I’ve had part-time jobs ever since graduating university almost a decade ago - a necessity to make rent and keep myself fed. My jobs, often in minimum-wage retail, would always be enough to cover essential costs, whilst my art income remained something like a bonus - more than a hobby, but never truly that serious.

I had never truly pursued art before - it rather persisted as a continuation from all the way back in secondary school. I can’t say I was passionate about it, and I ultimately lacked drive and aspiration. But it was the most interesting option out of everything I had tried, and according to everyone else I was good at it. And so, there was no reason for me not to continue on.

In April of this year, during a week off work, I took myself on a self-imposed art residency. At the time my recent friend and art collector was on a voyage around the world, and had kindly offered his attic studio space for me to use - which I gladly accepted. So, following that weekend, I spent every day going to his house, up the multiple staircases to the roof and sitting down at an empty desk. From anxiety-filled large charcoal line drawings to my classic gouache work, I would try to immerse myself and make art.

One evening, I went out to a nearby hill and watched the sunset. The sky was free of clouds and the sun was red on the horizon. It was not cold, but the spring air was crisp and awakening.

As I sat down at the blank desk the next day, dotted only with a book, a few painting tools and paper, I suddenly felt like there were great rolling fields in front of me. I could do, create, be anything. It was not euphoric, but clear and calm. It was centred and unmoveable, like the surface of the sea flattened out.

“Every day could be like this” I thought. A day completely open to creation. A blank page to fill with whatever I wanted. The hills rolled on and on, into the breadth of the sea.

When I look back at my trajectory and my past experiences that got me to where I am today, I feel proud of the growth I’ve sought over the past few years, and everything I’ve been through over the span of my life. I feel that even when I wasn’t consciously aware, art has always given me the most autonomy. Creation is a beautiful thing, I think. A thing most you, even if seemingly intangible or incomprehensible.

I have absolutely not got my life together, but I am content with how things are going and I know the decisions I’m making are for me. I know every day cannot realistically be rainbows and creativity, but I want to take small steps closer to that reality - and this is me doing so.

I have been on a healing journey for the past few years. I know that many people laud healing, self-care and “rediscovering your inner child”, but the true reality is as grey as life is. An amalgamation of overwhelming joy, rage and deep isolated sorrow.

Recently, as the weeks go by, I am constantly being hit with unsuppressed emotion. Often, it’s horrible. It’s lonely. The list of things that have affected me is seemingly endless, though by comparison, the life I have lead has been relatively easy. Each realisation renews something in me - something else that has to die in order for me to live.

As a person who seen the volatility of depression from a young age, every person I have been closest to has reflected this.

Particularly when I think of my sister, of her depression, of the agony she suffered as a child, I feel saddened, sickened, guilt-ridden, devastated. She was just a kid and she had no idea of what was going on, no language for her pain. No one in her life had enough life experience to truly help her.

It was devastating to witness my family experience that - my mum in particular - and the pain, confusion and fear we all felt but didn’t share. Some people say that depression is contagious, and whilst I don’t believe that in the ‘woo woo’ kind of way, I think if you don’t get help as someone in close vicinity to this kind of deep suffering, it will have a profound effect on you - whether that's apparent or subconscious. In fact, I don’t know how it wouldn’t affect you.

It makes me angry to think that the people in my life have had to endure such pain. It makes me angry that I have been a witness and recipient of it all. Mostly though, it just breaks my heart.

I know that I have carried this my entire life. I don’t believe that people are burdens, but what is burdensome is the responsibility we carry inside of us - the feelings we flatten, lock up, dismiss. When it all comes out again it’s like a torrent. All that pressure has to go somewhere.

As I continue down this path, each time I mourn my life differently. I scream, I cry, I punch pillows. It’s a terrible thing to feel. But afterwards, you might just feel 1% lighter.

I have just said goodbye to the final time to my friend, previously my ex, who I had a complex relationship with for the past 6 years. In truly letting go I have realised, on the cusp of 30, that I have lost all constant witnesses to my life.

I have been a pretty textbook introvert for most of my life but somehow I lucked out when it came to friends and people around me. From a genuinely loving family to a group of school friends I stayed with throughout my education, to a uni group and my former best friend, to my ex/best friend. I have pretty much always had witnesses to my life journey, within social groups or with at least one person I felt I belonged with. Now, without witnesses, there is no one reflected back at me. And with it comes the loss of external confirmation of my existence.

