I landed back in the UK with a broken suitcase and a dream to leave the country as quick as I’d returned.

So I got to work. A job within 24 hours, then another, better one within the month. Twice-weekly Substacks and my first paid subscriber. Three tiktoks per day and a plan to go viral. My daily scroll swapped for my daily vision board check-in.

Every part of my life became about leaving.

Every bus ride to work was spent listening to my manifestation playlist and visualising that I was really on the bus to my new job in Australia.

Every shift was spent working double-hard to train as a barista so I could take that skill along to the next country with me.

Every day off was spent filming Tiktoks or writing substacks and burning myself out with this new expectation of output.

I was saying No to plans so I could save money, after finally being free to say YES since leaving my six year relationship and stepping away from my business.

And when things took longer than expected, it crushed me. The belief that I was failing weighing down on my shoulders. Like it was my fault things weren’t working fast enough.

It came to a head when my anxiety got so bad that I ended up in A&E, convinced I had heart problems. Health anxiety causing panic attacks in work, I was losing my vision from migraines, I had no inspiration and I was crying.. all the time.

So I did what any normal person would do(?)…

I turned my solution into a game.

I put myself on house arrest.

But not actually to my house.. instead, to the present moment.

I made a rule that I was no longer allowed to live anywhere but right here in this moment for the foreseeable.

“What could I be doing right now to get closer to leaving?” became “What would I do right now if I was just living in the present moment?”

Instead of laying in bed at night worrying over the fact that I hadn’t yet reached my savings goal and how can I even have a savings goal if once I’ve paid my mum off I need to pay my dad back and also what about that tax bill that’s due in July and then the next self assessment in January for the business I don’t even run anymore am I going to forever be on a payment plan with HMRC?

… yeah instead of THAT, I wasn’t IN bed because I was on a night out snogging a man on the dance floor.

I was on artist dates with my friends from work. I was smoking cigarette(sssss) with a(many) pint(s). I was on my first ever Hinge date! I was even on a spontaneous trip to Benidorm, making friends with a stag do on the flight and turning up on the strip dressed as my friend to surprise her for her 30th.

I took things off my to-do list — like my weekly free substack posts — and I started writing for me again. I stopped staring at my vision board like it was a map with a journey I would understand if I just stared that liiiiittle bit longer (eye twitch).

I stopped telling myself I couldn’t afford or enjoy life right now because it meant I was failing myself on the life I want in the future.

It’s been long enough of my boots on the ground experimentation of Present Moment Arrest that I feel I can happily report back.

There have been moments of frustration. Moments of anxiety where I’ve worried if I’m doing the right thing. But none of those moments ended me up in A&E or consumed my mind for weeks on end like before.

I’ve made incredible memories. I’ve said YES to so many more things. I’ve collected stories upon stories that I know I’ll be reminiscing on in decades to come. And if we want to talk about actual needle-movers: I got an unexpected pay rise, I was offered a promotion, and I have had past clients from my previous business book in unexpected sessions with me.

I stopped worrying about the money, actually spent more of it, and even more flowed in.

I gained the clarity of what I actually wanted. One of my biggest stressors was not fully knowing where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. Eating me alive each day, I was constantly trying to think my way through it. Shock horror: I actually just needed to live my way through it.

But the biggest thing I realised was: things are going to happen exactly when they’re meant to.

If I hadn’t have gotten onto that exact flight to Sri Lanka, on that exact date, and if I hadn’t have booked that exact hostel… I wouldn’t have met the people who are now friends for life. My entire experience across each three countries I visited was determined by that first day of solo travel (for better or worse lol — but regardless, for the necessary lessons).

So if I know that the exact date I choose for my next adventure and the exact destination will align me with the people, opportunities and memories that are meant for me… why would I race to that finish line and disrupt what’s meant to be?

Why would I spend months punishing myself for not being “there” yet?

After this experiment, it’s as though I can picture the future ahead of me.

There is a section in the timeline surrounded by sparkles where I envision I am “meant” to start my next big adventure. Within those sparkles are the people I will love that I don’t even know exist right now. The opportunities that will take me to my happiest timeline. The laughter and spontaneous drinks and flow state of things just working out.

But before that section, there is the timeline that I was trying to force. I imagine it’s not so much “negative”, just more blank. Maybe I get there (there = Australia) and I find it hard to find a job. I feel lonely. I don’t have as much financial security so I feel panicked. I don’t settle in the way I’m meant to. Maybe I end up flying home?!

So if I forced and pushed and stressed myself to go earlier simply to prove to myself and whoever else that “I did it”, I could very well be missing out on the exact blessings that have already been lined up for me.

Maybe this is all just an idea that keeps me in faith. Maybe it simply helps me relax a little. And I’m okay with that!

Present Moment Arrest has taught me trust. It’s taught me what actually happens to your experience of life when you stop fucking worrying so much.

So I want to ask you: where are you forcing? Where are you trying to push for a timeline instead of trust that it will happen exactly when it’s meant to?

What’s the worst that could happen with putting yourself on Present Moment Arrest? You have more fun? You make more memories? More stories to tell your grandkids? You actually get the clarity to move forwards?

Why would you not actually just enjoy the journey, trust that it’s all falling into place, and trust you are, right now, exactly where you’re meant to be? What would you do today if that belief was true?

It was just under a year after I snuck into that hotel pool in Rome and signed up to be a nanny. I did it! I was 21 and stepping onto my first solo-flight to Fiumicino airport. Apart from a people-pleasing moment when a woman in my row woke me up to give her my window seat because “if I was sleeping I wasn’t using it”, I got there smoothly.

I landed, met with the family that I’d only spoken to once via Skype, and gazed out of the car window, love-hearts beating out of my eyes at the Roman streets that we sidled through.

Soon I was placing down my suitcase and gazing up at the two-story penthouse that I’d be calling home for the summer.

After having my fingerprint scanned for entrance to the apartment (I know) I met the housekeeper and was given the grand tour. I was shown the kitchen, my bedroom and the secret rooftop above **the actual rooftop.

I snapped a picture of the view from the kitchen window and uploaded it to my Snapchat story: If the view from the Notts house was this good I’d have no problem washing my dishes

As any freshly twenty-one year old would, I assumed I’d land in Rome and receive my official welcome into my Hot Girl Summer. Spontaneous dates with sexy Italians, evenings drinking Aperols, maybe a Paolo on a vespa to take me to Villa d’Este?

What I actually received was the rude awakening that, unfortunately, you still take you with you, wherever you go.

That January had delivered me my first ever grand, foot-sweeping, crippling situationship. I’d sat on the toilet after leaving Dean’s student house for the first time and declared to myself that “I was in love”. He ghosted me the very next day. I’d spent the next six months trying to figure out what the hell had happened, how to put myself back together again, whilst simultaneously trying to bump into him by posting my every move on my Snapchat story.

So I wouldn’t admit it to myself, but I went to Rome almost in spite of Dean. Needing to do something for myself, needing that year to not be just about heartbreak.

But I didn’t strut down the streets and have Italian men swoon in my path. I sat in a cafe alone in Campo de’ Fuori and wiped my tears over a Cafe Ginseng. I sat on the steps by Piazza dei Campidoglio and furiously filled pages of my journal. I even took myself to church one dusk in search of answers.

I was still heartbroken. I was still going crazy over the boy who had kept me in a breadcrumbing-hoovering cycle for the past six months. I was still convincing myself that removing him as a follower but keeping my Instagram on public and posting four times a day was completely normal and in fact exactly what I’d do despite him.

I was all of everything that I’d been feeling, just… in Rome instead.

So the first two weeks were lonely and overwhelming. I didn’t realise how much just knowing where the plates go in a kitchen makes you feel like you belong. Knowing which step on the spiral staircase creaks at night. Knowing the quirks of a house like you’ve lived there all your life. Or knowing how to use the bathroom lock.

The bathroom lock was old. It was jiggly. There was a lot of manoeuvring to be done in order to get it to actually lock.

No one else seemed to have trouble with it except me. I’d wobble it, push the door further into the wall, lift the door up a bit, jiggle the handle, give it a good kick…nothing.

This lock was rejecting me. And with that, it felt like Rome was, too.

“You know you can come home if you need to”, Mum told me on the phone one evening.

But I wouldn’t. I knew I wouldn’t. I hadn’t come this far to just go home after a week. I needed to prove it to myself (and to Dean) that my happiness didn’t revolve around him.

Soon after Mum’s call, I had my first meet up with another au pair that I’d found on Facebook, Maya. She brought a packed lunch in her bag and we perched on a wall in bustling Monti. Whilst I munched on a slice from my fast favourite Pizzeria al Taglio, Maya told me the lay of the land. Tips on the best food, neighbourhoods I needed to explore, how many times to expect the metro to go on strike per week, and after just one afternoon together she invited me to Siena with herself and a few other girls.

Suddenly this city didn’t feel so lonely. I had a friend! Walking a little taller, I made my way back to the penthouse for my evening shift with the girls. I tossed my hair, looked up at the sky, took a picture of a sprawling Bougeinvillea against a graffiti covered wall. I even got a small “che carina” from an elderly man. Who was I kidding? I was smashing this Summer In Rome thing.

