I read an opinion piece earlier this year about a man who, at 57 years of age, had an epiphany about himself: he didn’t actually like the taste of the coffee he’d been drinking all his life. He liked the milky foam on top of it.

Upon realising this, he at first began ordering half-shot lattes (the milkiest and least coffee-tasting coffee he could conceive of). Still dissatisfied, he went the whole hog and changed his go-to order to a cup of hot milk, or what my two-year-old niece knows as a ‘babyccino’. Ordering this off-menu drink at Gail’s, Starbucks et al., he had – yes – occasionally faced bafflement from the till staff. But best case scenario? He got to enjoy his favourite drink for 80p – without the bitter coffee taste he hated so much.

I thought about him this morning while preparing my daily coffee with my beloved De’ Longhi machine. I make it with the Taylors of Harrogate Lazy Sunday coffee I bring from the UK – I love many things about living in Portugal; Portuguese coffee is not one of them – together with a specific barista-style oat milk. I serve it in my favourite greeny-blue mug, which I bought at a ceramics shop in Faro. In the same way the writer of the op-ed (who was in fact Caitlin Moran’s husband, Pete Paphides, writing in The Times) has perfected his non-coffee coffee order, I have perfected my at-home ritual. It has me going to bed every night like a child anticipating Christmas Day.

Still, I respect Pete Paphides. Not just for his self-knowledge, but for acting on it daily, unperturbed by the trail of social faux pas, confused baristas and jealous toddlers he leaves in his wake.

Because we all have our quirks. The kind that get romanticised in the ‘manic Pixie girl’ trope of rom-coms: think Zooey Deschanel’s character belting out The Smiths in the elevator in (500) Days of Summer; Emilie de Ravin in Remember Me eating dessert before her main course; Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates building architectural houses out of her waffles.

The reason this crops up again and again, I suspect, is that there’s something universally compelling about it; the permission to be kind of weird, in the way you want to but you’re told not to be as a child. Because isn’t that the consolation prize of adulthood: getting to do what you want?

As a child, there’s so much you’re restricted from doing – even if the impulse is there. No, you can’t eat your pudding until you’ve had your greens. No, you shouldn’t wear your communion dress to soft play. No, you can’t stay up all night to finish The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. NO, YOU CANNOT RIDE THE BORDER TERRIER LIKE A HORSE.

Over the weekend, I interviewed about her latest book, A Creative Compass, in conversation at Latitude Festival, on the newly established Listening Post stage. During our conversation, the inner child, the source of so much creative inspiration, was a recurring theme. I liked this paragraph in particular:

As an adult, you’re in theory at liberty to do so much more, but you’ve become estranged from your instinct. Although, sometimes it whispers to you. Walking through Primrose Hill: what if I took my shoes off, lay down on the grass and rolled down from the top of the hill? What if I sat on top of that wall and people-watched for the next half an hour?

What if I started singing and dancing in public, like I was starring in a musical film? My father does this occasionally. As a child, I was mortified. Now I join in. During the festival last weekend, my friend and I spent a joyful, incredibly silly half-hour dancing to songs by Whitney Houston, Kylie and Arctic Monkeys at the Disco Hut, an area for parents and children (and us, it seemed). The best part? There were hula hoops! Hula hooping is a forgotten hobby of mine – and I have to say that the joy of rediscovering it was on par with watching David Byrne (of Talking Heads) the previous night.

Whatever the impulse – whether something spontaneous, or recurrent (like a repressed aversion to coffee), it’s worth paying attention to. In an environment where our tastes are so influenced by algorithms and marketing budgets and (in a more timeless way) unspoken societal rules, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the mental freedom we still have.

Who could you be if you homed in on the internal signals you received, day to day, from your own body, rather than the external noise of what you ‘should’ want?

What if you cultivated the self-knowledge required to ignore the sandwich boards clamouring to convince you that you wanted a ceremonial grade matcha iced vanilla almond latte atrocity, and embraced foamy milk?

Got dressed in the morning in whatever clothing spoke to you?

Took up a hobby not because it was trending, but because you had always wanted to try it?

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Listened to the Mamma Mia 2 soundtrack on repeat, instead of the new Taylor Swift album that you’ve never quite connected with?

Over the past 24 hours, I’ve been considering some of my own quirks:

• While incredibly greedy in every other respect, I don’t actually like most desserts.

• The desserts I do enjoy (predominantly, of the dark chocolate variety) are unfailingly better with a sprinkle of salt, and/or citrus.

• My celebrity crushes have always been quirky-handsome. Think, Adam Driver. The Safdie brothers. Jason Segel. Jason Sudeikis, although crucially only with the Ted Lasso moustache. Brett Goldstein. Óscar Isaac. Joaquin Phoenix. When I was a teenager, I had a Ben Adams from A1 poster, because he was the heartthrob I was supposed to fancy. But it was all a lie!

• Gin and tonic tastes best served with rosemary and orange.

• I recently took up piano, just because.

  

• While received wisdom dictates that a ‘good’ party must go on until the early hours, I, much like Cinderella, prefer those that end at midnight.

• While I love listening to live music in a relaxed setting, like the poetry and music event, Inner Spaces, my friend Iva runs monthly here in Lisbon, I’m more or less ready to retire from watching music standing up in a large stadium. This is partly to do with an aversion to crowded spaces in general (which, it seems, has emerged with age), but mostly to do with my stature. At 5’2”, I am paying to watch a screen for 90 minutes, periodically eclipsed by the head of the 6’4” bloke in front of me. Can I boycott concerts until event operators agree to implement a staggered standing arrangement, much like a school photo? Watch this space.

• I prefer chopsticks to cutlery.

• If I could turn back the clock, I’d use it to watch Mamma Mia 2 again for the first time.

• I need almost total silence to work effectively.

• I prefer doing my hair myself to having a professional blow-dry. While my hairdressing skills are limited, I’d rather look a little messier rather than spend the day feeling like a coiffured poodle.

• I really, really like pickles.

Honestly, I could keep adding to this list forever, and that would be a positive thing. Because taking time to pay attention to, chronicle and – crucially – act on our own tastes is a powerful rebuttal to all the external sources clamouring to tell us what we should want, instead.

Know thyself. Pick up that hula hoop. Crush on Ted Lasso. Enjoy your foamy milk, if that’s what your heart wants.

What secret quirks are you waiting to lean into?

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I’ve started propagating. Not in a metaphorical way (although maybe in a metaphorical way? I’m never quite sure what my subconscious is up to). Certainly, here in the land of the literal, I have four or five water glasses on my hob, filled with cuttings of mint, rosemary, lavender, and a mystery herb. I did look up the Latin name of the mystery herb, but I’m still none the wiser – and, in a bid to build suspense, I’m resisting the temptation to disappear down an AI/Google rabbit hole. Perhaps it’s incredibly poisonous. Possibilities abound!

Back to my hopeful water glasses. My propagation experiment emerged from a conversation with my friend, owner of said farm, where I stayed last weekend. As we walked around the land, I was complaining about my terrible sense of smell. Terrible in the sense that it is weak, a condition known as anosmia, although I’ve heard complaints at the other end of the spectrum as well. Is it better, incidentally, to have smelled and suffered, than never to have smelled at all?

My friend sent me home with several cuttings from her strongest-smelling herbs, their roots in soaked cotton wool and wrapped in tinfoil, and now I am here propagating them in my kitchen in Lisbon.

The plan is that, once the roots have formed, I will house these herbs in a balcony planter, which will sit alongside my existing one. The planter herbs will become my stimuli for a daily smell-training ritual – this is a thing in anosmia treatment, apparently – which I’ll perform to stimulate my olfactory system and prime me for other scent possibilities. I doubt my nostrils will ever rival those of my super-smeller friend, who hugged me the day after I’d purchased a new perfume and guessed (correctly), ‘Jo Malone, Pomegranate Noir!’ Still, I’m curious about what’s out there smell-wise.

This weekend, I’m off to the UK and then Paris, a trip totalling nine days. In a stroke of serendipity, this is the perfect amount of time to propagate roots – which as I understand it requires very little further input from me.

On the subject of input, I intend to take time off work while I’m away. I am bad at remembering to take annual leave (such is the cliché of the freelancer failing to be their own HR department). My brain has, lately, announced that it is taking industrial action. My IQ seems to have taken a nosedive, while my hippocampus has gone on strike against learning Portuguese. How much of this can be attributed to the 30+ degree temperatures which have characterised June in Lisbon, I do not know; only that there are times in life when one must check out and this one is making a strong case for itself.

And yet, while I’m away, my cuttings collection will be (heatwave willing) sprouting roots. Which makes me feel, well… I’ll avoid the word productive. Too many connotations. But let’s put it this way: it makes me feel hopeful. It makes me feel that change is possible. Growth will come, and I don’t have to be the direct source of it.

OK, perhaps I am thinking about this in a metaphorical way.

Peaches are in season again. Barbecues line the narrow streets of Madragoa, Graça, Alfama, Bairro Alto. Sardines are packed like, well, sardines on the grill, their metallic-rainbow skin glistening at golden hour, sparks leaping off the hot charcoal like fireflies after dark. A colour-coded spreadsheet makes its way around the expat network, detailing where to get your fix throughout June. The limestone pavements are carpeted with jacaranda petals, purple against mole-coloured calçadas. Spring is knocking at the door of summer. By this point, we’ve all lost count of how many heatwaves we’ve had this year. And exactly one year ago today, I arrived here for the holiday that became a migration.

When I decided to move, I was drunk on chilled red wine and hot summer romance and sunshine on bare skin and the never-old sensation of running a fork, gently, over one side of a sardine, skimming flesh from its spine, the pungent taste and smell I never stop craving, all year round.

Peaches go out of season at the end of September. Sardines follow in the early weeks of October. Mid-October, I celebrated my birthday here. I nested in my flat throughout November, when it rained so much that you could barely traverse Lisbon’s famous pavements without slipping over. I spent my first Christmas away from my family, then navigated my first central-heating-less February. All the while I got to spend hours outside every day, at neighbourhood quiosques in leafy spots or in Estrela Park or walking along the Tagus River, feeling like this life was still quite good, actually.