At present, I live alone in a house of people I'm not friends with, with no spouse or even a pet. I mentioned introversion before, which means I love and am very comfortable being by myself, but now I am presented with the fact that no one is here to witness my life. There's no one to regularly go back to. I do things alone and no one really knows I do them. No one knows my continual thoughts, my walks in the morning, the depth of my growth, desires, dreams or fears. I do have friends and family who I touch in and out with, but that's not the same as someone who's reliably present. I know that I have lost that relational continuity and social landscape around my identity. As a long time relationship decenter-er, I now realise some of why people care so much about romantic relationships. Isn’t it a wonderful thing, to travel with someone - to have reflected proof of your aliveness?

And so, being an adult is, I realise, is you learning to exist in the silence, in your own space. To create your own bubble, to express and connect in all ways that are available to you. Completely on your own terms, according to your own values and energy. And that is a gift, though you may not realise it. Because I feel I have always contained or changed myself against my true wishes, in whatever way, to keep my connections. Even though I’m not a people pleaser and have always done my own thing regardless of what others are doing, I guess this is just the default nature of humans. Without social confirmation, suddenly you are just you - without pressure or expectation.

Even as I grieve and reality settles, I feel grateful to have experienced the connections that I have even with my nature. To have best friends throughout most of my life (though they weren't deep connections until my ex), I know that that's rare and a beautiful thing.

I'm thankful for my witnesses, and I look forward to my future connections, but I know I must be okay with being alone. Because I am the only constant presence in my life, because I want to flourish either way.

the weather has turned cold as if it were autumn, but now and again the sun breaks through.

last week my candle broke for some reason.

i’m obsessed with elderflower. it blooms everywhere i look.

this year, especially, it seems that flowers are bountiful.

today i was exhausted, but i made it through what i needed to do. i even stopped to collect some interesting weeds along the way.

i don’t really like the term ‘weeds’, but that’s the easiest label i have to communicate.

i get so angry at things sometimes.

i am often confused and it’s hard to communicate through a well of emotion.

elderflower smells somewhere between honey and damp earth.

the sun is hot like a flame on my skin.

the leaves of this weed are shaped like hearts.

where am i, actually?

where else could i be but here.

I’ve spent my entire freelance career relying on a part time job to pay the bulk of my rent and living expenses. Letting that go is strange and it’s something I wasn’t even sure I’d want to do until the last year.

I’ve studied art throughout my child & teenagehood, and worked professionally for about 7 years since graduating. A few years ago I really had to question if art was the thing I wanted to do if I was presented with any option in the world, and eventually through a lot of questioning, experimenting (and a slight mental breakdown), I discovered that it was.

I genuinely love art and the act of creation, of painting and visual poetry. Art and music are often the things most real to me. Over the past year, I have really realised that I don’t belong at my workplace anymore and I’ve been constantly thinking about all the better things I could be spending time and energy on whilst there. I have never been one to take chances, always carefully selecting the best ‘maximised’ option, but I felt this was the right time to do it. At some point you have to commit, right?

So here we are, mid 2026, about to be 30 and jobless (being dramatic). And we’ve just got to go for it.

Happy international women's day. This is a photo of me at my home studio (basically the end of my bedroom), crouching somewhat awkwardly on the floor and trying to make myself look professional.

Even though I'm a women, I've always found it difficult to relate to the experience of being a women. I have always been quirky, not stereotypically girly, and not particularly into belonging to groups. I'm slender, wear no make-up, dress modestly and have naturally low presence. I'm individualistic, don't like assimilating and I do much better with 1-1 relationships. I think I probably live life more like a man in some ways. I know that that always sets me apart and I usually feel like I'm on the fringe of the female experience.

The Given Caretaker Role

My strongest association with the female struggle has by far been the role of the nurturer and emotional labor. Growing up in a predominantly female home (in numbers and hierarchy), alongside younger sibling’s mental health issues, I learned early on from my mother that I needed to emotionally compensate for everyone else. For my father’s lack of knowing himself and his emotions, for my sister’s depressed silence, for the family’s internal arguments. Somehow delegation fell on me rather than my dad to talk to my siblings, when my mum was tired or felt she couldn’t do anything more for them.

I have since been the emotional labourer for many people in my life, in relationships that epitomise the phrases “Love is what you do for others” “Love is suppressing your feelings” “Love is ignoring your needs for the greater good”. I have played the role of friend that bandaids, the role of mother, nurse, therapist, situationship lover - all in unbalanced relationships that I was trying to bridge too much by myself.

I’m tired of trying to love everyone.

Overcoming this caretaking role has been a big one for me, and is ongoing to this day. Learning that other people’s feelings and actions aren’t my responsibility, that I shouldn’t manage everyone else’s emotions, and that I need to prioritise my mental wellbeing first. I will always be there for my friends and family if available - but I don’t need to be there for everything.