Back through Rione Monti to the big brown door. Back up the tiny elevator. Fingerprint swiped. Up the spiral staircase.

I was face-to-face with the bathroom door, and I turned the lock.

It worked.

I don’t know what I did differently, but I never had a problem with the lock again.

“You stayed. You figured it out. And now you’re welcome.”

After Rome accepted me, I had a ball. I went on a single date with an Australian guy and we walked around the markets pretending to be engaged. I took a solo trip to Sorrento. I got an awful free haircut. I went on a trip to Cinque Terre with two other au pairs where we watched Love Island on the coach and I got stung by a jellyfish. I was still heartbroken and still trying to make sense of it, but Rome became the place that taught me what happens when you stay, you figure it out, and what you get to experience on the other side of it.

I visited the family a few times over the years beyond my stay. Each time I’d use the bathroom, I’d jiggle that lock in the exact right way, and I’d think back to the girl who nearly let it send her packing home.

It took me until my final week in Rome to learn the alarm did not go off inside the house and I could have all this time been using the bathroom instead of pissing in a water bottle and pouring it out the window.

And… I’m running out of stories to tell.

Okay, that’s a lie. I’ve actually uncovered sooo many more stories from my travels over the years recently.

There’s the one about the broken lock in the house I lived in in Rome. And that day I was heartbroken and saw a rainbow halo-ing a waterfall and thought in the most cliche way “If I can have my breath taken away by this view, I can definitely fall in love again”.

There’s the story of Silent Bill from Budapest and the really embarrassing moment I pissed on a garden chair whilst sleepwalking in Colombia.

I haven’t run out of stories, but I have run out of the zest for life to write about them right now.

I’ve been running an investigation with myself over the past month. I’ve put myself on house arrest, but for the present moment instead of my actual home.

I’ve attached a monitor onto my ankle that bleeps any time I find myself getting caught up in the future. The worries, the goals, tbh even the dreams. (short story: I put so much pressure on myself to hustle in all areas of my life that last month I ended up in A&E because the anxiety got so bad!!)

So, I removed all the pressure. I paused the Australia timeline. I stopped stressing myself out about the fact I wasn’t able to save any money yet, and I actually started spending more money. I said Yes to every night out invite. I snogged boys in clubs. I went on my first Hinge date!!

As it happens, right now as this post goes live, I’m somewhere in Benidorm hanging out of my arse from an Eastenders themed night out — on a trip I told everyone I couldn’t come to, but in a change of heart spurred on by the knowledge that one day I’ll be 75 and I won’t be reminiscing on the times I didn’t go out, I booked a last min flight to turn up at 11pm on night four and surprise everyone on the strip.

I read a quote a while back (on Substack of course) that said “some days you’re writing the stories, but other day’s you’re living what you’ll one day write”. That’s what I’m doing right now!

I was telling my coworkers this week that I was unsure what to write about this week (beep beep back to the present moment Jess), and my friend Milly said… write about not knowing what to write!

So here I am. Writing about not knowing what to write. Actually, writing about knowing what to write, but not being in the headspace to write it with the passion each story is owed.

And I guess this is what the entire journey of rebuilding my life is about. There have been times of amazing YESes and “how is this my life?!” and booking flights, but there have also been moments of deep frustration, confusion and complete whiplash of going from being able to make thousands in a day to now picking up an extra shift and waiting a month to receive that £80. It’s been far from perfect and sometimes the rollercoaster of it all can really take its toll. But it’s the honesty of it. Sometimes you really do have to take your foot off the gas and stop moving the goalpost and oh my god can I use any more idioms in a single paragraph?

I hope this week doesn’t feel like a filler post because it truly isn’t. It’s a reminder to you also that some days you’re writing the stories, and some days you’re living them. And both are just as important as the other. Maybe I snogged a boy dressed up as Phil Mitchell last night (I haven’t actually ever seen Eastenders and just had to Google what he looks like — I really hope I didn’t snog a guy dressed as Phil Mitchell last night).

Maybe I’ll next write about last week’s abominable Hinge date, or you’ll hear about the guy from May who blew me a kiss across the dancefloor and told me we must have sex at least ten times in the next three weeks (… and then ghosted me?).

Funnily enough, this is the most fun I’ve had writing in a while.. and it’s because me and my ankle bracelet took the pressure right off! I’m sure that’s a lesson we all come back to again and again.

I can’t wait to share more stories, and I invite you to ask how you can LIVE more stories this week <3

Until next week, hasta la vista x

Looking back, Sean was the person I had the least in common with and felt the least myself with. It should have made him forgettable, but instead he became the one I still think about.

Druggie Sean reminded me most of my ex — for all the most grey-area reasons.

He wasn’t mean, but he was blase. He was clearly unhealed, but spoke “I don’t need therapy” with a badge of honour. He didn’t know how to use his words very well and did his best to show instead.

Where Canggu Dave was gazing into my eyes and asking me to tell him another story about my life… Druggie Sean was gazing at my face waiting to tell me about that time he did magic mushrooms and went snorkelling.

He earned the name because any time you walked by his private room, he’d have his door wide open, speaker blaring, and some sort of substance lined up on the hostel chest of drawers. Kind of like when I’d look up from the waiters station and gaze over to my not-yet boyfriend behind the bar, saucer-eyes nodding at the crazy music he put on for the close.

And just like I still feel uneasy at reducing my ex down to all the things that were wrong with our relationship, I feel uneasy reducing Sean down to a lack of emotional depth and his use of class A drugs. Because he was, deep down, a sweetheart.

I made my move on Sean at a foam party at a hostel across the island. A cheesy pick-up line about him making sure he didn’t drown otherwise I’d have to give him CPR.

One drink later we were snogging in a maze of white foam bubbles.

The man partied like the crutches were scared of him. We disappeared into the hostel bathrooms together. When we left, the sun had set and everyone had left.

On New Years Eve I took the magic mushrooms and boldly stated “am I coming back to your room tonight” whilst slurping noodles outside a MiniMart at 4am. Back to the room he did take me, only to kick me out two hours later so he could go take coke with his local friends.

I wasn’t mad at Druggie Sean — I had, truly, been trying to use him for his private room (Chloe had been pissing me off all night and I didn’t want to room with her).

A few days later, I’d booked my own private room in an act of never needing a man. I walked myself home from the club with a pizza alone to watch Wicked 2 in bed, only to receive a message from him inviting me out to the island afterparty. Soon I was using his crutch as a limbo pole with his friends from the island and my new friends from the hostel. That night I took him back to my room (girl power).

But we didn’t sleep together. Not at first.

I could feel this mans pain. He’d shared some personal things with the group (in his very blase way) and I could sense a sadness.

“All right, talk to me”

Soon he was sobbing into my chest. We opened up about our past. I fell comfortably into the role of rescuer. Life coach. In-house-therapist-girlfriend. And what had originally began as a night where he stated he was too tired for sex, turned into us passionately kissing and.. you know the rest. I also knew the emotional-boner scene all too well from — you guessed it, my ex.

Days passed and we fell into a routine. He slept, resurrected at 2pm ready for a Smirnoff Ice and a wobbly game of volleyball in the pool. He’d tell me to kick him out of my room if I wanted to get with another guy because he didn’t want to cramp my style. I’d tell him sleeping with the same person was more fun than a new guy every night. We’d end up back in my private room so many times that the hostel would give him his own key. At some point the chaos tattoo was born from a spontaneous decision in a club smoking area. Then we soon broke the M Box curse and escaped to a private villa he booked for us.

This is where things got cute and I didn’t know how to read it. In one breath he listened to music so loudly and didn’t really consider me, but in another he pushed until I said yes to spending the day at the ice bath together and out to dinner for my last night. He woke up early to cycle beside me as I dragged my suitcase down the cobbled streets to the port (broken ankle — I’ll let him off). He sat me on his knee and kissed me goodbye.

As with most travel romances, the hair strokes and nights in bed transition into sporadic Instagram story likes and a “hope you’re loving Peru!” message here and there, but still my time with Sean has left a mark on me. He’s still someone I think about often and smile at when I see he’s back on the island again.

But with Sean I didn’t feel exactly heard, or like i could be my silliest self with him.

But I saw the gratitude in his eyes the night after he cried to me. I felt his inability to say it in words but in the way he stroked my hair. In the way he laughed when I laughed at the Youtube videos he showed me. He refused to tell my friend how he felt for me but she said she could see it in his eyes. And I saw what lay under the surface when he stuck a picture of me on his hand made oracle card when I ran the workshop for everyone at the hostel.

He cared for me in the ways he knew how. But they very rarely translated into the ways I needed.

And I think that’s where a lot of us get lost in long-term relationships, isn’t it? We confuse feeling needed with feeling known. We confuse helping someone along their journey with being held in our journey to our truest self.

Sean showed to me the importance of knowing who brings out what sides of you and why we can end up staying longer than we’re meant to. What parts of a person pull on a pattern already inside of you, and what can happen if you choose to fall back into it instead of step away.