And then spring came back around, with its promise of that first summer, and it was as if I’d passed some sort of test. I have experienced all four seasons in Lisbon, the way I sometimes theorise that one should do with a prospective life partner before making any milestone decisions.

I have been mostly happy here, in a way that feels safe to me: less ‘weekend warrior’, more weeks on end of gentle daily joys. My life has a comforting rhythm to it: good friends and a brightly-coloured workspace and communal lunches and yoga and rituals like my podcast club or writing groups. I am living my best life, and by that I mean the life that works best for me, not someone else.

I have begun to seek more adventure, such is the human condition. I recently had a refresher driving lesson to acquaint myself with driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road (a skill I never picked up, delegating to ex-boyfriends whenever abroad). Every so often, I’ll say something like, ‘I need to get out of Lisbon’, in the way that the cast members of Made in Chelsea used to declare they needed a break from London. Then I’ll return after a lost weekend in Manchester or Faro, and fall back in love with Lisbon all over again.

Although I’ve moved to another country, I’m still the same person I was in London. Sometimes anxiety robs me of my capacity to be in the present, the way it can to anyone, anywhere. And sometimes I get disappointed about things not working out. Being here doesn’t immunise me from ambition or occasional loneliness (although, I’ll testify, the blue skies help).

Still I return, sooner rather than later, to the reality that I uprooted my life to move here. And I need to make that count. I made a high-stakes decision, and it injected energy back into my thirties in a way that propelled me to behave like the heroine of my own life, not the victim of it.

Was moving here the right choice? The past year has been one of the happiest of my life, yes, but a honeymoon period isn’t enough to validate such a big decision. Moving here was the right choice because I am still choosing to make it the right choice. Not every day, but most days I manage it.

I just finished the second season of the Netflix series, Four Seasons. In the final episode (spoiler alert), a prominent character decides on a whim to move to a little mountain town in the Italian Alps, after visiting friends there. The past five years had happened to her: empty-nesting, divorce, bereavement. But now she was making a choice to move forward, because life tossed her a lemon and she said perché no? After a period of inertia, she wanted to do something with her life, rather than leaving that section of the canvas blank.

She didn’t pick her new home from a TikTok shortlist. This sleepy village in the Italian Alps was just the opportunity that presented itself, at the right time and place. And it was her duty to make that opportunity count.

That’s sort of how I feel about Lisbon. God knows, there is so much I love about it here: the husky-voiced Portuguese grandmothers, as animated and opinionated as my late Jewish grandmother; the saturated blue skies; the tiles and pavements; the streets of apartment buildings that collectively resemble a Dulux colour chart; the calming slowness... believe me when I say I could keep these semi-colons coming to me. Is there another version of me, perhaps, who could be living in Bordeaux or Mexico City, had things worked out differently? Perhaps. It doesn’t matter. I was gifted two idyllic weeks last June; the fortnight that propelled me to say, porque não? To finally make the move.

But it isn’t the role of the city I’m in to hand me the life I want. That’s my job. Nor am I in a position to scapegoat it for anything I lack. I migrated here; it owes me nothing. It’s helpful to remember that conditionality. It’s a good way to live.

Peaches are in season again. And as I bite into mine, the memories of that first summer surfacing, it reminds me to savour this moment once again.

Some days it feels crazy that I based a major life decision around being a bit happier. As I walk down a steep, cobbled hill facing the Tagus river, I recall that, the better part of a year ago, I made a snap decision (which had, in truth, been brewing for years) to move to Lisbon. To make my ‘fantasy life’ my real life.

Still. A few years shy of middle age, it’s not the craziest manifestation of that early mid-life crisis energy. It’s not a sports car I can’t afford, or an affair, or God forbid a bad haircut. I moved at a point in my life where I didn’t have all that much to lose by leaving; no dependants, or white picket fence, or relationship to give up. I never imagined myself moving, until – all of a sudden – I did. Yet, if I was writing my life in novel form, this plotline would have felt inevitable.

Here’s where it sounds absurd: I uprooted my life in order to spend a full 10 minutes of my morning fondling the seasonal produce (currently, kiwis) in Pingo Doce, schooled by a motherly Portuguese woman with strong opinions about ripeness. I overhauled my life to go to the beach on a Wednesday, armed with tinfoiled tuna sandwiches and the last 100 pages of my novel (most recently, Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell – divine). I overhauled my life to spend this Easter weekend at my friend’s farm in southern Portugal. I overhauled my life to go a bit slower, to savour this moment where I’m not quite young, not quite old – but armed with the confidence, and life experience, to know a good thing when I see it.

Because what is life for – really – if not for these little moments, and having the capacity to savour them? Why do we pursue anything, if not for the prospect of luxuriating in it for a while, time standing still; that moment of reflection at the top of the hill, looking out at the horizon and thinking: this is the life that I built.

Living here isn’t all custard-yellow buildings and blue skies, however. There are daily hurdles, which I imagine – not having lived in a foreign country before – are shared among expats.

Some observations from my first year of expat life:

You will miss things you don’t expect: A few years ago, a friend moved to the States and became suddenly very British – yearning for Marmite, crumpets etc. Now I get it. In no particular order, I miss Marks & Spencer (particularly the underwear and pyjama sections); Boots; Everyman cinema; jacket potatoes; stand-up comedy; theatre; blonde-roast coffee.

Language learning will not be linear: Some days I wake up thinking in Portuguese, other days I stand in line at my local butcher’s unable to comprehend a word of the animated conversation the women are having in front of me. Yesterday I spent the bulk of the day memorising irregular Portuguese verb conjugations in the past perfect tense, only to baulk at an interaction with a Bershka cashier.

Some things are unexpectedly expensive: Sun cream is double the price. Over-the-counter medicines, like paracetamol, are close to four times the cost in the UK. Oh, and I recently (accidentally) paid over 10 euros for pine nuts. No rhyme or reason. Speaking of which…

You become obsessed with idioms: While I don’t (yet) have many Portuguese friends, I have many expat friends who speak English as a second (or third, or fourth) language. With them, and with my wonderful Portuguese teacher, I suddenly feel like Mary Poppins – pulling out bizarre expressions like ‘Don’t count your chickens…’ and ‘barking up the wrong tree’ like its own niche form of expat Tourette’s.

Visa woes are real, but weirdly bonding: One of my good friends here acted as my ‘D7 Doula’, coaching me through the intricacies of my visa application. It’s easy to dwell on the shitshow of Brexit having happened (and I do, regularly) but equally, the friction associated with staying is something that unites much of the community here, and in a strange way makes me value every moment I get to spend here.

It’s a crash course in friend-making: As I wrote about in a previous post, friend-making is a huge part of expat life. New friendship has opened up avenues and reveals hidden corners of Lisbon life that I never would have stumbled upon alone, no matter how much time I spent wandering the windy, medieval neighbourhood of Alfama. But it has taken time, effort and patience. I’ve never invested more in this skillset than I do now, and I think it puts me in good stead for the future. Equally, one thing I hadn’t expected is how much some of my friendships back ‘home’ – I still call it home, I wonder if and when that will change – in London have flourished. They have held my hand, metaphorically if not literally, as I’ve wandered the city sozinha (on my own), coaching me through the strangeness of this new life. There’s a lot to be said for a phone call.

It’s different to just visiting: Before I moved here, I was in the habit of coming to Lisbon for a handful of weeks, over-indulging in whatever I could and meeting lots of people, but in a surface-level way. Something I’m proud, this past year, is realising the stakes are much higher now that I live here; and stepping up accordingly. Lisbon, as an expat, can feel like a moderate-sized village. I have a reputation to uphold, and it makes me reflect on how I want to show up for present and future friends; what I have to contribute to this community. I have a healthy (ish) lifestyle that sustains me, and I’m protective of that. One of my most salient reasons for moving, in the past, was that I didn’t think living in Lisbon – making it a daily reality – could match how it was to visit. Two months shy of my anniversary, I’ve found that it’s even better.

Rebuilding your social life in your thirties is a humbling process.

Particularly when I never anticipated having to do this all over again. Before moving Lisbon this summer, I thought I was pretty much set, friendship wise. In London, I only ever expected my social circle to evolve and expand, such as last year when I made a bunch of writer and/or book-loving friends, or a few years ago when I decided I needed more like-minded single female friends. That would happen, sure, but those newer friendships were the cherry on top of an established social life.

My current challenge, now that I have a Portuguese postcode, is a heftier one.

I’m not starting from a blank slate. I already have a handful of good friends here (thanks to years of visiting), together with a long-term friend from London who lives here. That means my feeling is more akin to my first day at secondary school – where I knew some people from primary – than it is to day one of kindergarten.

Still, starting secondary school was no small feat – and there’s a lot to think about. For instance, what do I call myself: ‘Chez’, the nickname by which my school and university friends know me, or ‘Francesca’, my more European-friendly first name, and the name I’ve used to introduce myself in recent years? What am I looking for in a friend: similar hobbies and aspirations, novelty and intrigue, or a fellow Brit who exudes the familiarity I sometimes find myself craving here? Where do I meet those people: out having fun (where I, in turn, am a lighter and more fun version of myself) or a more tailored environment, like a no-phones hike frequented by expats and travellers?

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The answer is, well, all of the above. But also, not to overthink it. Overthinking is a concept I’ve historically taken issue with, particularly when I’m accused of doing it by someone else – because who are we to judge what’s going on in someone else’s brain? More recently, I’ve come to define overthinking as the moment where thinking outweighs doing – and becomes destructive.

And so, instead of overthinking, I’ve been doing; indiscriminately signing up to everything that looks vaguely interesting on MeetUp. For instance, the no-phones hike. See also a photography walk last weekend, populated mostly by – and I should have seen this coming – actual photographers, amateur and professional, who attended with their actual cameras (in stark contrast to the no-phones hike, my cracked iPhone 13 got a serious outing at this one). I’ve also been a Digital Nomads drinks; several Portuguese classes; and multiple writing groups; a podcast circle. I’m a regular at the local English-speaking yoga class, and I’m on the list for a silent-reading club, together with looking out for a book club to replace the one I started last year in north London.

