a white traveller really leave the Western sphere if they don’t approach everything with s general sense of suspicion and hostility?

BACK TO THE POINT.

What we do get to see, though, is how things actually look outside of the Nat Geo framing - through the lens of a selfie stick, an Insta360 and a ‘digital nomad’ with a dream.

We can experience the world outside of the well edited, professionally colour graded shots of Bangkok, accompanied by some ambiguous oriental sounding music (the kind you get in a Thai Spa).

We can literally watch someone walk around Hanoi for THREE WHOLE FUCKING HOURS IN 4K.

Everything is available at our fingertips: nothing is a mystery.

Now, I’m not saying that watching these videos is the same as going, but I think it creates some kind of dullness to what usually would be new and exciting – walking around Bangkok for the first time.

The world is so globalised, we already know what to expect.

We've already seen the vlogs.

We’ve already noted down the top viral spots to eat at.

In this sense, travelling hasn’t become about actually going. It’s become about discovering something beneath the surface of the tourists traps.

Hence the phrases: hidden gems, like-a-local, where tourists don’t go, traditional, off the beaten path, unseen…

Overseen, unexplored places are perceived as real, and behind that trend is something bigger - a drive for ‘authenticity’ in the way we travel.

But is that even possible?

Passport Privilege and the Illusion of Authenticity

Typically, ‘authentic’ experiences are offered to us in the form of paid tours, dinner with locals, cooking classes, watching the Hmong people dance in front of the fire.

Something feels uncomfortable about that though – watching a village of people dress up and dance in front of a bus full of thirty white tourists.

Now, I’m not questioning the authenticity of the tradition or dance (I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m talking about).

I’m more questioning the practice: something likely extremely culturally important and reflective of a people’s identity is reduced to a show for the tourist to feel satisfied that they’ve experienced some level of authenticity – something entirely manufactured, commercialised, tip-able.

But let’s think about it in another way: outside of commercialisation and profit.

Even if we do something outside of a tour.

We get invited to lunch by a local family in Yunnan: can we be sure that what we’re experiencing is truly ‘authentic’?

How much does our status as a tourist, our passport, western-ness, European-ness, outsider-ness affect the experience we’re having?

Even then, without the financial incentive to provide a level of satisfaction that ‘authenticity’ has been experienced, is what we’re experienced really authentic?

When we’re sat in a house with a family that doesn’t share the same language – how can we actually ever experience anything even resembling authenticity?

Again, I’m not saying that we can’t be on the receiving end of hospitality, and that what we’re experiencing can’t resemble authentic hospitality.

But…

Can we honestly say that we’re not just relishing in the idea of ‘discovering’ and ‘experiencing’ authenticity from an ‘othered’ cultures?

Doing so entirely through the lens of our own self-importance – being the centre of attention – precisely because we are the outsider.

That, my friends, is not an authentic experience.

Comparing Perspectives: Let’s switch it up

If you don’t already know, I am British.

Whoop whoop.

Many people imagine, when I tell them I’m from the UK, that I am from London.

I am not.

I am an absolute outsider in London, a tourist in my own country.

I am relying on my own notions of what London is.

BUT.

What I do have is a cultural understanding of the UK, a language link, a solid understanding of my country (at least I fucking hope so).

This puts me above (above?) above? many tourists coming to London in terms of cultural knowledge – ones that imagine London as double-decker buses, afternoon tea, quaint British streets, fish and chips, and rain.

SIDE NOTE: IF YOU THINK LONDON HAS GOOD FISH AND CHIPS – FUCK OFF.

So, let’s contrast my experience in London (if , hypothetically, I visited) with that of an international tourist that speaks no English.

What cultural depth would they have? Access to the city? It’s people? Knowledge?

I’m not saying they wouldn’t be able to have a great time, but their lack of ability to connect would CERTAINLY limit their ability to authentically understand London in all of its cultural depth.

When flipped and recalibrated inwardly, it sounds reasonable: how the fuck can you expect cultural depth and authenticity in those circumstances?

SO HOW CAN YOU EXPECT TO EXPERIENCE VIETNAM AUTHENTICALLY WHEN ALL YOU KNOW IS PHO, COMMUNISM, HANOI, RENT BIKE, CHEAP, AND SPEAK ZERO VIETNAMESE.

This isn’t me advocating to learn Vietnamese (or do, honestly), or saying you need to do a PhD in Indochinese relations to enter Vietnam, more that we should adjust our expectations of authenticity.

Even if we stretch it to its FURTHEST LENGTHS.

Imagine you arrive in Bangkok with ZERO internet – no tourist traps slammed in your Google maps, no hotel booked, no phone, just a bunch of Baht and a week to spare…

What’s the chance that you’re going to experience Thailand authentically?

ZERO FUCKING CHANCE.

Locals will treat you as an outsider, a tourist, PRECISELY BECAUSE YOU ARE.

After all, let’s be honest with ourselves – where does this emotional need to feel unique and authentic when travelling and exploring come from?

Two answers: vanity, colonial hangover.

PICK UR SIDE.

So, What’s Left?

Maybe it’s okay to just be accept being a tourist.

To take the photo, to eat at the viral chicken spot, go to Khao San Road, explore the old town in Warsaw.

Maybe surface-level traveling isn’t inherently bad – it’s honest.

We are just dumb tourists, and yes we should do some due-diligence before we travel, be aware, travel sustainably…

But maybe we can also not strive to achieve some higher plane of authenticity and cultural enlightenment that only we (and definitely not the other 60 people in this £3 a night hostel) can achieve.