I think if i had met Sean in any other situation, I would have found myself in an “I can change him” cycle. Instead we were sent our opposite ways — him to South America and me to Vietnam.

eventually, there were pieces that allowed me to see the truths throughout the relationship, like the many times I convinced myself that “good enough” was as good as it could get.

this is one of the latter…

Read more

Summer of 2017, I booked a trip with Beth. We’d never been on holiday together alone before and I can’t even remember how it came about, but I do remember drunkenly dancing in circles in the pizza house the day before we flew out, on the way home from the club.

I felt something about the city as soon as we stepped foot out of Termini station. I’d never been, but it felt like home.

It wasn’t the Trevi fountain that got me, or even the colosseum. It was the way the light cast over the houses on the outskirts of the city as the sun started to set. Or the way the water glittered in Villa Borghese. The sound of street performers set up in Giardino Degli Aranci as I sat alone watching the sunset with a Smirnoff Ice is still one of my fondest ever memories.

Beth and I did Rome like true twenty-year-olds should. Thousands of steps across the town to see all the main sites. Eating pasta in a quiet restaurant before drinking sangria on the rooftop of our hostel. A bar crawl ending in an unknown club. Smoking weed on the side of the road with new friends. Even venturing to Tivoli where we gasped at waterfalls in Villa Gregoriana, declaring that the restaurant hidden in the ruins at the top of the cliffs was officially the most beautiful place on Earth.

On one of our last days, we woke up in Alessandro Hostel with the worst hangovers of our lives so far. We’d also made the mistake of booking a hop-on, hop-off tour bus around Rome. In 38 degree heat. In late July.

We hopped off that bus extremely quickly.

Desperate for relief from this hangover we decided to hunt down a swimming pool. What I came to realise when I was living in that city a year later was that it’s really funny the random places you go to when you’re a tourist in a city — as soon as you live there you realise how far you traveled for something so simple.

We got a metro. And then another metro. And then soon we were wandering around the outbacks of Rome under a painfully bright sun, searching for a hidden hotel that apparently offered day passes to the pool (it didn’t — we snuck in instead).

It was in that pool that I decided that Rome was where I wanted to be. I towelled my hands dry and searched “Au pair in Rome” on my phone. I found a website, and I made an account. This is what my twenties are going to be all about.

I think we eventually got caught posing as guests and asked to leave, and we wandered back to the metro, sun-soaked skin easing our hangovers at last. We wandered past families having dinner in their gardens, nonnas hanging clothes on washing lines against glowing syrupy sandstone. When we got to the station I snapped a picture through the railings of the metro line below, squeezed between graffitied walls and apartments piled upon one another.

A year later, I’d ventured to a far-off beach with my au pair friend Mia who I met in my first week. We changed at a random station. I walked past those same railings. I saw the image I took a year ago, and I thanked her for making that Google search, in that pool, on that raging hangover.

This one came after an “off my tits on aperol spritz” hat (that is 1) obviously so very me, and 2) the second gift I’ve received over the years with this quote on — the Aperol love runs deep) and a keychain from a hostel in Hue that my three friends from home and I met up in back in January.

As I tore the wrapping paper, I saw the words “travel journal” sprawled across the front.

Flicking through, each page was titled with a different country across the top — waiting for you to visit every place and fill it in.

Heavy tears filled my eyes in an instant. The sensation that came over me was so intense that it took a few sips and a drag of a cig to get it out.

“It’s just that — you could have — you guys wouldn’t have bought me this a year ago, because it wasn’t my life” .. more tears.

A year ago, that gift would have felt like something I’d lay at the tombstone of the dreams I used to chase. Twenty-eight year old Jess wasn’t thinking of the next country to visit. (Actually, she was — but she was burying that whisper deep).

She was waiting for her boyfriend to book their annual poolside holiday where she’d spend ten days having to pull up a conversation-starter app on her phone just to get a single deep conversation; reading books cover to cover (kindle to kindle?) to avoid bickering. Convincing herself that yes, her dream holiday really was an all-inclusive resort with nice towels and a dirt track down to see an Elvis impersonator with a mohawk seven nights a week.

Twenty-nine year old Jess left the relationship. She’s not long home from three months of solo travel. She’s seen the world and plans to keep seeing it. She’s dating, and doing things for the plot, and reminded on every night out “how good it feels to have Jess back”.

And so, the gifts she receives mirror that. She’s no longer hiding her free-spiritedness like it’s something to be ashamed of. You look at her and you see that curiosity written all over her face.

They say “to be seen is to be loved”, but the part they miss out is that in order for you to be seen, you have to be living a life true to you, out loud. Which means you have to walk away from the people and the paths that don’t allow those parts of you to flow easily.

Because when you’re being so obviously your most authentic self, the world cannot help but to see you.

Were there signs? When did it start going downhill? Were there specific moments I realised this wasn’t going to work, that we probably weren’t each other’s person?

There’s a couple moments from late 2024 where he wasn’t supportive of me, or didn’t celebrate my wins. December 2024 was when I published my first book as well as hosted my first creative business event — my two biggest achievements to date. For the book, I organised the celebration meal myself. For the event, I took myself to the cinema alone, worryingly calling him afterwards to ask him “are you going to break up with me?” because when I’d brought up how unsupported I felt, he’d told me I spoke about my business too much.

At the time, I brushed it all off as us being in a tough period, things not quite clicking and being lost in translation. And, to be honest, maybe I did speak about my business too much.

But there was a moment over Christmas of that month, on holiday in Prague (read: escaping the UK and Christmas Family Drama Season), where something settled in my mind that, over time, changed everything.

The short story is — He planned a date night.

The long: he hinted at planning me a surprise date before the trip. I told everyone including my nail tech because it was such a rare thing for him to do and I was gushing with excitement. I mentioned it briefly as we boarded the plane. He had no memory of making such a promise and hadn’t planned anything. I cried on the plane there. He planned a date at the last minute. I was left feeling like I’d ruined it for myself, when, looking back, he ruined it for the both of us.

After a (tbh, very nice) cocktail river cruise under the stars and dinner at a hand-picked restaurant, he told me that if I wanted to go to a bar before going home, we could.

I asked the waitress if we could move to the bar to watch the jazz band.

Suddenly, he was annoyed with me.

“I just feel like you always want to stay out and continue the night and then I always end up compromising by staying out when I want to go home.”

…….????

Reader, I hope you’re as confused as I was, because did he not just suggest we stay out for another drink?

We ended up missing the end of the jazz band because of our argument. We stayed for a drink anyway whilst I felt the room melt away around me as I stared at him and let the realisation settle that we really were two very different people.

It’s a moment I’ve remembered clearly for the past eighteen months. I can still see the image of his face across the table, and feel the thought passing through my mind like lightening: “does this man know me at all? Does he even really love me for me?”

Because he was right! I DO always love staying out! And as I neared the tail end of my twenties, whilst he’d felt like he always had to compromise by staying out later, I’d always felt like I was compromising by going home earlier.

After the best part of our almost-six year relationship being spent on the sofa or at the driving range because I had such intense cabin fever that I’d go wherever he wanted if it meant we were outside of the four walls of our apartment, I felt the air around me closing in.

Back at the hotel, tipsy from the night of drinking, I confessed my fear to him. That if he ever did work on himself, he’d realise he doesn’t actually love me for me. He just loves having a home in me.

“No that’s not true.”

And then we had sex.

We never spoke about it again.

It echoed through my mind. I had a strong feeling when that year came to a close that 2025 would be the year we either got stronger, or we broke up.

There were many times over the next few months where I tried to initiate deeper conversations. Relationship check ins, moments of honesty, vulnerability. By August, we’d broken up.

My freedom to choose when I go home is one of the things I love most about being single (and one of the things I felt so trapped by in the relationship).

I remember my second night of solo traveling, in a karaoke bar in Sri Lanka. My first friend of the trip told me she wanted to go back to the hostel. I made sure she shared her location with me but shouted over the karaoke music that I was staying out. I still remember the power that rushed through my bones as I made that choice. I’d spent six years going home early; I wasn’t about to continue doing it. Maybe that’s why solo travel in itself felt so freeing — because you really do not owe anyone anything. You’re completely free to live on your own timeline. You’re not ever required to shape shift to someone else’s wants.

Gone are the days of “sorry, he already started cooking tea” or “sorry, I think I’m going to the golf course”, or “okay baby, well if you want to go home shall we get a bottle of wine and take it back with us?”

I stay out as long as I want to stay out. I say yes to all the invites. And I no longer have to sit across the table from the person meant to know me most and wonder if he knows me at all.

And yet you have tan lines in the shape of cheap flip flops criss-crossing your feet that first formed themselves in Sri Lanka. You have mosquito bites on your ankles from that lake in Ninh Binh that convinced you you had dengue. You’re using the toothpaste you bought in Hanoi. You have two new tattoos on your body that you got matching with a group of strangers in Gili Trawangan.

But your Dad’s still asking you how to spell random words, or a question he could just Google. Your cat snuggles into your lap like your scent never left his nose. You listen to the same playlist as you soak in your first bubble bath in months. And you’re cheersing a glass of red with your mum like you never left.

But you did leave. And then you came back.

You lie here on your bed, and you feel like a completely different person to who last lay here just seventy-three days ago. You feel like an alien. Like you don’t fit. Because you belong in another country — which one, you still don’t know.

How can traveling make you feel so alive, but so lost once you return? How can it make you feel so at home in each place apart from the one you come back to?