All of this is to say that I have been busy, making friends and seeking community. Which is interchangeably (and sometimes simultaneously) fantastic and exhausting. It takes time, my more established expat friends assure me. Friendships – solid friendships – take time. You might click with someone instantly on a hike, but find you can’t trust them down the line; alternatively, someone you thought you had little in common with might prove a slow burn.

As I fell asleep, I gave myself a pep talk: slow down. Let things evolve. Don’t let the outcome you seek (e.g. a network of good friends who know you intimately, and vice versa) preclude you from seeing what’s right in front of you, projecting what you want (a BFFFFFFF!) on to a relative stranger.

In other words, be cool.

What’s funny is, this wisdom could just as easily be applied to dating, and yet in that sphere it was a much, much harder lesson to learn. While I have – I think – matured in my approach to dating, it’s funny to see the same impulses suddenly emerging in this ‘first day of secondary school’ stage of friendmaking.

Reminding myself to take it slow can be a challenge, when there’s a part of me that just wants a readymade circle to go for pizza and wine with every Wednesday. But I know, from looking back at my longstanding friendships back in London, that our bonds have been built upon years of shared vulnerability, laughter and long conversations. I can’t have predicted the outcome when it began, nor did I try to (if anxiety or urgency did occur during the early days of our friendships, I can’t remember it). I think this enabled me to see them as the person they were/are, rather than the friend I wanted them to be.

It’s not a perfect analogy, because romantic relationships are – typically – monogamous, whereas friendship is not. This means you generally already have some friends, when making more friends, whereas in seeking a romantic partner you are starting from a place of privation, and the choice you are ultimately leading to is a high-stakes ‘stick or twist’; win or lose. Whereas, with friendships, the spectrum is more like, ‘Will this person be a good person to invite to birthday drinks, or will they become the one I want to spend my entire birthday weekend?’ The ego cost is lower, and so’s the anxiety.

Still, I could benefit from applying what I’ve told myself throughout all these years of dating (‘You should play it cool!’) to my current process of friendmaking.

The romantic impulse is still there. I still believe that relationships – and I mean that broadly – are what make a meaningful, joyous life. I’ve already seen that love story play out in the friendships I’ve formed with people who were once strangers and now feel like family. My heart remains full of hope (and, at times, impatient).

But impatience isn’t what’s going to get me what I want. I need to be cool. I don’t mean cold and stand-offish. Friendship forming still necessitates some warm-heartedness: the kind that makes you taking leaps of faith, and risk rejection. Inevitably, there will be confidences, and invitations, that go unreturned, but you stand to win more than you lose (a piece of dating wisdom from a friend) – or, at least, you have to keep on believing that.

So no – I don’t want to be cold. But I do want to stay cool, and go slowly. As a friend of mine kept saying in the early days of her own – now very much established – relationship, you have to go slow to go faster, or indeed further. Throughout years of dating, I never trusted this – and I should have. That’s why, as I build the foundations of my Lisbon friendships, I’m doing so with care.

I’ll start with an admission: I didn’t think I’d get round to writing a newsletter at all this week. But then, as I was walking home from my second Portuguese lesson, an idea started to form in my head; the bud of a conversation I wanted to have with someone, but I didn’t know who to call at 9:23pm on a Wednesday.

And then I got back to my flat here in Lisbon, I looked in the mirror and noticed two small-but-fierce spots that have formed on my chin. And I thought yes, that’s it. That’s the newsletter!

Shall I give context? Fine – I will (as much as a part of me would like to stop there). For once in the history of my skin, these spots are ones that I don’t mind. They’re part of an experiment I’ve been doing recently, which involves using a La Roche-Posay retinol serum once a week.

The strange little spots are an outcome that beauty writers call a ‘retinol purge’. I, on the other hand, am no beauty writer, but in a nutshell here’s what happens: when using products containing retinol, a so-called wonder ingredient, your cell turnover increases. This means your skin apparently gets worse before it gets better, through ‘purging’ all the gunk out in double time. It’s a waiting game, and not a pretty one, I’ll give you that. But a worthy experiment, I think/hope/pray. I think my skin is looking better. And although I douse myself in factor 50 to protect my currently-photosensitive complexion, the sunny horizon is in sight.

I’ve trusted the process, and it’s beginning to work out. Which is a comforting thought to apply to other areas of my life, given that – for various bureaucratic reasons pertaining to visas – I am stuck in mainland Portugal for an indefinite period of time.

There are, frankly, worse places to be stuck. Although the honeymoon period is over with Lisbon, it has developed into something more akin to the first years of marriage, a marriage where I still have pinch-me moments, such as stopping slack-jawed in front of a butter-yellow building with the thought: ‘How is it possible that I live in this heavenly place?’

Still, it’s a strange thought that I can’t just hop on a plane and leave the country. Especially when that country isn’t my country, the United Kingdom, where I lived all my life up until now. And it makes this period of being here very real, in a way all my hot flings with this city over the past few years haven’t been. I’ve got to get a Portuguese SIM card; find a few more friends; make a real stab at living here, for as long as it lasts.

Some of – many of – my happiest memories since 2022 have happened here. And yet I knew it wasn’t going to be like living in Disneyland, as much as some of the buildings in the neighbouring resort town of Sintra fit the Walt Disney bill rather well. And so, I feel like it’s now for the hard part. The part where it gets harder, before it gets better. The moments where I realise just how complex Portuguese is to learn, and remember that friendship is a slow-burn, and wake up in a bit of a slump, and consider questions like, how much friction is too much friction?

Then I tell myself this: that, in my experience, my boldest decisions have always been rewarded. And yet, that gratification is rarely instant. The universe doesn’t owe you a standing ovation for your courage. But you do end up developing a quiet pride in yourself, somewhere along the process. Boldness begets boldness, because hard decisions require you to scrabble about actively justifying them, in a way that you wouldn’t have to if you’d just stayed still.

And that’s what I wanted, from coming here. Not an easy ride, but an interesting one. And so I’m trusting the process, filling my days with novelty, and believing that something good is around the corner.

I’ve been doing a lot of living, lately.

Which might sound like a redundant thing to say – because living is sort of inextricable from being alive, isn’t it?

But what I mean is that I’ve been living predominantly in the present. Not asking myself, how am I going to write about this experience (because I’ve always felt an instinctive binary between living life and writing about life). Not photographing things, to package it up nicely for the Instagram overlord. Not panicking about the minor social faux pas I made last week, or trying to plan an outfit for a social event the week after next. Just… living, day to day, more preoccupied by what I’m doing tonight than the fact I turn a year older in a fortnight.

That said, sometimes you’ve got to honour your future 89-year-old.

I just got back from Seoul, where I travelled for an architecture conference as part of a media trip (and yes, I feel cool writing that sentence).

For various reasons, the period between knowing I was going to South Korea, and boarding a plane to South Korea, was roughly 96 hours. The dates fell over a trip back to the UK, a trip where my chief aim, other than getting my Portuguese visa stamped in my passport, was to go to Marks & Spencer with my mum to buy this olive green cashmere cardigan.

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However, just like my decision to move to Lisbon earlier this year, there are certain times in life where living too doggedly in the present is a mistake. When saying ‘yes’ is something you have to do not just for your current self, but for a projected version of your future self (I’m terming this my future 89-year-old, although if longevity science has its way perhaps by 2078, 89 will be the new 59).

Such was the case here. If I didn’t go to Seoul, that 89-year-old me would be justifiably pissed off. I can imagine her shaking her marble-headed stick at me. Not only has South Korea’s capital been on my bucket list for years, but – for various nerdy reasons I expand on at the bottom of this post – I was desperate to go to this particular conference.

Still, this mindset (serving your 89-year-old) requires checking in with yourself – as it can become a ‘should’. For instance, I suspect it’s the same strain of future projection that makes skydiving so popular. See also swimming with sharks; going on safari; and getting a tattoo (‘I should do this, because when I’m old…). As it stands, I’m happy not to do any of those things. That’s someone else’s future 89-year-old, not mine.

Meanwhile, I just returned from a four-day trip I’ll never forget; inspired and awed. The M&S cardigan is sold out in my size. But only one of those statements will matter when I’m 89.

One last thing

As mentioned, my trip to Seoul was to attend the Emotional City conference at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism.

I won’t say too much about this here, because you likely don’t subscribe for long essays about architecture (I write these elsewhere), but the conference was dedicated to Humanise, a movement begun by Thomas Heatherwick, of Heatherwick Studio, to champion built design that promotes people’s wellbeing. Believe it or not, this isn’t a given in architecture – although that’s changing. And the conference guest list – which included everyone from researchers to artists and city planners – reflected that.

Humanise promotes architecture that is built for your average person (i.e. someone non-visual-arts trained, or a stakeholder), rather than for the aims of a private developer, government authority or the architect themselves. Which, as an average person obsessed with architecture, is a movement I can get behind. It combines all the things I’m personally curious about (wellness, architecture, psychology, and the emerging discipline of neuroarchitecture).

If this intrigues you too, do check out the work of Humanise, together with Project Why at HKS and this Wallpaper write-up on the Biennale which includes an interview with Thomas Heatherwick himself.

I spent 2023 trying, and failing, to go upside down.

Every Saturday, come rain or shine, I would wake up at 6:50am for a yoga inversions class in Camden. By 8am I’d be gathered among a motley crew of handstanders and wannabe handstanders, ready for 75 minutes’ worth of drills, usually involving a wall and/or a brave partner.

At first, I embraced the challenge. I’d watch the teacher, who specialised in calisthenics and gymnastics, contort himself into various shapes, his body and limbs for the most part suspended in the air, and I’d think: that’s going to be me someday! I drank up his encouraging words, and the morale of my fellow classmates. I tried, and tried, and tried.