The Positive Female Experience

As my 20s have progressed, I have learned the strength in female compassion and comraderie, and I have grown to know and admire many fellow women in the creative space and outside of it. Creativity is a celebration, and I really feel that embodied in these spaces I happened upon. There is beauty and warmth in communal support, in uplifting and protecting each other. I think it is a wonderful strength and the positivity has really been a blessing to me in times of struggle.

The meaning of being a women is still not entirely known to me, but something beautiful regardless. Continuing to break my own unconscious gender-related shackles will probably be a lifelong quest of mine, so we can exist without preexisting programming, and without restraint.

To add: My Current Favourite Novels by Women

Red Azalea, Anchee Min

Small Bodies of Water, Nina Mingya Powles

The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Amy Tan

The Rice Mother, Rani Manicka

At my own suffering that I see reflected in the world,

At the world's suffering that I see reflected in me.

It has been a mentally taxing start to the year. As my own commitments and disatisfactions build, the unhappiness of the people closest to me and the division of the world as a whole seem at a critical point. I can feel fear inside me, directing my choices, running from discomfort, from pain. In these moments, I try to bring it back to self - to my breath, to my values, to the birds outside. I swim at my local pool, my hands caressing the smooth, viscous water. I am exhausted but I write, because that is what my soul dictates.

Self care is complicated but I am learning what I love and what is right in the moment. My choices start at my centre. Everything begins there.

(These are the makings of my own heart)

I'm currently reading Stoner and it is much more nihilistic than I anticipated. More than what the outline promises of a story about an unextraordinary man's life, it is rather a tale of a starkly unhappy one. A confused life, a life not knowing who one is or how to enact it in the world. A life that comes into contact with love but loses it in fear. Altogether, the story lacks hope in growth and permits the existence of misery. Even then, I am struck by the ending. Even a life of misery and failure to overcome, is a life worth living.

(I am so resentful of losing love to fear.)

The thought crosses my mind from time to time: At this point in my life I don't have a single best friend nor anyone that really knows me. I don't often find that lonely, but sometimes the grief strikes me like a rock in the back of the head. I suppose one should be grateful of having had something, but it doesn't always feel something to be grateful for, does it?

(I want to be known)

I don't believe in karma but I am an accumulation of my sins, as is the world an accumulation of its sins. That is not to make of sin a detestable or inhuman thing, but to practically state its ill effect. When we do not choose ourselves, when we do not choose love - we choose evil that brands us slowly, often unknowingly. Such is the tendency towards habit and the known, only broken by introspection, bravery and the ensuing growth.

I do not mean to be fatalistic but many of us won't make it. A good percentage of people will end up with some iteration of William Stoner's life - a decent, unobtrusive life with unrealised potential and the ultimate failure to face the self. If we can manage a few small victories like Stoner, that is a wonder in itself and in fact, in some way an existence to be grateful for, in comparison to life's many other cards. Regardless, the choice of more is always there and the path is always open. In the face of trauma and a lifetime of pain and mistakes, the only choice lies in the present - black and white, crisp like freshly fallen snow, yes or no.

Alone in my room, processing and healing from this personal and universal anguish is no easy feat. Yet it is one I toil against, or perhaps for, as a marker of visceral human experience.

To live and to die is the life of a human, or animal, or beast.

From the comfort of a warm, satiated cavern, we were birthed into emptiness. We grew from the beginning again - a new kind of existence - one physically separated and full of the uncomfortable, of friction and pain. A new, brittle world where peace now seemed illusive.

To replace the warmth of nurture came jarring necessities and a wall of unmet needs. We didn’t get what we wanted when we wanted it - or we didn’t get it at all. We had to learn to wait, to ask, to compromise, to be hurt, to be patient with our hurt. We let pain turn into suffering, we dwelled it in, and got back up again - or didn’t. We listened to the birds, we laughed and ran for miles. We forgot many important things; we stubbornly refused to change. 

The world asks us of many things. Always pushing or pulling, a life full of pressure. A sinking or squashed feeling. Squashed into shape. Pressing on the mind.

And when there’s no pressing, it’s empty. Why have we been put here, on this sphere - alone? How many people feel alone on this planet of many. How many people feel that their life is lived in fear, without choice, on this singular earth in a black space. In this the midst of this ridiculous existence, where life bleeds into death and death into life, and fear should have no place.

As I sit here, listening to the pattering of rain above me, I breathe it in - of life and its tatters. This is what it means to be conscious, to be cognisant.