You look up at the time on your Macbook. The time that has stayed on the same timezone on this screen since you left. You used it to see what time it was for your friends and family, but now it’s your timezone, too.

And what’s funny, is it’s the monotony that reminds you. The way you borrow your Dad’s socks again. The way your mum still sings across the house.

Nothing’s changed, except everything about you.

And you don’t want to sound cliche, the typical traveler who’s come home and has #changed, but everything just feels so mundane. So beige. The way your Mum is still gossiping about the same friend. The way there are still those leftover chips in the freezer that were there when you left (definitely with an extra layer of freezer-burn). The life that once felt like home has now lost all saturation.

So you lie on your side, and you stare at your laptop, and you think about how it feels like only yesterday, you lay here, nervous for your flight. And you’ll wonder how you’re ever going to lie on this old striped bedding and feel like you belong here again.

I was staring at the tiny clumps of clouds hovering above the misty skies of Sri Lanka. Music in my ears, witnessing the process of me actually doing it: I was about to land in my first country of solo travel.

On the first flight of this journey, I’d written a letter to myself. To past, present, and future me.

It was four months since I left my six-year relationship — to the day, an eerie coincidence. I was still struggling with the push-pull guilt of cheating on my ex-boyfriend in a drunken haze on a hostel bar crawl, vs. the deep knowing that when I flew home, came clean and then ended the relationship, it was the right choice.

I had made a promise to forgive myself, but it’s a lot easier said than done when half of you is excited for the journey ahead, but the other half is buried by the heavy guilt of moving on.

I was listening to my emotional playlist. Technically my Autumn playlist, and I mean — it was November, even though I was soon to step off a plane into the muggy heat of Colombo.

LANY, Ed Sheeran, Hozier — the playlist always made me feel wistful, and was exclusively played in the bath or whilst walking down long park paths of crunchy golden leaves whilst the air slightly stung my face.

As I’m wrestling the feelings of “I did it!” with “but I did that”… a song starts playing through my AirPods.

It’s a Harry Styles song, one I haven’t heard in years.

“You can let it go

You can throw a party full of everyone you know

And not invite your family, ‘cause they never showed you love

You don’t have to be sorry for leaving and growing up”

I’d never really listened to the lyrics. You know when a song is just a song but then one day at the exact right moment you truly listen to it and it fits your exact scenario?

“You can see the world, following the seasons

Anywhere you go, you don’t need a reason

‘Cause they never showed you love

You don’t have to be sorry for doing it on your own”

That letter I’d written on the flight, that now sat in the pocket in the back of the chair in front, I’d written to myself:

“It’s safe to let go. It’s safe to be free.”

And here I was, a few hours later, hearing the same words mirrored back to me. It felt like an intervention from the Universe — delivering me the exact message I needed before I could overthink.

But even more, here I was: doing it on my own. One of the reasons I knew I needed to leave was the realization that I would be facing a lifetime of doing these things, alone.

I nodded along as I felt each lyric brush across my soul, and then before I knew it we were landing and I was being pulled into the hustle of the girl group I was meeting for the wellness retreat that would start my solo adventure.

And then the retreat came to an end, and I found myself in a hotel in Unawatuna alone, quietly awaiting my first night in a travel hostel the following day.

There was a terrible storm, and being in what felt like the rainforest outskirts of a Sri Lankan village, the wifi kept going down in the whole area.

I was lying in bed, safe under my mosquito net, when I remembered the song. What better way to solidify such a dramatic moment (the moment before everything changes) than with the song that started it all? And no wifi wouldn’t be an issue — my autumn playlist had been downloaded to my phone for over five years.

Except when I clicked onto the playlist, the song wasn’t on there.

Matilda by Harry Styles was not on my autumn playlist, and never had been. It wasn’t downloaded onto my phone at all.

I tried to play it even with the patchy wifi, and it just stayed stuck at 00:00 seconds, trying but failing to start the song.

I thought back to the moment the song played, exactly when I needed. How I felt like it had been the Universe interfering with my overthinking. Telling me directly: It’s time to let go.

Okay, Universe, I’m listening now.

The cafe job that isn’t me living full time off my creative income.

The childhood bedroom that I call home that isn’t the shared apartment with girl best friends somewhere across the world.

The money going out as fast as it comes in and isn’t piling up in my “dream life - move abroad” savings pot.

Not a lot of it is how I’d choose my life to look right now.

In the dream realm, I’m a full time paid writer and maybe also a coach. I’m traveling full time or I’m living in a city that feels like I’m romanticising life every day just by waking up. I’m going on spontaneous dates and I’m writing about my life like it’s a plot for your next favourite movie and everyone is lapping it up. I have money in a million pots and I feel abundant and rich. I go out for drinks with my girlfriends and we laugh and drink Aperol spritz and dance the night away.

It’s not exactly that right now.

But.

I was writing in my journal today, my classic mood-boosting four prompts:

5 things I love about myself

5 things I love about today

5 things I love about my life

and 5 things I love about the situation I’m in

The last one was what got me thinking. This is what I wrote:

“These “problems” I have — the confusion of where i want to live, the frustration of my writing growth not happening quick enough, the stuck-ness of me working in a cafe and not quite living my dream life yet — is all evidence that I’m actively building it. The reality I live in now is the result of stepping away from what wasn’t aligned. Yes, I burned it all down, but now I can rebuild from the ashes. It might be messy and chaotic and confusing and not quite right, but I’m no longer playing dress up in someone else’s dream life.”

And that’s the thing, isn’t it?

It was very easy to tell myself I was “living the dream life” when I had:

• the long-term boyfriend

• the expensive two-bed apartment in the city centre equipped with a gym and a co-working space

• the nice car

• the business where I was full-time self employed and could work from anywhere and wake up whenever I wanted

• the six-figure+ dual income, growing savings and pension

• the fancy holidays to 5 star hotels every year

But when I actually look at it, that life is a lot further away from my dream life than I am now.

On paper, it was perfect. Because on paper, it was what I “should” have wanted. Should have strived for.

But when you peered down into my soul, you didn’t find vision boards of BMWs or all-inclusive holidays or days on the golf course.

You found spontaneous adventures, travel, meeting new people, and raw creativity dripping through every crevice of it all.

So, I look at my life now, and even in its mess, its imperfection, its underlying murmur of “what the fuck am I even doing”… it’s the closest to my real dream life I have ever been.

The rubble that I stand in is the proof that I’m doing it — that I chose my dream.

My almost-30-year-old wardrobe strewn across my childhood bedroom floor, the humble bus to work every day, the waiting that extra week to get my nails infilled. It’s the proof that I chose what was true to my heart instead of true to everyone else’s timeline.

And for that, I actually think your dream life is the life where you don’t have that inner voice constantly whispering “is this it?”

You might be in the rubble. You might be the furthest away from the on paper “dream” than you’ve ever been.

But are you closer to your real one?

Whenever I refer back to my time on this tiny island, I say “yeah, that’s when I got trapped in the party hostel on Gili T”

Concern floods people’s faces. “Why?! What happened? How did you get trapped?!”

Until a friend who already knows the story gives me a sidelong glance and says: “What she really means is when she got trapped of her own accord.”

“We’ve finally broken the M Box Curse.” I sprawled across the huge double bed with my hostel romance who’d booked us a private villa. We’d lie in bed every night watching Youtube videos and eating noodles out of the box. (This was the first time a boy had shown me something on Youtube and I actually enjoyed it — I still watch the comedy channel he introduced me to from my bed in England)

It really felt like a curse. Like once you got in, you’d have to claw your way out. We went back to the hostel on my last night to pick up my friend’s phone charger. Everyone was pre-drinking. The rotation had already started and there were a bunch of new faces around the table, looking at us confusedly as we hugged all the staff. I felt like we were a famous couple. Like people might think we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, traveling the world together, and hadn’t actually met around this very table just the week before.

I’d pictured us walking back into that hostel and “oh, go on then”-ing a Smirnoff Ice. One turning into another, and another. To take part in the drinking games, maybe a round of the pizza box game or cambio. Just like the morning we were checking out when before we knew it we were doing “graduation” Joss shots and the straws in our drinks were going soggy with the amount of time we were longing it out at the pool. But the energy was off. It felt like we’d fled a cult in the dead of night and returned back the next day for the rest of our bags. Just one day out of it and it already felt like we were stood on the outside, looking in, the spell broken.

During my time on the island, I met up with a friend from Spain, nearly four years since I’d last seen her. Her time on Gili was very, very different to mine. Mornings in the gym, sipping smoothies with her then boyfriend. Cycling along the beachfront at sunset before more early nights in.

We met up on the beach for a sun-soaked lunch. I had a limp from a snorkelling injury a few days earlier — the staff on the boat beat the heal of my foot with a literal rock to get a suspected sea urchin out. I made a joke about not needing the NHS when you’ve got an Indonesian sailor with a giant pebble.

She rode me back to the hostel on her e-scooter to save me the 20 minute hobble in the mid-afternoon sun.

“Jess, don’t stay too long here. Get yourself off this island, you need to look after yourself. Go and have some solo time in Uluwatu or something.”