A year in, I realised I was going to sleep every Friday night dreading the class.

It wasn’t just the physical challenge. There would be kicks in the face (you would kick, and be kicked; it was inevitable). There would be strength limitations, your shoulders, fingers and palms pleading mercy as you put more and more weight into them, hoping for that eureka moment where you’d kick up and fly!

But none of that compared to the mental exhaustion of the boxing match I’d have with my inner critic. Because, a year in, all I could hear was the should of, I’ve been coming to this class for a year, I should be better at this. Why haven’t I progressed more? Why am I not stronger, more motivated? I was, probably, making some progress; at least the teacher reassured me that that was the case. But, mentally, it made me feel weaker and weaker – and, believe it or not, that wasn’t helping me go upside down.

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As a one-off, I switched my Saturday morning class to the all-levels vinyasa class that took place next door, at 8:30am. Then I kept going, and I never looked back. And then I tried not to be ashamed when, inevitably, I’d bump into my old teacher.

Because it wasn’t his fault that I hadn’t managed it; and it wasn’t mine, either.

It just wasn’t my time.

Before moving to Lisbon, I felt like I was up against a clock in several areas of my life: romantically, professionally, biologically. I know that’s a cliche – and likely the product, at least in part, of internalised misogyny – but that feeling was a reality. It created a low-level panic in me. I felt my future was out of my control.

My handstand goal was supposed to be the antithesis to that. There were many things I couldn’t make work, but this one – I told myself – I could, with enough time and energy.

Plus, let’s face it, it would make me feel like a superhero.

When I paused my handstand goal, I felt like a loser. That shame lasted for months. Two years on, I think of leaving that class as a sign of strength. A willingness to adapt. To temper the harsh expectations I was putting on myself. To fall back in love with yoga (as I have done, since).

And besides, there will be time. That’s a phrase I seem to be telling myself a lot lately, and believing it. It helps that I don’t feel as much time pressure anymore. That’s partly down to becoming part of an expat community where the age range, and more crucially array of life choices, is broader than what I was used to in London.

But it’s also due to a feeling of general openness to what’s ahead. A willingness to try and experiment with things, and to make that process of trying a two-way street. If it feeds (inspires, excites) me, I will continue. If it doesn’t, then why self-flagellate, as I did with that class for months?

It feels counterintuitive to think of a goal as something that should be held lightly. And yet, that’s what I want to do – not just with the yoga handstands, but with all the things I wanted back in my London life.

I don’t want to thrash against the tide of what’s not-working. That’s not the same as giving up too easily (or whatever harsh thing I told myself I was doing in 2023). That’s trusting my intuition. It’s allowing goals to be a guiding light; not a should-stick to beat myself with.

One of my favourite things about yoga is its age diversity. Sure, I get the appeal of things like CrossFit (the endorphin high, the possibility of meeting a fellow tight-abbed significant other). But yoga is something I can do with both my mother, and my 20-month-old niece. It’s something I hope to do well into my eighties.

The good news, with respect to my handstands goal, is that age doesn’t really come into it.

From the perspective of this class cohort, at least, people’s age (and body type, it’s worth mentioning) had absolutely no correlation with who could, and couldn’t, do a handstand. As far as I could tell, it was entirely arbitrary. The athletic-looking 6’4” bloke (whom I later learnt was a former model) in his thirties was far, far behind the heavy-set bloke in his early sixties, who could hold himself upside down with ease.

Perhaps the one thing that differentiated those handstanders was that they had mastered their inner critic better than I. And perhaps that’s easier to do in one’s sixties, than in one’s thirties. Equally, perhaps those who rock up to an inversions class at 60+ are those who tell themselves exactly what I’m learning right now: that our life goals have no expiration date.

That doing a handstand (or publishing a novel, or buying a house, or settling down, or starting a family) are things I might do in the next five, or ten, years – or not. My instincts will guide me, as I go.

Or maybe I’ll be a handstanding octogenarian. Watch this space.

Hello again!

It’s good to be back in your inbox. It’s been a while – over two months, in fact. The longest break I’ve ever taken from writing The Shoulds. It’s been a busy time for me, because I’ve been busy living out, offline, a decision that’s taken me three years to make.

A decision I had should-ed myself out of, before making a U-turn earlier this summer.

I’m writing this from a plant-filled office, the evening sunlight streaming in through the generous windows. I feel light; unhurried. I’m in the right place, at the right time.

Just under three years ago, I sat at the same table, writing the first issue of The Shoulds. I had decided, on a cold water-swimming-induced whim, to spend a month in Lisbon with a journalist friend. One month turned into two and a half, which turned into four. Time went slowly, at first, as I encountered the novelty of almost-living in a foreign country where absolutely nothing – coffee orders, transport, supermarket queues, social plans, online deliveries – happened quickly, or exactly the way I wanted it to.

My heart rate slowed, too, as I let go of the pressure I’d been putting on myself, back in London, to optimise, improve, and push forward; to define who I was, and what I wanted. During that visit to Lisbon, I stepped off the treadmill, and I let myself exist in the moment. Integrating into a close-knit expat community, I made friendships which evolved almost entirely face-to-face, our online interactions restricted to making in-person plans. I took up yoga. I took long meandering walks around the city.

I was doing life right – or, at least, in a way that felt right for me – but it didn’t count. Because I didn’t live here; not really. Lisbon was a fantasy life.

And then I returned to London, for good. Ostensibly. I was making a commitment – putting down roots – showing up in a way that would earn me the future I envisaged myself leading: a successful career characterised by books and bylines; a doting husband who fell within my dating app filters; perhaps a child or two at some point (I’d discover my maternal bone eventually, surely).

I put one foot in front of the other, trying to get it right. I enrolled on a prestigious creative writing course. I became a regular at yoga studios and cafes, visiting at the same time every week, convinced by a New York Times feature that this would stop me feeling lonely in my local neighbourhood (it worked, but only a little). I completed London dating around the time when I found myself sat opposite the third James Something-or-Other in a 12-month calendar period, swapping softball questions about our siblings. I attended a lot of weddings and met a lot of babies. I did a bad job of updating my LinkedIn. I started a list in my Notes app to brainstorm fun things to do – and all I could think to add was ‘listen to a funny podcast’.

I lived in London, one of the best cities in the world. A city rich in history, opportunity and diversity, which had shaped me, pushed me, challenged me for over a decade. I had a privileged life there: friendships that brought joy and meaning, a family who loved and accepted me, a sense of home.

I should have been thriving. Yet, something wasn’t working. I was doing life, and London, wrong; a series of false starts. I didn’t hate my life – far from it. But I didn’t love it either, no matter how much I told myself I should.

More pressingly, I felt lost. As I progressed through my early 30s, I didn’t want the things I was supposed to want. I paid witness to the promotions and the milestones and the big white weddings, and I wasn’t even jealous. At least, not jealous enough. Because intense jealousy might have proved useful as a motivator; a sign to pursue something, to live my life differently.

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Instead, I berated myself for not wanting the things I was supposed to want. Even when I thought I’d found my footing – in a career milestone, in a new relationship – I’d soon look to the hypothetical future and find I wasn’t even excited for it.

Occasionally, I’d visit Lisbon for a week, and I would click back into that sense of doing life right. A lower-stakes rightness, because doing life right in Lisbon was as simple as selecting the ripest yellow peach from the local Pingo Doce, and eating it outside in the sunshine, the juices running down my arm. A basic life, but one I felt able to relish; my heartbeat slowing to the pace of the city, a city that has always whispered to me, live slower, live slower.

I always told people – including myself – that I’d never move here. For my whole life, I lived in the UK (in cities that, incidentally, all began with L – Liverpool, Leeds, London – a connection I only made recently). I was born with British citizenship, a passport which was – pre-Brexit – one of the most powerful in the world.

Moving country was what my paternal grandma did, her family forced to flee the Nazis in 1940s Poland. Meanwhile, I wanted to… what? Move country for happiness? Another version of it?

Earlier this summer, I flew here for a fortnight. For a holiday. A holiday which I’d framed as a final hurrah – because what was I playing at, really, still lusting after this fantasy life? Just one last fortnight. Then, I’d go back home, to London, and do it better this time.

Something I’m learning is that when a process feels too forced – whether that’s a friendship, a relationship, a job application, a creative project, a purchase, whatever – then that is a feeling worth listening to. This isn’t to say you always need to give up, but perhaps there’s another way of doing it. Another means of getting, roughly, the outcome that you want – the companionship, the challenge, the creativity – without the soul-destroying effort. The method that should have worked, but didn’t.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that, by the end of that fortnight-long holiday, I made a decision - or, more accurately, my subconscious decided for me.

I asked myself what I wanted from my life right now (I want, I want. One of the first, simple verbs a child, or a non-native Portuguese speaker, learns to say, and one I’ve been long estranged from).

I realised I couldn’t predict, or indeed control, the future. The best information was what I had in front of me. That feeling of wanting. And the benevolent fear that lay alongside it, whispering to me: ‘If not now, when?’

I decided to move to Lisbon. Not because I should (nothing, and no one, has ever told me I should uproot my life and move country), but because I wanted to.

The past two months have been spent navigating a complex Portuguese visa process and moving into what I now think of as the Alonement flat, Lisbon edition.

Meanwhile, I ate quite a lot of sardines.

What are you running away from? asked an expat friend here, when I announced I was moving. The thing is, I don’t think I am running. Or at least, if that were my strategy, it would be a bad one.

After three years of coming here regularly, I’m familiar enough with Lisbon to know that rain falls, both metaphorically and otherwise.

Moving to another country is not a prescription for lasting happiness. No major life overhaul is, no matter how much we tell ourselves (or other people tell us) it will be. In my case, moving to Lisbon will solve some problems, and create others (incidentally, if anyone knows a Portuguese accountant…).

I’ve read enough positive psychology research to anticipate that I’ll at some point reach the same baseline level of happiness.