And we can still do it with a sense of consciousness, respect, and awareness.

Travel can still be worthwhile.

For leisure.

For the break from our shit jobs, our life, our routine – for adventure, for fun.

It doesn’t have to be transcendent, unique, far-fledging, and exploratory.

It doesn’t have to be profound..

It’s HIGH TIME to reject the colonial, extractive mindset of “experiencing” other cultures like they’re there for our personal development.

To make us feel good about having experienced the ‘other’ in an ‘authentic sense’.

Instead, we can just be somewhere else for a bit: be polite, be respectful, and enjoy it.

That doesn’t mean we stop asking questions—but maybe we stop pretending we’ll ever have all the answers because we can say XIN CHÀO and know what BÚN CHẢ is.

Travel, even without authenticity, can still give us something: not meaning or authenticity, maybe, but perspective.

It doesn’t have to mean anything to still matter.

RANT OVER.

THANKS FOR ATTENDING.

By the way (hehe), if you enjoy what I write, you can buy me a coffee right here or throw a few bucks into the virtual donation tin (my BuyMeaCoffee page is actually really funny as well).

Wake, shower, out the door.

The days are long, packed edge to edge.

My apartment feels less like a home and more like a place to sleep. Just a bed.

It also means I’m usually out the door before I’ve even thought about breakfast.

So naturally, two hours into ‘co-working’, I’m ravenous and hovering around the café counter, trying to justify spending way too much on something small and sad.

A pastry won’t cut it, a full meal costs an arm and a leg, and Warsaw is seriously lacking in anything quick, decent, and affordable (meal deals are yet to hit Poland).

Which is how I found myself genuinely ACTUALLY clicking on the ads of those ridiculous meal replacement shakes—the ones with nice branding and vague promises of "fuel."

Five hundred calories in one stodgy shake. Not great, but a genuine consideration nonetheless.

Oh… wait…

You thought I was just going to make a life decision without becoming so critical of it that I eventually write an entire Substack about it?

WRONG.

Jokes aside, the reality is they reflect a broader disconnection from food, nutrition, and what it means to look after ourselves.

WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO GLUG DOWN 500 CALORIES OF LIQUID WHEY PROTEIN AT 9AM?

Hence, the lesson here isn’t about optimizing my eating schedule—it’s about learning how to genuinely take care of myself and actually prepare meals.

Maybe the answer is ‘meal prepping’ (I fucking hate it), or just slowing down enough to spend fifteen minutes cooking eggs and toast.

Something seemingly small, but enough to matter.

It’s not about punishment, or trying to do things the hard way for the sake of it.

It’s about slowly building the resilience and space to care for myself properly.

Though honestly, I will fucking gag if I have to eat overnight oats again.

When did we decide the Chia seeds were okay?

What I’m saying here is that there’s some areas of life we shouldn’t optimise.

In a time where there’s an app for everything, a product to be sold, it seems wise to purchase our way out of inconvenience and discomfort.

But honestly, maybe life is supposed to be a little weird, inconvenient, sometimes awkward—and definitely unoptimized (is that a word?)

Another example of this would be nootropics – L-theanine, Modafinil, Ashwaganda...

You know what I’m talking about, probably?

I get adverts for them ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

Maybe that says something about me?

Anyways…

If we’re tired, we should just be tired.

REST MORE.

I don’t think we can ‘optimise’ our productivity and energy by forcing cordyceps flavoured coffee down our gullet.

To me it’s a sign of a bigger issue - that being made to work more and more and more is normalised.

More possibilities, more opportunity.

Less time, more things to do…

Can we even have hobbies without wanting to monetise them? (buy me a coffee).

Again, maybe we’re just supposed to deal with our own cognitive limits.

Maybe we gotta accept that when we’re tired, we’re tired.

When we’re not feeling productive, we’re not feeling productive.

Equally, I don’t know if every process in our life can be optimized.

We’ve even optimized ordering coffee through apps.

Which allows us to skip the queue entirely…

(or wait in another queue of people waiting for their pre-ordered coffee?)

WOO FIVE MINUTES MORE IN THE OFFICE.

But…

Maybe that quiet, awkward wait is part of the beautiful weird, fucked up, human messiness that we’re not meant to escape.

Maybe it’s the awkward, unpolished, deeply inconvenient parts of life that matter most—the bits we can’t streamline or control.

Maybe that’s what being human really is.

We have to build resilience somehow as we move through life—and I’m not convinced that optimizing every single process is the way to do it.

We don’t become stronger by gaining back a few minutes of our commute, downing synthetic breakfasts, or taking ashwagandha to subside the anxiety of existence.

We build it in the in-between moments – the awkward, inconvenient moments.

In the forgotten breakfast routine, something we have to bring back into our life, through HABIT.

In the awkward café queue, giving us a few minutes to stop and YAWN.

In the missed alarms, waking up too late and accepting that we sometimes can’t control the amount of sleep we need.

The unproductive afternoons where we intend to do eight hours of work but do 20 minutes’ worth and scroll reels instead.

Maybe that’s the point of life?

To fuck up, get it wrong, make mistakes, and then grow.

To learn from mistakes.

To slowly build a routine, get enough sleep, leave enough time to grab coffee.

That should be enough, right?

“Yeah but … there’s an app for that.”

C O O L.

But at some point, we have to ask…

Where’s the line between making life easier and stripping away the small, everyday struggles that actually shape part of the human experience?

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger—or at least gives us something to write about.