I knew that in part she was right. My body felt like it was breaking down, too much strain for too many days in a row. I’d been in the medical centre twice the past week, with the allergic reaction, a black eye and now the coral incident. It had been two months of constant drinking, smoking, partying from island to island to island.

But.

I also knew that I’d just left a long relationship where I spent many years saying No when I really wanted to say Yes.

“Sorry I can’t come out tonight, we’ve already planned what we’re cooking for tea!”

“Gonna go home now! We brought the car so we only planned to stay for one anyway!”

This was my time of saying Yes. Of making up for lost time. Of finally living the life where I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. And not just knowing it was possible — actually doing it.

So I would do it all again. Exactly the same. I’d go overboard with the gin sprites. I’d spend too much money tapping away my hostel wristband. I’d extend another night and another night and another. I’d laugh when the hostel staff gave my romance a key to my private room because he’d stayed in there so many nights already. I’d let my friends perform open-foot surgery on my heel by the pool using a derma planing knife. Hell I’d even get a matching “chaos” tattoo on my other foot because why the fuck not?

Because it wasn’t forever. It was fifteen days at most. And soon I’d be back in the UK, getting the bus to work every morning in the rain and telling my new work friends these stories and writing Substack posts about them. There would never come a time where I’d look back on my time on Gili T and wish I’d said “no”.

I said Yes. I probably said a few tooo many Yesses.

But I don’t regret a single one. I’d say Yes, all over again, in a heartbeat.

So, in my final days of solo-travel, from the balcony of a corner cafe in Hanoi, Vietnam… finally that future version of me, I wrote back my reply.

Jess, you’re sat on your flight to Sri Lanka right now, writing a letter to me, to us. You’re crying tears of joy and anxiety, a whole load of emotions mixed together. You tell me you hope we have the best time traveling. That it’s better than you can imagine.

I’m sat on the upper balcony of a cafe in Hanoi, Vietnam. I know — Vietnam was not on the travel itinerary. It’s also the 25th Jan. I also know we were meant to fly home 20 days ago. We didn’t.

And since you wrote me a letter, I’m writing you one. I want to tell you everything we’ve experienced but also everything we’ve learned over these past almost-3-months.

1. You won’t get a minute alone. I know you’re worried about making friends but by the end of it you’ll wish you were a little more weird. For some reason people just love talking to you. You’ll even have a man from Leeds sit down at your table and spend the next hour chatting to you whilst you’re writing this letter.

2. As much as you’re excited to fill up your scrapbook travel journal, you will be having so much fun in the present moment that you’ll completely forget about it. Cafe napkins will get left behind and the last sign of travel memorabilia will be the mountain of club wristbands from 4 islands ago.

3. I know you thought that this trip would be the place you finally gave up nicotine, but you’ve actually been smoking a pack of Marlboro Golds a day (sorry).

4. You’ll fall in love with the vibe of smoking a cigarette. It’s a moment. It unfortunately does make you feel cool.

5. That book that you brought with you? The travel memoir that you only let yourself read one chapter of on the plane out of fear you’d get through it too fast? You’ll be spending so much time living you’ll still have half of it unread when you catch your flight home.

6. Most illnesses that you’ve convinced yourself you have are just a big fat hangover. Apart from the full body rash — girlie, you’re allergic to magic mushrooms. We had a great night though.

7. Beer tastes better in Vietnam. I know it’s a shock to even read this because we don’t drink beer? Girl it’s 50p a pint and you have no money left.

8. There are so many people in the world. And each person you meet will teach you another piece of the puzzle of whatever person you decide to keep in your life. It might be the way someone kisses you, or the way they let you share their pho when you ordered the wrong thing, or the way you feel completely carefree around them.

9. They’ll also teach you what you don’t want — like the way someone doesn’t hold the door open for you, or the way they spend a whole day avoiding you after you’ve slept together, or the way they use drugs to numb their feelings whilst swearing they “don’t need therapy” (been there).

10. You need a visa for a self transfer through India and you’ll be kicking yourself when you leave it too late. The embassy will be closed and you won’t be able to meet up with your bestie from Sri Lanka in Mumbai… and you’ll also have to book a whole other flight.

11. Your last £50 can go very far in Vietnam.

12. Again, you don’t have dengue fever.. you’re just hungover.

13. You’ll form an even deeper relationship of trust with the universe. Missed flight? Obviously not meant to be on it.

14. I know you loved your packing cubes and your neatly organised suitcase and abundance of lists, but you’ll fly out of your final stop with the cubes buried under a mountain of clothes, 20% phone battery and no films downloaded on your iPad.

15. I know you had “go on a date in another country” on your bingo card, but I’m not quite sure it can be ticked off. You did jet around Canggu squeezed onto the back of a Grab with a boy who changed his flight after two hours of meeting you, collecting party supplies for a surprise 21st birthday you’d organised for a new friend. You stayed in a private villa with an Australian who took you for breakfast and then sat you on his knee at the ferry port and kissed you goodbye. You went for late night burgers with another, you woke up to a private chef cooking you breakfast in a millionaire’s villa, and you even spent a late night exploring of Da Nang with a real-life airport meet-cute… but none of them really felt like dates.

16. About the airport meet-cute.. you’re gonna feel like your life is a MOVIE. It’s funny that you’re about to watch Before Sunrise on the flight to Sri Lanka, because on your flight to Vietnam it’s going to feel like you’re living in the storyline.

17. You try so many things you’ve never tried. Durian fruit (tastes like onion), goat soup (why was it so gelatinous?) and so. much. beer.

18. Wicked 2 is shit :( you end up buying it on Prime for £30 on New Years Day, and 25 days later we still haven’t finished watching it.

19. You’ll get two tattoos. One of them you’ll get matching with the hostel rep and the australian guy… and within 5 days, 8 more strangers will have it too. On your last night travelling you’ll also convince a complete stranger in Vietnam to get it, too. I won’t tell you what the tattoo is because it’s too funny and needs to be a surprise.

20. You’ll realise there’s so much more to life than what you’ve always known. So many people doing jobs you didn’t know existed. People your age repping in hostels, managing them, and doing a whole range of things that allow them to live in the most beautiful places. You’ll meet a million people who dumped their exes, broke off engagements or now have to sell their joint house… because they wanted more from their life. It will remind you every step of the way that you made the right decision.

21. You’ll miss him. In the moments when you slow down, when you stop. The quiet stretches on the 5 hour busses. The morning after you take magic mushrooms. The nights you lay in bed. Your heart will hurt at the fact you can’t speak to him, at the way you have no idea what life is like for him or how he’s doing. It still won’t sink in that you’re strangers now, and to be honest, I don’t think it ever will. And whilst there’s always a voice that tells you to look around at where you are and how much more you life feels now… you’ll let yourself feel the hurt too.

22. You’ll run a spontaneous creativity workshop in a hostel in Gili T, and you’ll cry tears of joy. Everyone will be drinking and end with singing karaoke around the table, and you’ll have friends telling you they want to be you when they grow up, and that it was their favourite moment of travelling. It will remind you just how much you love what you do and that you don’t want to let that go. (It will also plant the seed of making repping in hostels and running workshops like that an actual job)

23. You’ll make friends in the funniest ways. Doing karaoke together, being sat alone in a coffee shop, you’ll be in a 2 hour minibus and the guy that comes up on your Bumble feed will be sat next to you.

24. On the 6 month anniversary of your breakup, you’ll be sat on Train Street in Hanoi with Sophie. She came to visit! And funnily enough, (as you know) she was also there on the day of the break up - turning up at your parents’ house with emergency food. To be able to be together exactly 6 months later, celebrating her last night in Vietnam is so special and puts a lot into perspective.

25. You will make friends for life. You’ll question daily how you didn’t know these people existed three months ago. When your best friend Kush literally fills out your visa application for you all the way from India, or let’s you facetime him in the hotel to check the wifi works and then calls you for an emergency cigarette together over facetime, you’ll think about how lucky you are to have a friend like him. And that’s just one person — you meet so, so, so many amazing people.

26. You’ll realise how free you feel as a solo traveller. You can do whatever you want, when you want. And it makes you realise how happy you are to be single.

27. Your favourite place will be Sri Lanka. You were shocked by how much you didn’t like Bali (the indonesian islands are a different story), and Vietnam you can’t really compare because it’s so different. We love it here, though.

28. Listen, I know you said you’re meant to dilly dally in a european city like italy or spain, but you’re well and truly a converted island girl. You went to the club… without shoes on!!!! So don’t be surprised if we’re living in Australia or traveling Thailand a year from now.

29. You really did it, Jess. You made it happen. All of these experiences are a product of you getting on that plane and stepping into the unknown. How amazing is that?!

He would flit between groups socially, cigarette in one hand, Smirnoff Ice in the other, chatting away whilst the sun crisped up his red shoulders.

Our first interaction had come the night before, when I was on my way up to the bar.

“Can you grab me one and I’ll pay you back tomorrow?”

“He’s never gonna pay you back for that” Chloe laughed as we climbed the steep stairs.

The next day, tipsy from an early morning happy hour, Chloe and I set on a mission to convince him that I’d bought him two.

He knew we were lying but he bought us one each anyway. And then another. And another. Soon we were flirting, then his hand was on my leg under the pool, and the next thing you know I was daring him to cancel his flight home that day.