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I am the same person, with the same flaws. I have spent more than one evening here in a capitalism-induced haze: scouring Facebook Marketplace (and my new favourite, IKEA Preowned) for the perfect dressing table, which, in the moment, I truly believe will make my new home – and life – complete.

And yet…

Life here feels fruitful, in a way it didn’t, back in London. I’m excited, in a way I haven’t been in years. Not for the horizon dreams of love or success, but for something more immediate: tomorrow.

In moving, I’ve paid attention to what I want, not what I should want. I have found, here in Lisbon, what some people find in a partner, or a job, or a house. I’m in love with a city. For the moment, that’s all the information that I need.

I’d love to hear from you – what’s a decision you’ve made because you wanted to (rather than because you ‘should’ do it)? And what was the outcome?

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The other day, I met a well-dressed woman in her seventies who travels constantly; her agenda for the rest of the year includes trips to India, Australia and New Zealand. Where’s home? I asked her, to which she responded: ‘I have a home within myself.’ (Although her suitcases, I subsequently found out, reside in Suffolk).

I relate to this woman – sometimes. During a good meditation session (and they’ve been rare, as of late), I visualise a physical place within my chest: a little perch beyond my heart, where I can simply exist with an empty mind. It’s a home where I can retreat. Away from the doubts and anxieties that nip away at me; other people’s voices; the everyday to-dos of the flight I need to book, the thoughtful gift I need to buy; the comment I perhaps shouldn’t have made. I rest in that place, unencumbered, protected. I feel another kind of home when I write, specifically when I’m in that ever-elusive flow. There’s a voice in my head that’s me, and yet external to me – and connecting with it feels like coming home to someone I love.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve invested more than ever in the notion of home as a physical space. When I’m in my flat in London, the space where I’m writing this from, I’m surrounded by objects chosen by me, or people close to me: and they reinforce a sense of who I am, tying together past memories and curiosities to create a patchwork quilt which reflects my identity back at me. I’ve recently been reading Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, a novel about a hipper-than-hip millennial couple living as expats in Berlin, carefully curating an enviable home together (think elite-level house plants, parquet floors, twin home offices, etc). From a few pages in – I’m halfway through – it becomes clear that Perfection is a satire. Of the digital nomad lifestyle, of the power of stuff to define oneself, of our image-obsessed, always-online culture. In this novel, stuff is just stuff.

And yet it’s not as simple as that, is it? Offline, these objects can be so loaded with meaning you barely register their appearance, like a beloved childhood teddy bear with a missing eye. It’s not superficial to love a ceramic mug, or a second-hand marble coffee table from Facebook Marketplace, or a pair of curtains that frame the late-afternoon light in just the right way. At some point in one’s life, a home might be a symbol of what you’ve built with a significant other, or a family. When you live alone, it becomes an emblem for self-love, and an active one; in many ways, that home loves you back each time it makes your day a little more pleasant (the mug, the coffee table, the new curtains it took me six years to have installed…).

Our homes – and the objects we fill them with – reflect back our life choices, past and present. And sometimes that feeling of groundedness can help to propel us into the future: a comfortable base to launch from. At other periods, those places can feel stagnant. Cosy, and wonderful, but stagnant. In my case, I’ve been staying still in my cocoon, holding my breath, reluctant to try my luck and rock the boat by leaving. Striving for stability, while everyone’s lives change around me. Open to change – in theory – but going for it half-heartedly.

And so, like a snail (or a well-dressed woman in her seventies), I’m off to Lisbon for another month to mull this all over, carrying my sense of home along with me (to, in turn, the only city other than London that’s ever felt like home). During that time, I’ll be taking a little break from this newsletter (why does that always feel like telling a teacher I haven’t done my homework? Paid subscription gang – payments will be paused!). Although I’ll be away from my physical home in my respects, I’m excited to see what that distance brings. I’m hungry for change in some form – it’s times like these I wish I liked tattoos, or haircuts – so let’s see how that goes. In a month or so, I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your summer – I’d love to hear what you’re up to in the comments (because I’ll have total FOMO not writing to you every week) – and I’ll be back before you know it. For now, Adeus, which I’ve just learnt is the Portuguese word for goodbye.

Since I’ve been staying here in Lisbon, I’ve been taking an approach to life that is uncharacteristic – of myself, and quite likely most successful people I know: I’ve been taking it day by day.

Yes, there is some degree of planning ahead, like when I arranged to stay here a month longer (not least because of the several of you who commented on my last essay, urging me to do so). But for the most part, I’ve been taking a holiday from the habit that’s characterised my last decade: forecasting into the near future, living my life with one foot raised in motion, squinting towards the horizon.

I’ve been so used to pursuing goals. Goals that – I told myself – my happiness was contingent upon. Making more friends. The relationship that eludes me. The second book. The shiny commission. The doubling, tripling of followers, podcast listeners, newsletter subscribers, daily word counts – all the metrics that could prove my life to be a successful one.

But the thing is, I don’t seem to care about those things right now. And I can’t necessarily articulate why that is. My brain feels slower since I’ve been away, a reality that makes me think it’s a shame that we sometimes call someone ‘slow’ as an insult, when really having a slow brain feels quite pleasant. My slower brain is more creative, more receptive to ideas (I’ve started pitching freelance journalism features again, off the back of all the new things I’m suddenly curious about), and more able to take pleasure in everyday joys.

Earlier, I used the word ‘holiday’, but this technically isn’t one. I’ve worked almost every day I’ve been here, based at the bright yellow co-working space that forms the infrastructure to my social life here. It has, however, been a break from the life that, back home in London, I’ve been failing to make a success of (again, by my own very narrow metrics).

We’ve lost the art of being lost, said my friend Iva to me one lunchtime. Which I liked, and later wrote down. Because I’d never heard it phrased like that (Iva phrases things so beautifully). Lost, much like slow, is one of those words that’s used mostly pejoratively. Could we reframe it as an ‘art’, instead?

I’ve felt lost for a while now. But maybe I can make it an art, rather than a stick to beat myself with! After all, there are different ways to be lost: you can be stock-still, or you can be in motion, getting arguably more lost, but still discovering new information all the while – even if that’s confirming the directions you don’t want to go in.

For the past fortnight, at least, I’ve been the latter kind of lost. Without tangible goals, but moving ahead in spite of it, in a way that feels good in the moment rather than serving my future self.

Rather than clinging tightly to that joy, I’ve instead maintained a loose grip. It reminds me of that William Blake poem: He who binds to himself a joy/ Does the wingéd life destroy/ But he who kisses the joy as it flies/ Lives in eternity's sun rise.

And that feels comfortable and rewarding, in a way that trying too hard (and yet, coming up against a brick wall time and time again) has not felt.

If there’s an art to being lost, I’m cultivating it.

First thing’s first: my podcast Alonement, an interview show about alone time and why it matters to my guests, has returned with Season 10. It was an honour to have award-winning comedian/proud self-proclaimed cat lady Katie Norris as my first guest. You can listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts – and please do leave a review because occasionally I really care about that kind of thing late at night (plus it helps us get discovered, etc etc).

Now! Hello from Lisbon, the hot affair I’ve been coming back to since October 2022, the month I published my first issue of The Shoulds. Since then, I’ve done five long stints here, stretching my visa-free Schengen allowance to the limit. Schengen aside, I’m lucky enough to be able to work mostly remotely. I’m also lucky that my close friend and fellow Substacker , lives here and has welcomed me into the expat community she’s built over the past five years, since she was brave enough to move here during the pandemic.

On the subject of bravery, Lisbon is where I come when I want permission to live the way I want. I take professional risks: I started the newsletter here, I started writing fiction here, and this time around I was here as I hit the ‘Publish’ button on Season 10 of my podcast Alonement. I dress in brighter colours and show more skin. I go to in-person writing mornings at a local bookshop. I do more yoga. I comfort-eat less (and possibly drink more wine, but it’s hard not to when it’s €3-4 a glass). I’m funnier, I think – or at least I make the jokes I usually make in my head outside of my head. And I’m calmer, because it’s hard not to be when the pace of the city, paved with slippery calçada tiles, dictates that you slow down.

What am I doing here? Simply put, I’m cheating on London. I think it’s just a fling, a hot affair, but I can’t be certain yet. If I’m honest, I’ve felt stagnant recently, in my 20-year-long marriage with my beloved home city. I love it, but it feels like, for so long, I’ve been waiting for something to happen that never bloody does. The professional high, the whirlwind romance, the creative epiphany or the cosy, content life that eludes me. In London, I feel abnormal; existentially burnt out by never having a good answer to ‘Are you seeing anybody?’ and ‘What do you do?’ and (excruciatingly, more than once) ‘Who’s your crew?’

I’m simultaneously enjoying the social buzz, and the downtime, here. I’ve met more people in the past week here than I have in the past six months in London, and I make friends with people I would never have encountered. My inner extrovert is getting fed, on a holiday diet of mostly-new acquaintances. I miss my other close friends and family (by whom I feel deeply known and loved), but I haven’t feasted on newness in a while, and it’s exciting.

I love walking around, the sun on my skin, bats (yes bats!) flying overhead the park near where I’m staying, and strolls along the riverfront near my workspace. Reading on the beach, mooching around the weird-and-wonderful Pingo Doce supermarket, solo brunches in hipper-than-hip Brazilian-owned cafes; it’s alonement, abroad.

And I feel lonely sometimes. Probably more lonely than in London, where my loved ones live and where I’ve formed cosy rituals and communities that mean I know exactly when, and what, I’m being ‘fed’ socially. Plans in the diary; one of my favourite love languages, and a shared one among my friends and I back in London. Here, plans happen more spontaneously; and that’s a mixed blessing.

So yes, the loneliness happens. Yet it feels like less of a personal failing to be lonely as a foreigner in a foreign land, than it does back home. And it feels less scary, knowing I’m one of the foreigners – not one of the people who really should have it sorted by now (i.e. a Londoner in London). Loneliness feels more like an opportunity. More like something I should pay attention to, and follow the trail of. Like, what flavour of lonely am I feeling today, and how might I satiate it: community, intimate conversation, romance? Where could my loneliness lead me, where I wouldn’t have gone in my comfort zone of London?