Off Chloe and I went to buy more cigarettes, and suddenly I’m receiving an Instagram DM:

alright

you’ve got me 2 more days

The love affair picked up speed quickly. Three hours after that message, I snap a picture of us lay by the pool, his tattooed arms wrapped around my legs, smoking a cigarette.

Soon we were jetting around Canggu, tightly squeezed onto the back of a Grab bike as we hunted down supplies for a spontaneous surprise 21st hostel party for Chloe. We sat by the pool late at night, conspiring excitedly about taking it to the next level, with “21” balloons and a three-tiered black forest gateaux cake.

By day three, pre-gaming at the hostel, it was all feeling a bit much. Squeezing between friends on a cramped bench, I avoidantly made sure there was no room for him.

But then leaving for my Grab to the club, I hear a girl’s voice before I’ve even seen her.

“The way that man speaks about you, makes me believe that good men still exist.”

She gushed to me the words he’d been saying, the way I was being described when I wasn’t even around to hear.

What was even more refreshing though, was that he’d gotten the hint. He’d given me my space at the hostel and I’d enjoyed partying with my friends — but he hadn’t gotten in his ego about me ignoring him.

We spent the rest of our nights together talking until the clubs closed. Back in the room, we’d intersperse between deep chats, old embarrassing Youtube videos, cigarette breaks and one occasion where he went down on me whilst I read aloud his birth chart. I remember thinking this was the sexiest thing to ever happen to me.

On our last full day, still hanging together at the hostel, I caught him gazing wistfully at me from the beanbags whilst I played volleyball in the pool. Soon Chloe was dragging me to the side to spill that he’d admitted he was falling in love with me.

“Under NO circumstances can you tell Jess. You’ll scare her off”

A few hours later, again sat in the club talking well into the night, he told me.

Later on, lay in bed, recovering from the UTI that fateful astrology moment had given me (but staying over “just to be together”), he gazed into my eyes and vowed that he very much looked forward to the day our paths crossed again.

On my last morning he biked over to the hostel to say a last goodbye. He cried. I didn’t.

Our friend Lucy, who I caught up with a few islands later, told me he sat in that beanbag and cried for hours, telling more and more people the depth he felt for me.

We exchanged a few messages over the next month: a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year; him trying to convince me to move to Australia; and a sad picture of the first tea my Mum cooked me upon my return home. But the conversations dwindled pretty quickly, and I was okay with that.

A month after our fast-paced love affair, I met a random girl in a bar in Hoi An, Vietnam. When following each other on Instagram, we discovered we had one mutual.

“How do you know Dave?!” — part-horror, part-hilarity whipping over our faces.

Her friend had dated him back in Brighton, pre-Aus. And she had not had a good experience.

Suddenly I was hearing an almost identical story to my own: instant passion, couldn’t get enough, very intense feelings, and then… ghosted.

At once her group chat was popping off as she sent selfies of the two of us into there, sharing the gossip.

It did taint my memories of Dave slightly, realising that this could have absolutely been a classic love bomb play. But, in the grand scheme of things, I still look back on my experience with Canggu Dave fondly.

Dave taught me what it felt like to be listened to. Eye-gazing, stare-into-your-soul, hang-on-every-word listened to. We’d sit in the pool with our group of friends and he’d pull me onto his knee and stare at me whilst I ugly-cackled my way through another story. After leaving a relationship on the basis of “I don’t actually know if you see or love me for me”,having someone care so much to hear the end of my sentence felt like plunging myself into a still-cool pool at 9am on a hangover.

But I did also find myself questioning: is he interesting or am I just interesting? is he funny, or are we both just laughing at all my funny stories?

It will take a lot more for me to fall for someone than them just mirroring back how much of a catch I am, so if it waslove-bombing, I realised I don’t really mind.

Our fiery romance added a spice of fun to what originally set out as a very underwhelming Bali experience, funny stories and fond memories to share for a lifetime, and I can’t deny it: the man gave me the best orgasm of my life.

I’m perched on the shiny leather sofa in my family’s living room. Cat on my lap, Nothing to Declare blaring on the TV (having 70 year old parents will do that to your eardrums).

How the hell am I sat in my parents living room right now, when 24 hours ago I was napping in the reception of a Hanoi party hostel? When 30 hours ago I was getting a matching tattoo with someone I’d met that day?

Had it all just been a fever dream?

I’d landed home after almost three months of solo travel, with:

• No job

• No desire to run the business that I’d spent 5 years building

• No relationship

• No home (hello childhood box room)

• The desperate need to be out of the country again and living my actual dream life.

• And no money — I also now owed my Mum £800 after having to change my flights last minute.

It will all be different on April 27th.

That’s what I kept telling myself.

Because April 27th was exactly three months away.

Which meant I was about to enter a chapter of using the Three Month Rule.

A rule my friends and I had started putting into place whenever one of us was going through a shitty time. I’d originally seen the idea on Tiktok — a girl and her friends would put a “three month dinner” into the calendar. They’d meet on that day, and they’d reflect on how their “how am I gonna survive this” situation had changed in that time.

In fact, it was coming up to the three month rule for one of my best friends. On 1st November she’d sat and cried with us about how much was changing in her life, and how lost she felt.

“Babes, in three months time, all of these problems will have solved themselves. You’ll look back and you will LAUGH at the stress you were feeling. You just can’t see it right now.”

Surprise surprise, three months later, we were sat in a bar in Vietnam laughing at how much had worked out these last 90 days (we hadn’t even planned Vietnam when we had initiated the 3MR for her).

So, I prescribed myself the Three Month Rule.

Yes, my situation felt dire. Yes, I desperately wanted to be back living my travel life. But I also knew a lot of this wouldn’t be solved in a day.

Three months, as usual, felt doable. It felt like I could honestly trust that factually, a lot of this would be sorted in three months, instead of me having to desperately manifest it into existence.

I had started writing this piece when it was hitting the 6 week mark. Here’s what I had to update on 8th March:

“Since I landed home, I have:

Secured a full time job in a coffee shop that I love.

Received my first pay check (only a week’s wage, but enough to quieten the post-travel panic)

Gained 74 Substack subscribers — which feels insane, as I came home with 18!

Hosted two creativity workshops in my local area — the part of my business that I knew I wanted to continue.

A lot can happen in six weeks, and even more can happen in twelve.”

And now, as I complete this post, it’s April 27th.

It has been exactly three months since I landed home.

And yet again, the 3MR did exactly what it needed to do.

I still love the full time job in the cafe. Since I last updated, I’ve elbowed my way onto the coffee machine and trained myself up as a barista, with the help of my new work friends.

I’ve received my first month’s pay check and started paying my Mum back for the flights. I’ve had enough money to enjoy my life back home, have nights out with my friends and book a girls holiday.

I now have 320 subscribers on Substack and my first paid subscriber. What the helly !!!

Romance-wise, I’ve snogged an old friend in a club, my manager spends shifts scouting out the hot customers to try and get me to give out my number, and I met a guy a few weeks ago that rocked up to my Dad’s 70th to secure a date with me — but these are all stories for future Substack posts (hehe).

In so many ways I am LOVING being at home again. I love the novelty of having work friends after 3 years self employed. I love going for spontaneous drinks in my childhood city, which is now a booming community. I love seeing my family and my oldest friends and drinking Aperols in sunshine in Stevenson’s Square.

But, I’ll also be completely honest.

Whilst on paper everything’s changed, in some ways life feels more confusing than when I first landed home.

Because the Three Month Rule can help you figure out logistics and solve specific problems, but it can’t tell you where you’re actually trying to go.

I don’t even think 300 subscribers was a goal for the year let alone to happen in two months. I’ve learned an entire new skill as a barista and every day I go to work with the intention to soak up as much knowledge as I can. I’ve made new friends and I’m saying yes to spontaneous plans because I said No so many times through my twenties that I want to soak up all the LIFE that I can.

But soaking up LIFE is costing me money that I could be saving towards my OTHER life I want to live.

I think I was a little optimistic with how fast I could get fully on top of my finances. It’s frustrating not to have it all done, and I’m impatient. The longer it takes to get back on track, the further away it feels that I’ll be back on a plane again.

I feel like I have something to prove to my parents — Dad’s fears about me not having a “long term plan”, Mum’s eye rolls when I talk about jetting off again. I feel like if I delay my timeline, it’s proving them right. That I can’t do it and I have my head in the clouds and I’m not realistic and that’s my downfall.

I’m constantly flitting between the one way flight to Australia life, or the pick up a job in a party hostel in Thailand pipeline, or the dilly dally through a European city life day dream.

If I was planning to do Europe then I’d need to save less money, so I could go on more trips this year and actually explore some of these cities. But if I’m going to Australia then I can’t do that because I need to save that money for a bigger safety net. You see my problem?

I have no idea where I actually, specifically want to go, which means it’s really fucking hard to make a clear plan or to get truly excited for it. I don’t know what or where I’m working towards, so on the days I don’t feel so positive or creative, the pendulum swings and I feel truly lost.

A lot has changed in these three months. More than I could have hoped for. But I thought solving my on-paper problems would instantly make me “know” the rest — when in fact, it just amplifies that I’m still not quite sure what I’m doing all this for.