On the romance front… Being single is easier here, too, because it doesn’t feel abnormal. I’m tired of being defined by what a podcast guest on my latest series called the ‘single at wedding years’. I’m so, so tired of app dating. I’ve reached the point, after a fair investment in cognitive behavioural therapy and a lot of yoga, where I no longer believe I’m unlovable; I genuinely just haven’t met the right person. And it will happen. But God, I don’t need to be reassured of that, unsolicited, at parties anymore – parties where there’s no one to flirt with, because everyone’s taken.

I’m at a time in my life where I could be blossoming, but there’s nowhere to grow. I’m more confident and sure of myself than ever, but what to do with that? With my London lifestyle as it is, it’s hard to be a main character – more a supporting one, at the celebrations of the things I should be doing, but am not: weddings, baby showers, housewarmings. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve built a life I love in London, in so many ways. I am so lucky to have it. And yet here I am, cheating on it outrageously and telling you all about it.

Perhaps the flame of being here will burn out, and I’ll start craving home again. Maybe absence is what my heart needs, to make it fonder. To spice up my relationship with London, the cool, cosmopolitan capital city of opportunities that I’ve lived in, and loved, since I was 13 (and loved from afar before that, while growing up in Liverpool). Perhaps it won’t, and I’ll have to make some tough decisions; or at least learn more than five words of Portuguese (my latest, incidentally, is insaciável, which means ‘insatiable’. Read into that what you will).

Does my life belong in Lisbon – or is this just escapism, an emotional and spiritual affair, as it has proved for years? Did I just need this break from London, to appreciate what I have there – and then bring back elements of the lifestyle I enjoy so much here, in my already-stuffed suitcase?

I don’t know. Which feels like a strange thing to admit to the thousands of you who so kindly subscribe to this newsletter, and read it every week, but I hope this particularly honest (and, I must say, off-the-cuff) dispatch at least resonates with some of you. Because we’re all a bit lost sometimes, and if there’s a catharsis for me, in admitting that on the page, then I trust there’s also a catharsis in reading about it. And perhaps it is being here that allows me to exhale to this degree, and write this all out. Again, I don’t know. And, if you’re reading this, I’m glad of your company amid the not-knowing.

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Olá, pals! I’m writing this during a 36-hour stop-off in London, as I pack for a trip to Lisbon tomorrow. I’m downsizing the XL luggage I took to Madeira – where I was until yesterday – to a somewhat ambitious carry-on sized case for my 16 day stint in the Portuguese capital. A valuable exercise in minimalism, or a soon-to-be regret? The jury is out, as is most of my footwear.

Anyway, this is all a preamble to say that I haven’t got time to write a whole new post this week. Instead, I’ve lifted the paywall on one of my most-read posts of last year – all about the subject that is envy. Or, indeed, jealousy.

Which is a taboo subject, but one that might resonate with you if you’ve, say, spent your morning hearing about your infinitely more successful pal’s success. Or if you, say, visited your parents’ house recently, to learn that their miniature dachshund has territorially-pissed on your bed to show you how the pecking order goes, and then you stumble across one too many snaps from that glossy garden party everyone but you seems to have bagged an invite to.

So! You feel that pang of jealousy. Or is it envy? Well…

Envy and jealousy are words often used interchangeably: I’m envious of this, they’re jealous of that. But actually, there’s a subtle yet important distinction that I was unaware of when I first wrote this essay. A distinction I discovered precisely ten minutes ago, in fact. Here, according to the LanguageTool blog, is the difference between envy and jealousy (I’ve paraphrased):

Envy is what you want what someone has – as simple as that. Whereas, jealousy is when someone else gains something (e.g. an object, a relationship) that makes you feel threatened, or insecure, without necessarily wanting that thing for yourself.

For instance, maybe you feel envious of someone’s new two-bed maisonette in Maida Vale, because you wish you lived there. Yet you’re jealous of your friend’s new attached-at-the-hip partner Paul, even if you don’t find Paul attractive and wouldn’t snog him in a million years – because it’s not about wanting what your friend has (i.e. the specific partner), it’s about feeling jealous, perhaps irrationally, that Paul could replace you in your friend’s life.

Presumably, if you just find Paul smoking hot, and don’t actually miss your supposed pal, it could just be straightforward envy again. But you get the picture. And if you don’t, here’s another snippet straight from the horse’s (LanguageTool’s) mouth.

All of this is yet another preamble to say…

I WAS WRONG!

Yes, wrong! When I first wrote the original version of this post, originally published in May 2024, I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong! (Isn’t it life-affirming to be wrong? It proves that every day does, in fact, have the potential to be a school day; that you never know what wrongness might be around the corner, waiting to teach you a lesson!)

Here’s why I was wrong: in the original version of the essay, I focused on envy, and the interrelated emotions it can evoke (e.g. fear and insecurity). But my terminology was off, because I was actually referring to envy’s more complex cousin, jealousy.

And so, because I’m all out of preambles, here’s that (now lightly-edited) post from May 2024. I hope you enjoy reading it, if you didn’t get a chance the first time round. And if you did – do leave me a comment and let me know (or just click the heart button for my self esteem, or best of all invite me to a goddamn garden party!)

Happy for you, sad for me: When hearing other people’s good news is challenging

Lately, I’m seeing a lot about envy jealousy. Inside Out 2 introduces a new emotion/character, Envy, voiced by The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri. In Louis Theroux’s interview with Adam Buxton this week, the old friends discuss podcast rivalry (including their own). ’s newsletter explores what she terms ‘green slime feelings’.

In recent years, there’s been Self Esteem’s hit song ‘I Do This All The Time’, which contains the memorable lyric: ‘The best night of your life was the absolute worst of mine’. Envy and jealousy feature in millennial memoirs: in Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton writes about her struggle to cope with her best friend Farly’s engagement, while in The Panic Years, Nell Frizzell shares her ambivalence towards her friend’s pregnancy announcement, at a time when she wanted to start her own family:

And yet (screechy handbrake turn), envy jealousy is not what I want to discuss here. At least, not directly. Instead, I want to explore an emotion that often gets confused with envy [again, JEALOUSY!]. One which it took me years to unpack.

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That emotion is fear. Specifically, the flavours of fear that come after hearing other people’s good news.

Your thirties: All about the good news

One thing you receive a lot of, in your thirties, is other people’s good news. It’s a bit like that nursery rhyme: first comes the love, then comes the marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage, but make the baby carriage a two-bed in zone 7.

Statistically, it’s all happening in this decade; the socially-agreed upon milestones that constitute ‘good news’. The average age of a first time home buyer is 37 (38 in London); the average age of a first marriage is 30.6 for a woman (32.1 for men); and the average age for a first-time mother is 30.9 (33.7 for men). The average age for a PhD recipient is 31. You may well be approaching your peak salary, too, with one analysis finding women earn the most aged 40 (four years later for men) – so it’s likely the decade of impressive promotions.

What I’m getting at here, besides showing off my Big Data Energy, is that, from your thirties onwards, you’ll find yourself hearing about other people’s successes constantly, in a way you probably didn’t earlier on in adulthood, when everyone was immersed in housemate hell, hangovers and early-career Hunger Games.

The thing that feels ugly to admit? Sometimes, hearing other people’s good news is hard. You might want to be 100 per cent happy for your friend. You might be, hand on heart, between 70 and (on a really altruistic day) 90 per cent happy for them. But still, intermingled with that, there’s something… icky.

Now, if we were to use Occam’s razor (The simplest answer is usually the right one), identifying that ickiness is straightforward. Envy is defined as a ‘wish that you had something that another person has’. So, if your friend achieves something that, we’ve agreed upon as a society, is aspirational, and you do not have it, then you, my friend, are a jealous bitch. Go to jail and do not pass go!

And yet, I’ve surprised even myself with the degree of freudenfreude (a lesser-known German word for ‘happiness in other people’s happiness’) I’ve felt in my thirties, as loved ones have got married, had career success, purchased homes etc. I want these things to work out for them, and I find myself invested to the degree that I cried when one friend broke up with a long-term partner. Another time, I woke up in a cold sweat after a nightmare that a family member and her partner split. I found myself deflated when a friend’s house purchase fell through. I know this sounds weird, or virtue-signalling, or whatever, but it is the reality. I want good things for my friends.

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Perhaps it’s because I’m generally happy with my lot, which is largely down to privilege but also the fact I tend towards intrinsic, as opposed to extrinsic, motivation. In Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies personality framework, I came out as a Questioner. This means I’m led by my own expectations of myself, rather than other people’s. Take, for instance, having children. A good few friends and close family members have become first-time parents over the past year. It would make no sense for me to envy them, because that’s not what’s right for me at this moment in my life.

But back to fear. If the unwelcome ‘ickiness’ I sometimes experience in response to other people’s good news isn’t (necessarily) envy, then what is it? Having reflected on this question over the past couple of years, I’ve realised it’s generally one of three things (or a combination thereof):

1. Feeling invalidated

‘If they do [insert lifestyle choice that’s different to mine], that means my lifestyle is inferior.’ I have a close friend who was once so similar to me, on paper (age, background, appearance, career, relationship history) that we had a long-running joke where we combined our names into one terrible portmanteau. A year ago, in the space of a few months, she met her now-husband and started a family. It was a ballsy, life-defining decision – and one she’s found a lot of happiness in. And I was happy for her. Yet, I won’t deny it made me panic, for a while, about my own choices. Our friendship, up until then, was a staple of my identity, amplifying the joys of the lifestyle we long shared. I had to recalibrate: finding other friends who shared my lifestyle, and finding a stronger conviction within myself. I learnt that she and I could still thrive simultaneously – just, this time, in very different ways.

2. A scarcity mindset

‘If they have [insert aspirational thing], I will never get it.' Honestly, I think this is worse for women – and this ELLE feature agrees. After all, wedding bouquet throwing is still a thing. In a world where we’re conditioned to think otherwise, I find peace in reminding myself: Her success is not your failure.