So here’s where I’m at now: I’m doing my best to enjoy my present moments, and not forcing a decision on my next steps. The past three months had the aim of getting back onto my feet and into a rhythm — and I did do that, and more! These next three months I think I’d like to develop a clearer plan. Pay off most of what I owe, start saving for my new life, and grow my Substack even further.

If so much did change by April 27th, it’s got me wondering what will have changed by July 27th.

I guess we’ll find out.

“It’s a great day to delay flights” I posted to my Instagram story, sipping my third white wine from an Italian bar named Donna in Mirissa, Sri Lanka.

I’d originally planned to only travel Sri Lanka for 2 weeks after the retreat I was attending ended. But, four days in, I’d cancelled all my pre-booked hostels and had a pretty-much road trip planned with my new friends from the hostel. I knew I’d need more time before I flew to Bali.

I didn’t know it yet, but delaying that flight changed everything. Had I left when I was meant to, I’d never have traveled back down to the coast to Hiriketiya to meet up with my friend Kush (who had been drinking with me in Donna that day — I’d just met him the night before). Our friendship wouldn’t have blossomed into the soulmate bond we have now, and I’d never have met Abbie in the ice bath—the final piece to our trio— when we traveled over to Weligama. I truly find it hard to imagine a life without these two people in it, and that day in Donna I didn’t know I was setting that exact reality in motion.

But that’s actually not the point of this story.

When I was changing my flight, I decided to pick the journey with a thirteen-hour layover in Kuala Lumpur.

“I’ll put my bags somewhere and I’ll go and explore the city in the layover! I’ll be able to tick off another country — why not!”

I did not at all consider that my thirteen hour layover would come after a red-eye flight from Colombo to KL—on top of an already seven hours of travel from Weligama to the airport.

Suddenly, I found myself sat in a seating area of an Xpress Mart in Kuala Lumpur airport, at 6am, after spending an hour trying to find a new SIM card and literally anything liquid to drink to hydrate myself.

I was supposed to be feeling adventurous. Ready to seize the day. Ready to train hop from the Petronas Towers to climbing the steps of the Batu caves and even hop by the Apple store because apparently they replace your phone battery for free.

Instead I was overtired, I’d been told off by a security guard for sitting on the floor, and now at the plastic Xpress Mart table I was being haunted by a children’s arcade game playing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (Chipmunk version), full blast, over, and over, and over again.

I ran to a Starbucks because it gave me the smallest shrivel of familiarity that I needed (along with free wifi — still no SIM card). I ordered a large coffee, and I cried my eyes out in a corner booth. The man who served me my drink shot me a concerned side-eye every five minutes.

It was in this moment that I realised: this was actually my first real moment of solo travel. I’d met Kush on my second day at my first hostel. We pretty much stayed together the entire time after that. I’d not had a minute alone for the entire trip. It was a vastly different feeling to the excitement I felt just nine hours before, sat in Dominos at Colombo Airport. I was sat alone at a table singing loud and care-free along to the live performance of American Boy coming out of my phone — him and Abbie FaceTiming me from our favourite Weligama restaurant.

I felt weak. I was tired and fragile and felt for the first time of the trip… actually vulnerable. My backpack felt like a lead weight with my laptop and iPad and a million things stored in there even with my trusty blue suitcase still checked in. My phone had reached full storage and wouldn’t even load Whatsapp, so I couldn’t even text my Mum in a moment of need.

There was no fucking way I was jetting off on an unknown train, in an unknown country, for a full day of sight seeing.

A thought jangled in my head rustily. Sleeper pods. Those were a thing, weren’t they? Where you can basically just hire a little room to go to sleep in… and they’re usually near the airport?

I googled the closest one. I couldn’t work out whether it was in a premium lounge or just somewhere in the airport, but I left the Starbucks and went in pursuit of my very own pod of dreams (literally).

After a long stretch of walking (finally getting my SIM en route), asking about five different people who pointed me in five different directions and definitely ending up in a car park at some point… I found it.

The reception looked clean. Futuristic. There were screens above the desk like I was about to curate my own meal at McDonalds.

“We actually have a deal on today — if you book for six hours, it’s cheaper than booking for three”

I cried an awestricken “yes please”, tears already pricking my eyes, paid my £19 and was handed a tote bag with a huge fluffy towel, slippers and a toothbrush. I was led to my pod like a hungry child following the pied piper. It looked like a tiny wooden garage the size of a single bed.

I dropped my stuff, walked to the bathrooms and sobbed tears of relief in the shower.

I slept for the entire six hours. That sleeper pod was the first private room I’d had in over three weeks. I cried in the bed, on the stairs, in the bathroom, at the front desk as I checked myself out post-pod (the receptionist didn’t quite seem to return the “that was the best sleep of my LIFE!!!” enthusiasm).

I returned to the Starbucks. The same server wrote “safe flight!” on my cup and I sat on the very same table that I had earlier, just to make things feel extra dramatic.

I was a woman refreshed. No longer sleep-deprived, ready for my next chapter. I wrote an extra journal entry, reflected on how I’d handled my first “wtf am i doing” moment of the trip, and I went ahead, iced caramel macchiato in hand, for my next leg of the journey.

I might not have got to climb the colourful steps at the Batu Caves and be taunted by a monkey, or see the sky-high Petronas Towers or even say I’d been to Kuala Lumpur… but to this day, having that hot shower and then climbing into that bed with a real duvet and in the pitch black… is still the sharpest experience of gratitude I felt the entire trip. Not the sunrise hikes. Not the beach front spicy margs. Just six hours of uninterrupted sleep and showing myself I can deal with the tough moments all by myself.

I didn’t realise that in writing that first Substack post, I’d written myself a manual of exactly how to pick myself up from ground zero. Exactly how to rebuild my life, the way I actually wanted it to be.

So, when I moved out of the apartment we shared together, I wasn’t surprised when I found a journal buried in a drawer. I hadn’t seen it since before I’d moved in, over three years ago. The first page of the journal listed all the places I dreamed of traveling to. Number one was Bali. I’d just booked a one-way flight there.

Five days before I left my relationship, my ex and I had an argument. I cried in the bedroom and wrote a poem.

What was scrawled onto the page was how much I hated our bedroom. How I missed having my bed pushed up against the wall like in my childhood, feeling safe.

Five days later I was sleeping in that childhood bedroom, bed pushed up against the wall. My old home, suddenly my new one. I look back on that poem and I see a girl trying to understand why she doesn’t recognise herself in the life she’d built around her.

Four days before I left my relationship, I wrote a piece called “I don’t ever want to wear sunglasses”. It was about what happens when you hide from your own shadows. How it stops you from experiencing the magic of life; because when you numb the lows, you block yourself from the highs, too. I didn’t admit it to myself, but underneath the words lay a resentment that I was living my life alongside someone who did exactly that. Someone who’d spent a lifetime numbing the past, without acknowledging how much of our relationship it was numbing as well. His refusal to look at his wounds stole so many what-could-have-beens — spontaneous adventures, vulnerable intimacy, the kind of stuff that can only be created by two people fully awake in their lives.

I didn’t realise how much the girl inside of me knew before I did. How she was speaking through me even when I was covering my ears. Even when I was channeling her words but handing them out to other people instead of truly hearing them for myself.

And, two months before I left, I spent a morning doing mirror work. Afterwards, I wrote this about who I saw staring back at me, whilst dancing in the mirror:

“Right now, looking back at her in the mirror, I feel like her younger self. I feel like the person staring back at me is wiser than me, even by a few months. I feel like she really does know something I don’t. Like she knows how good it’s about to get and she’s smug at the fact I don’t know yet.”

I found that piece hidden in my Notion documents a few months after the relationship ended, when things really did start to feel “good” again. She already knew. That version of me in the mirror staring back at me knew something I didn’t yet.

The funny thing is, I think that “higher self” is just your future self, sending you back messages.

There have been many times since this mirror moment that I’ve looked at my reflection, back to that version of me who stood in front of it. I’ve sent her “we did it!” dances from my first hotel room of my solo trip in Sri Lanka. Woozy “it’s all gonna be fiiiine” messages from the toilets in Gili T whilst on magic mushrooms. And even, “you’re building it” encouragements from the bathroom at my new job. And when I think back to that blurry portal I felt myself looking into that morning, in my old, bare bedroom… I think I was just staring into the eyes of a million versions of me that I’d yet to become.

Your higher self knows before you do, because in my eyes, your higher self is the You who’s already lived it. She’s already on the other side.

Hey, I’m Jess and if you don't know my story, I have been a coach for creatives for the past five years. I am re-opening a couple of spots for 1:1 Creative Clarity calls. If you know you’re here for a wild, creative, abundant life… but are unclear on exactly how to make it happen, my sessions are for you.

If you’d like to book a session or chat more about it, send me a DM on Substack or reply to this email.

But do you know where that big leap feels way more comfortable from?

Spain.

Specifically, whilst sat in a cosy, lamp-lit cafe in Barcelona, watching strangers reconnect with their friends over soft-boiled eggs and fancy iced lattes.

Specifically, around a candle-lit table sharing tapas with a new friend and an even newer friend. Talking candidly about your life, cracking jokes, drinking sangria.