3. Abandonment issues

‘If they do X/Y/Z, they won’t want me in their lives anymore.’ For instance, if a friend moves in with their partner on the other side of town, you might worry that means you’ll spend less time together. This might also be the case if a friend becomes a new parent. What I’ve found is you can’t predict when people drop in, or out, of your life: it might be a new baby, it might be an all-consuming job. Some changes might bring you closer, rather than further apart. What I have found is some creativity, and flexibility, go a long way in making friendship work when your lives look really different.

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At the core of these reactions, there is fear. Not envy [/jealousy], fear. Fear of not being enough; fear that there’s not enough; fear of being abandoned.

And that’s OK. Change is scary. That’s true of both your own changes, and other people’s. And yet, friendship isn’t a commitment to stay the same. OK, some are (which is why we have the phrase, ‘a friend for a reason, for a season, or a lifetime’). Yet, long-term friendship is an arrangement which involves navigating life’s ups and downs together. In ways which might drive you apart but, equally, might take you down all sorts of paths that, sitting in a back garden somewhere in 40 years, you look back and marvel at.

The ironic thing about other people’s good news? It’s often just as complex as your reaction. While socially-celebrated, relationships, babies, new jobs are all difficult challenge to embark upon, even when everything seems to be going right. As much as it might sound like a humble brag, weddings are stressful to plan, ditto home renovations. If you receive someone’s good news and you’re struggling with envy, fear or any related emotions, they’re probably recalibrating in their own way – and will, odds are, value your support and fresh perspective. You only have to remain close in order to learn that. 

Until next week (from Lisbon!),

Francesca

Thanks to those who joined today’s live journaling workshop! Couldn’t make it – but would love to get in on the action? I’ve got you!

Here’s a list of all 21 journal writing prompts for June to complete at your leisure – in bed, in the bath, on a train, plane or the back of an automobile... I’ve also put together a downloadable PDF version ( complete with fancy formatting, thank you Canva) if you’d like to print these out and complete them offline.

These prompts should take roughly an hour to complete – split up into reflections (looking back at the first half of 2025) and forward-planning for the year ahead. If you’re looking to a mid-year ‘reset’ and to get your year back on track, these are for you. Beside each question, I’ve also put a suggested length if you’d like to do these as timed prompts. Happy journaling!

Journaling prompts for June

Theme: A mid-year reset

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A quick bit of housekeeping: our next Guided Journaling workshop is coming up this Saturday at 12pm. Fancy joining? Head to the event page for more details and to RSVP.

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I began this year with a plan. An elaborate, handwritten one, as it happens – that’s what spending the New Year period at a yoga retreat will do to you – with goals around my career, relationships and wellbeing. Oh, the hopefulness of yore, and a seven-day digital detox.

We’re currently six months into 2025. If you’d like me to report back objectively, I’d say that some goals have already worked out wonderfully. Others… well, six months to go lads, I’m working on it.

On the other hand, if my inner critic were to seize the mic, it would be a different story. I’d fixate on the goals that haven’t worked out (yet! My inner hope cries out in retaliation). I might deem myself a failure, or berate myself for the foolishness, the blind arrogance, the hubris of having made a plan in the first place. Because to make a plan is to, quite literally, set yourself up for failure.

Or else, I might call myself out for the perpetual crime of not living intentionally enough. Of not carpe-ing the diem out of my allocated 24 hours. Of getting caught up in other things, and losing sight of the masterplan.

What actually is intentional living?

Intentional living is a phrase that entered the zeitgeist a couple of years ago, and now suddenly it’s everywhere: wellness retreats, therapy blogs; life coaches’ extended job descriptions, even urban planning. This April, it was crystallised into our vernacular by the Duchess of Sussex. In a manifesto for her lifestyle brand, As Ever, she announced: ‘The collection is infused with joy, love, and a touch of whimsy. Thoughtfully curated, As Ever celebrates intentional living.’

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Intentional living, according to Psych Daily, is defined as: ‘Living with intention, and based on your core beliefs’. And it’s not without its limitations.

Because, in a world of manifesting and mood boards; apps that promise everything from customised ramen to the match of your dreams; accountability buddies; and, yes, buzzwords and phrases like alignment, intentional living and conscious choices, there’s a danger of feeling like you’re a failure for your life not going exactly how you planned it.

You’re just not living intentionally enough.

Get your shit together.

MAKE A PLAN.

Intentional living has become a big, fat Should. Which is why it might surprise you to learn that, in spite of that, I’m with Meghan Markle on this one.

In defence of living intentionally

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Thanks to everyone who took part in The Shoulds’ first survey! I’m absolutely touched by how many of you got in touch to let me know what you loved, and would love to see more of, from the newsletter. And congratulations to reader Steph, who won the competition to receive a one-year paid subscription.

On a separate note, our second instalment of Guided Journaling with The Shoulds – a one-hour virtual journaling workshop led by yours truly – is coming up! Details at the bottom of this email.

It’s asparagus season at the moment. Until this year, I never knew how much joy it could bring.

This realisation began a couple of weeks ago, over dinner with a friend. We ordered, at her suggestion, a plateful of thick, verdant spears, cooked al dente and eaten al fresco, on a warm-ish evening – enjoyed as a side to twin massive plates of crab linguine, and quite a lot of wine. Then it was a fistful bought from a Carrefour in Nice, and sautéed in a large saucepan at our AirBnB. Recently, I’ve been eating asparagus at every opportunity: tossed in oil in the air fryer, wrapped up in a buttery Hampstead crepe, as a starter at family Friday night dinner (thanks Mum).

Before this year, asparagus barely registered on my vegetable radar – and that’s because I never paid attention to its seasonality. How, in the relatively short period between late April and mid-June, asparagus has its annual glow-up, transforming from a neglected member of the vegetable aisle to a flavoursome, versatile, joy-giving staple. Then, as soon as it begins, that magic is gone for the best part of a year.

Asparagus season comes to an end soon. I’m already anticipating the disappointment of seeing those limp, pale stems take the place of the juicy, bright in-season variety. Yet, as a fledgling asparagus lover, there’s a consolation: because now, every year, I have another thing to look forward. And really, what greater joy is there in life than looking forward to something?

It’s the same way I feel about daffodils, one of my favourite flowers, which emerge in British supermarkets in February – sometimes as early as late January – until early May. Knowing daffodil season is on the horizon, the first two months of the year – a bleak old time to be here in the UK – feel a lot brighter. Spring might not be right around the corner – but somehow these sunshine-coloured trumpets abound even in minus degree temperatures. It’s the best kind of looking forward to something, in fact, because it’s guaranteed to happen. People may come and go, places may change, but the daffodils will be in season again and somehow, in the age of everything-inflation, they’re still a quid from Tesco Express.

You know that saying about worry: that when you worry about something, it means you suffer twice? The reverse can be true, of looking forward to things. At least, in the best case scenario. First, there’s the anticipation, which generates positive feelings – excitement, hope – before anything good has even happened. This sensation was recently coined forestalgia – let’s put aside that this was by a marketing study, and not a group of psychologists – i.e. the opposite to nostalgia.

The forestalgic among us hope that the ensuing reality mirrors the expectation, at least to some degree. That achieving the professional milestone will feel as good as we think it will; that the wedding day will go mostly to plan; that seeing Taylor Swift live in concert will be worth that £206 ticket price. Thus, the forestalgia effect is compounded, the joy of anticipation blending seamlessly into the joy of actual experience.

Oftentimes, the reality is otherwise. Sometimes, the publication day is an anticlimax, the dreamboat turns out to be a footnote, or the stage is obscured by an undeclared-on-the-resale-site pillar. Such is life. But should that detract from looking forward to something? Should you feel foolish and naïve, for getting hyped up about it in the first place?

I used to think so. Every cancelled date, or holiday plan that fell apart, or night out-turned-nightmare, a voice in my head would whisper, you idiot. You shouldn’t have got so over-excited and put expectations on things. It felt childish to daydream about the near-future, the way I once spent every Maths lesson: in a heady fantasy that dwarfed any potential reality. It felt shameful. ‘I don’t want to get my hopes up,’ people often say, echoing this sentiment.

‘You like having something to look forward to,’ someone close to me once said. It was stated neutrally, factually – but it’s always stuck with me. My relationship with that statement has changed, from one of ambivalence to one of pride. Because I do like to look forward to things. And isn’t that a good thing?

That child-like anticipation doesn’t come as easily as it used to. I’m not trying to sound like a jaded 103-year-old here; it’s more the opposite. At my current life stage, I’ve exhausted most of the ‘firsts’ available to me: I’ve been to enough parties, kissed enough handsome strangers, travelled to enough new places.*

The other kinds of anticipation – of watching children grow up, or getting married, or reaching the pinnacle of my writing career, or cultivating my first vegetable garden – feel a little remote and/or abstract right now. At least, that’s how I feel in my lost moments.

Still, I like to look forward to things. And I like to create situations where that can happen. It’s why I don’t quite understand the hype around ‘spontaneous’ travel. I’m a remote-working freelancer without dependants – I could hop on a plane to nowhere tomorrow. But then why would I do that, and rid myself of the joy of anticipating it for a month or two? Will I pack for said holiday in advance? Absolutely not. But I’ll be in a much better mood in the weeks leading up to it.

Holidaymakers are significantly happier in the fortnight leading up to their holidays, compared to those not going on holiday. That’s a stat I used about a decade ago in a magazine feature, and still quote back to people regularly – as if I need science to explain myself.

*actually, I lied; I would like to be invited to some more fabulous parties, preferably in exotic locations with handsome strangers.

Forestalgia, I’ve decided, is a win-win scenario.

Events live a half-life in my head. And sometimes, if I’m disappointed by the reality, I’m still glad of that period of anticipation. Take, for instance, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. I read that the marketing budget was $150 million – $5 million more than the film cost to make. Now, I didn’t love Barbie as much as I’d hoped. But the months I spent anticipating it, reading every bit of press there was to read and listening to ‘I’m Just Ken’ on repeat? Magical. It was the same story for the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown: I got chills the first, and second, and maybe third time I watched the trailer. I loved looking forward to these films, and even though the reality didn’t live up to that anticipation, it was still pretty good.

Of course, it’s different when it comes to situations involving others – when there’s ego involved, and the disappointment of the plan going haywire, or not happening at all, gets intermingled with feelings of insecurity or unworthiness. I’m lucky enough to have close relationships in my life where I know the forestalgia is mutual, and that only extreme circumstances will stop us from coming together.

I’ve also learnt to avoid dynamics where plans are frequently cancelled, or it’s unclear whether they will happen or not. For some people, and at some life stages, that arrangement is perfect – but for me? My inner child got her hopes up!

Because looking forward to things is child-like, in the best way. We should treat that instinct with tenderness, rather than shame. Even if the future does look different to our fantasy, it might be just as good – just in an alternative way. The key is to hold it gently. To indulge in the fantasy, then be receptive to the reality. And if you need certainty, amid the chaos? There’s always asparagus season.

Until next week!

Francesca

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Guided Journaling with The Shoulds - Saturday 7 June - 12pm

As we reach the halfway point of the year, this virtual session will be a chance to reflect and look forward to the next six months ahead – I love running these journaling sessions, and hanging out as a community online.

To keep these workshops intimate and interactive, these are limited to paid subs. If that’s not you yet, upgrade your subscription today and receive this + all the added subscriber perks (paid written content, online events, recommendations, interviews etc!)

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Happy Bank Holiday Monday, pals!

To kick off edition #2 of this monthly recommendations list, I wanted to write a little manifesto. Das Cultural? The Culturalist Manifesto? Anyway, here goes…

Down with the cultural Shoulds

Sometimes, when I read recommendation guides or culture supplements, I feel a low-level sense of panic. How is it possible for one person to read all these novels/watch all these plays/binge every single episode of all those trending ‘must-watch’ TV dramas?

Or else, I feel the way I did when, aged 20, I visited a friend in her first year at Cambridge. By the end of breakfast with her college friends, I was exhausted by all the references to books I hadn’t read; films I hadn’t watched; bands I hadn’t listened to. No one gave any context. It was as if everyone was trying to catch each other out, while the ignorant (which, recalling some blank stares around the dining table, was probably not just me…) nodded along.

I felt like a massive philistine. Now I look back, I know that cultural know-how was being used as a bid for status. Which is completely understandable, in an environment full of highly-educated young people still signalling their right to have a place at the table. However…

This is not that place.

Culture is not a stick to beat people with. Nor should it feel overwhelming – like something you ‘should’ do, for fear you might otherwise get kicked out of the tribe. Culture should be something fun, or edifying, to share. It should be joyful. Recommendations, in this context, are more like a gift you can choose to accept (or not); something curated to the person they’re given to: ‘You may like this because X’, ‘You’re always so insightful – I’d love your thoughts on Y.’

Sometimes it’s fun being late to the party. I say this to someone who only recently read Wuthering Heights, despite having a degree in English Literature – and I just finished Baby Reindeer. It’s also perfectly OK to not attend the party at all.

So please think of this is as a list of stuff you could consume, rather than should: whether that’s today or in a year’s time.

Right – let’s get to the recommendations!

Read on for a cultural smorgasbord, featuring:

• My honest take on Loop earplugs

• Novels you’ll cackle and/or cry your way through

• My favourite Hell-inspired interview podcast – plus news about my own show!

• Nice travel recommendations,

• The sleeper hit film starring two of the biggest male actors of the moment

• Plus, everything else I’m reading, watching and listening to this month, and a smattering of food and architecture.

This one’s for paid subs – so do join the premium gang if you haven’t already! As an added incentive, I’m giving a handy 20% off annual paid subscriptions for the bank holiday – valid for the next 24 hours only.

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A fact I’ll never unlearn about self care is where it came from. Not from a marketing meeting, as I’d always assumed, but instead in the wards of a psychiatric hospital. When I discovered this while researching my book Alonement, it transformed how I view – and practise – self care.

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We’ve all been there. The short, sharp shock of a No or We regret to inform you… or I can’t do this. The crisis that prompts a handbrake turn: turning your life in an unfamiliar direction, the road ahead barren and uninspiring, the horizon hopeless, in the face of what you’ve lost.

I’ve known that feeling. The breakdown of romantic relationships and would-be relationships (and the fantasies of said relationships I’d built up in my head); the loss of freelance jobs I structured my weeks around; the pile-up of rejected pitches synonymous with life as a journalist. The abrupt ending of a close friendship with someone I once spent endless hours on the phone to.

After each of these things happened, a void opened up.

I’m putting it abstractly – a void – but what are we actually talking about here? The 168 hours that make up our weeks. The square footage of our homes. The limited capacity of our conscious working memories (where we can hold between four to seven pieces of information at a time, depending on which scientist you speak to). The finite number of meaningful relationships we can nurture at one time. Our time, our attention.

When an unexpected chunk of that resource comes back to you, unaccounted for, it prompts the question: what could I devote it to? Exciting, right…? (Right?!)

Encountering the void, excitement tends to be the last thing on my mind. There are versions of my life that might have existed if everything had gone ‘right’ – and I cling to them most tightly when things go tits up.

I think about my fantasy self. She has boundless confidence, because she knows from experience that if you try, you will succeed! She had a plan; the plan succeeded; and now her life rests peacefully on the rock-solid foundation of all the good decisions she made.

Except life – real life – is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. One road inevitably leads to another, even if it’s not the one you expected to take. I’ve seen it with my friends: redundancies or break-ups which inevitably turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to them. I reassure them, prematurely, that this will be the case. Meanwhile, I struggle to give the same compassion to myself.

And yet, and yet…

Over the past two years, most of the joy and novelty in my life has come, indirectly, from a feeling of loss or absence. The creative writing group I joined when I realised that writing fiction in isolation wasn’t working. The local community book club I started in response to loneliness. The friendships I made when others faded. All the sources of love I’ve learnt to pay attention to in the absence of the romantic relationship I once imagined would fulfil all my needs.

A void is also a window. The plot thickens; the stakes are raised; a heightened creativity is demanded by the open-ended ‘What next?’ Experience has taught me the hard lesson that I only have so much control. Equally, I don’t know what I don’t know. What I perceived as a void is, simultaneously, a window to something special.

I discovered a new podcast this week: 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s. I say new – it’s actually been going strong since 2022, yet it was delivered to me afresh by Spotify’s algorithm, so I’m now working through it chronologically like a syllabus.

Although I am a ‘90s child, some of the earlier songs passed me by: like ‘Hey Jealousy’ by the Gin Blossoms released in 1992, when I was just one year old.

Anyway, I can’t stop thinking about this one lyric:

Change is inevitable, but it tends to open up a vacancy.

I interviewed the author earlier this week, the first leg on her book tour for Table for One, her second novel. Having been a fan of Emma’s work for the best part of a decade, I noticed an intriguing parallel between Table for One and Emma’s debut novel, Olive: both begin with the protagonist navigating a significant breakup in her thirties. A parallel made even more intriguing because Emma has been in her relationship, now her marriage, ever since her early thirties. Why this preoccupation?

Emma told me – and the 100+ lovely audience members that came to the event – that writing her characters is a way to ‘try on’ other versions of her life: ‘In a way, every character is me.’ A break-up, as Emma depicts so compellingly, can be a drastic force for change. Writing her character, Willow, has taught her to be bolder, to take life into her own hands. To take driving lessons again (this answer made us laugh – because Emma meant it literally, yet we were all aware of what an apt metaphor this was).

For Willow, too, the void is a window; and eventually a force for courage and change. We can all take inspiration from that, both in fiction and in real life.

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It was the pistachio tiramisu matcha latte that did it. A phrase I would have attributed to a random word generator, if not for the concrete fact of the pavement sign standing before me.

‘I have measured out my life in coffee spoons,’ lamented T.S Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, of the daily monotonies that underpinned his existence. Not that it’s a competition but, over a century on, life as a modern urbanite feels bleaker still: I can’t even work out which coffee I want in the first place.

On its website, Starbucks boasts 87,000 different drink combinations. While Starbucks pioneered this mania, its disciples – Blank Street, Black Sheep Coffee et al – are likely to have even more options, thanks to their endless capacity for creative bastardisation (rumour has it, babe, you’re no one unless you’re sipping a cherry cold brew latte this spring).

It isn’t just coffee. Take, for instance, the rise and rise of trademarked grapes. It seems like only yesterday we were choosing between white, red, or white and red. Now, a trip to your local M&S Food involves an existential dilemma while you weigh up speciality varieties including Tutti Frutti®, Cotton Candy®, Muscat® and Sable Seedless® (call me a pleb, but I still prefer white).

Meanwhile, your days slip away from you, measured out in the hours you spend contemplating an item on Vinted, deciding where to book for dinner on Friday night, and/or swiping your capacity for love away on a dating app.

Why face one massive decision, when there are so many tiny, low-stakes ones to busy yourself with? Millions of them, in fact: micro-decisions, concerning what to eat, drink, listen to, wear, etc – almost as if they’ve popped up to relieve you of the pressure to make the big ones. And because those choices are being marketed to you as important and urgent – by Starbucks, or Sweaty Betty, or Spotify – you may well get to them sooner. Sure, you haven’t decided whether or not you want kids – yet your brain latches on to that ‘What podcast shall I listen to?’ dilemma like a Golden Retriever might a manky tennis ball, all the while letting the truly consequential stuff fall to the wayside.

Somewhere deep down, you know it’s all a distraction tactic. You fear making the wrong decisions, and then having to live with the consequences. Even microcosmically, this is no small matter: you’re in real danger of buying a £4.70 beverage so hideous it makes you weep a little with each premium sip. How might that extrapolate out to marrying the wrong person, buying the wrong flat, leaving the right job? Better stick with the small decisions, you tell yourself –

The trouble is, that’s the more dangerous option.

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