Specifically, when accidentally hiking up a mountain (hungover no less) because your new friend booked the wrong cable car, whilst giggling and debriefing on your night of unexpected debauchery with said newer friend.

This week, I took a “trial run” trip to Barcelona, to stay with a new-but-super-close friend who serendipitously appeared before me at a very pivotal moment in my life. Some may say booking a £17 flight to a city you’ve already visited this year, a mere 13 days before leaving the country until next year was pointless.

I say,

1) it was £17??

and 2) it might just have changed my life.

I didn’t realise how much creativity I had bled out by hiding away in my childhood bedroom. How easy it is to feel “uninspired” and “un-courageous” when your world shrinks to the same four walls, the same monotonous habits, and the same home comforts, keeping you perpetually in victim mode.

I didn’t realise it until I was plunged into a still-new city, wandering the streets alone in the morning to find a pastry and realising that it’s these very moments that make me feel most alive.

I didn’t realise that I only needed a day in a new environment for inspiration to flow back through my veins.

That I needed a day in the very environment that my spirit comes alive, to feel… well, alive.

That I wasn’t meant to wait to heal. I was meant to live, to heal.

And so it’s a lesson I’ll take with me forever. They mean it when they say you cannot wait to feel ready. But what they don’t say, is that there may be a midpoint step, more than a baby step, that will allow you to finally feel capable.

Because when you are already in a new place, already in the moment where you’re “doing it”, navigating a new city in a long billowing skirt feeling like the main character, the even scarier thing feels like just an extension of what you’ve already done. It’s a step further, not a jump over a cliff edge.

I didn’t know it yet, but this small weekend trip to Barcelona was giving me a peek into the version I’d become on the other side of that 13 hour flight. The girl who was care free. Who spoke to anyone. Who came alive in the karaoke bar and scrawled writing pieces down in her journal on long-haul bus journeys. And she had so much more trust in meeting that version of herself, because of her trial run.

Last night’s hotel reception welcomed me with a fresh cucumber juice and by hauling my teal suitcase over a shoulder as they walked me up the winding path to my private room. But that was a £51 a night fancy hotel. This is my first official £8, 8-bed female dorm of my solo travels, and my bedroom is up two flights of stairs.

The hostel boasted itself to be the only beach front hostel in Mirissa, and I don’t know whether it’s the stormy weather or the fact the hostel photographs seem to have been taken decades ago, but all I see are a few rocks and grey waves crashing over them.

Before waving down a tuktuk, I take a moment to sit on the crumbling bench, gazing out at the ocean.

I’m really doing it, I’m here. My first official day of solo traveling. I have no idea what’s ahead of me.

There’s the most textbook traveler sat on the crumbling dining table behind me, long salt-waved hair brushing his guitar as he sings and plays a well known tune.

Classic.

What I don’t know is I’ll sleep with this boy later that night, and the next. He’ll try to follow me to the next town like a hostel boyfriend, and I’ll have to break it to him in the karaoke bar that I’ve literally just got here and I don’t want a ball and chain. He’ll write me a song and he will befriend every next man I kiss publicly in a bar. He will appear everywhere, and everyone I meet will know him, even 2,700 miles away on a tiny island where I bump into boys from his hometown. He follows me across this trip more than my pitiful red fan.

But before all this happens, I’m at the hostel after a beach day sipping strawberry daiquiris with Yuls, my friend from the retreat in Hikkaduwa I’d just attended. It’s on and off raining as a cyclone rolls in, and I receive news that Yuls won’t be joining me at my hostel’s family dinner or club night. I sit in my dorm, a little nervous I won’t make friends, and I drop a message in the HostelWorld group chat for the entire of Mirissa.

“Anyone going to Drs House tonight?”

“Who ISN’T going to Drs House lol”

“I’m pretty sure the whole of Sri Lanka is going”

I realise that even me asking this question is the first rookie mistake I’ve made at being a complete rookie traveler. I later learn that there’s not a single hostel on the south coast of Sri Lanka that doesn’t go to Drs House every Wednesday and Saturday.

I receive five messages from creepy boys asking me what hostel I’m staying at.

I head down to family dinner just before food is served, and it’s a long table of mostly boys.

It’s now or never. I just need to have this one scary moment before these people likely become my friends.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

I didn’t know it yet, but these strangers would become my first travel family.

So that’s where it all started. The group making space for an additional chair, whilst Textbook Traveler gazed into my eyes as we spoke about creativity and writing and song lyrics and the fact we both brought a multi-pack of Nicorette chewing gum because Sri Lanka doesn’t sell Snus. I share my recently-learned facts with the group about how traditionally you should eat Sri Lankan food where you eat a little bit of everything altogether, already considering myself a seasoned traveler after just a week at a wellness retreat with a private chef. Oh was I about to be humbled. (Exactly two nights later when I contracted bed bugs).

I think about those first nights often. I didn’t know it yet but I was a solo travel virgin and it probably seeped out of me with an innocent, floral scent. I hadn’t yet been hardened by the tough moments of having to deal with whatever crazy shit comes your way. I hadn’t yet been hospitalised by an allergic reaction to magic mushrooms. I hadn’t yet nearly broken my back after a post-ice bath fall. I hadn’t yet had three UTIs in four weeks.

But I also hadn’t yet experienced the rush of cancelling all my pre-booked hostels to co-create a new, spontaneous route with my new, spontaneous friends. I hadn’t yet felt the adrenaline after completing five hours on a £1.58 chicken bus, pissing in a hole in the ground and having a strange man rub home-made Tiger balm on my forehead. I hadn’t shared my last lucky cigarette with my two best friends, Kush and Abbie, that would become so important to me and the absolute spine of most of my travel memories.

I was fresh into the world of doing whatever you want, whenever you want, because your only responsibility was making sure you did your washing on a non-travel day.

There is a real innocence about looking back to the version of you who had yet to live all the memories that you now hold so close to your heart.

Because when I returned back to that hostel, almost a month later with Kush and Abbie in tow as we pre-drank for a boat party, Kush and I filmed an Instagram story screaming “back where it all began!!”I felt like a different person.

I knew the staff. I smoked cigarettes now. I’d slept with three new guys since that first night with Textbook Traveler (South Africa, Millionaire Villa and French Canadian) and I had the tanlines etched into my skin that told everyone around me “this isn’t my first day here”. I no longer asked the hostel group chat whether anyone was going to the club, and in fact would roll my eyes when someone suggested Drs House because “I’ve just been there sooo many times now”. I was insufferable the way a girl is insufferable when she’s riding the high of living a life of adventure and freedom.

We went to the boat party and it rained but we didn’t care. We drank gin and tonics with sugar syrup and I kissed a girl, which pissed off French Canadian. We squeezed into Tuktuks that drove us all the way back to Weligama where we ended the night in a restaurant where’d we’d been so many times the owners let us turn it into a karaoke bar. We sang Alicia Keys while our kottu got cold.

I was a far cry from the nervous girl asking for a seat at the table. I was a seasoned traveler.

Except that’s what I thought.

Until I got to Bali and realised I had a whole lot more lessons to learn.

I’m single after leaving a six year relationship, and walking away from a city-centre apartment and a car (not really mine tbf, entirely my ex’s).

I owe my parents money. I don’t have near enough as you’d hope in my pension because I ran my own business for the past five years and only started paying into it properly a year ago.

I have a payment plan to HMRC for my tax bill because a few years ago I got hit with a 5-figure whopper from my accountant, 5 days before the due date. It’s meant I’ve struggled to keep up and save on top of it ever since.

I don’t have a house or any savings for one. My birthday is next month. I’ll enter the last year of my twenties clocking in for a seven hour shift at a coffee shop.

When I was traveling, everyone I met had similar stories to me. People of all ages were traveling, throwing caution to the wind and some had even quit their “stable” jobs to move across the world.

But back in the UK, I can’t help the weight of society pressing in on me sometimes when I look around and see no one building a life that looks like mine.

But the thing is, when I look at these things in reference to the life I want deep down, they actually track.

I don’t have a house or savings for a house because I don’t want one.

I live with my parents because I’m saving to move across the world.

I work as a barista because I think it will be good job experience for if I want to move to Australia. And, it gives me enough money and peace in my brain to spend my evenings and days off writing — the thing I really want to do.

I don’t have a car because what’s the point when I don’t need one?

I owe my parents money because I went solo traveling and wanted to stay longer. I’m paying off memories that changed me for a lifetime, and money I was blessed enough to borrow in the first place.

And so I might sit here and compare myself to my friends who seem to have it “more together”, but I couldn’t sit here and say I wanted to swap lives with them. Not because their lives are less than, just that they wouldn’t be mine.

Because I might not have the money I’d like, and I might not have a stable, growing career or a mortgage or a parter or even a bedroom that wasn’t the one I grew up in. But when I look at my life, I know it looks closer to my real dream life than it ever has before. I know I wouldn’t swap places with the me from a year ago, who had the business, the boyfriend, the apartment, car, and flashy holidays.

So am I terrible at being an adult, or do I just refuse to build a life that only looks good on the outside? Am I terrible at being an adult or actually doing exceptionally well at following my heart’s desires?

My life doesn’t look like anyone else’s around me.

But for the first time, it’s starting to look like mine.