A wash of headlights across the ceiling. The scent of oranges in the air. The light breeze against my cheek.

I hear the sound of a piano key and know that I’m alive.

Over the past year, I’ve experienced many lessons about boundaries and personal limits. At this stage of my journey, I’m tired of following along and enduring the external bullshit, but more than that - I have no need for it. People often don’t know what they want and I can’t wait for anyone to find themselves, I must stick to my own pace. I know now how to set and maintain boundaries, and to not hold on to what cannot exist. I know now how to start from the self - I’m comfortable with that. I am more alone today than ever, but happier to me.

Ultimately, this is the year to commit to be seen. To be unapologetic about it, whilst still being gentle and attentive. At 29, I’m still in the healing stages, but I feel it - youth is leaving me and the era of being an adolescent adult is coming to an end. Today, I’m more cutthroat and carefree than ever before.

Lots of art to make, creation to share, change to commence.

Spring is coming, and this time I’ll be ready for it.

Music: Touch the sky by Julie Fowlis

I'm currently 29 and doing well in life. I'm not doing anything particularly special nor achieved any major milestones, but I'm happy with where I am on the journey and most days I feel pretty good. I am an introvert but find it easy to talk to people and start the beginning of something like friendship. I am grateful for the good yet scattered connections I have, for having loving parents and siblings that I keep fairly frequent contact with. I'm also working through some issues, feeling and healing and letting go of a lot of things, and it feels good. This is probably the healthiest, most lucid and most content I've ever been.

Sometimes it's hard though. In adulthood, everyone is busy with their own lives - their own friends and commitments. I live alone in a flatshare and every day I come home to a silent room, every day I come home to myself and every morning I wake up to myself. I cook for myself, clean for myself, move through life by myself. I find it difficult to find opportunities for genuine long, deep and fulfilling conversation with the right, compatible people. There's so much I want to say, to share - much more than my current natural connections can provide, both time wise and compatibility wise.

I had a tumultuous mid 20s which fundamentally changed the course of my life, and I cut contact or grew distant with a lot of school and university friends, including a best friend I lived with for 6 or 7 years. I also had my first relationship and first love, of which I considered this person my best friend following the first. I deal with grief a lot of days, though sometimes life is busy enough that I forget to miss people.

I consider myself lucky to have been blessed with people beside me throughout most of my life. Yet when they were there, it's been during the majority of my life when I've struggled to share my own life and joys and struggles to the same extent they show theirs. It's kind of sad, isn't it? Now I feel open and free, I am more alone than I've ever been. I suppose that is the nature of the journey of growth.

I'm not desperately lonely, I just feel, occasionally, that it's a little too quiet. Like I wish I was further down the path, more at peace with myself, relationships further developed.

Gratefulness and grief are a constant and careful balance for me. I used to think that I was not bothered if people were in or out of my life. I have always quietly, contentedly (to my knowledge at least) done things in a corner, in my own world and my own (many) interests. I have always been clear on what I like and don't like, on what I want to do and don't want to do, without t. But it's different now - it does bother me. Life is hard, and we weather many pains. Life is joyful, and we want to be known.

There is no particular answer nor am I searching for one when it comes to this. It is simply an acknowledgment and expression of something. As I near my 30s, I know it will be the best decade of my life thus far. Still, for now, I will remain meticulously watchful; excruciatingly patient.

It's Sunday 9th November 2025; time is now 18:47. I'm writing this after a fit of crying, of reliving something crucial.

These days I always feel on the edge of grief. This time, I cried from the following realisation - that I had been struggling with pain by myself for so long, for the better part of a decade. It's been an incredibly taxing drain on me, mostly subconsciously. All those years of crushing pain, of guilt, of fear. I'm sick of it. I have a family, yet I've dealt with this memory alone.

When I was 16, I was first made aware of my younger sister's depression and worsening mental health. My sisters and I grew up in a life of priviledge - white, middle class, loving parents. Though I'm grateful for this, it also meant that I was very sheltered. I hadn't even learned how to iron before the age of 17, and the fact that I was an introvert perhaps excluded me from learning to navigate more complex social situations.

Regardless of the reason, when I, as an older sister, was called upon to support my sibling, I had no tools and little developed emotional intelligence to be of any use. My parents - the nicest, most well-intentioned people - were at a loss with my sister, who would hardly talk about her feelings and who seemed to be experiencing this suffering for no apparent reason. With no personal experience of their own, they could only stand from the sidelines and offer sometimes painfully-tone deaf remarks - “You have so much to live for” “You are loved by so many”. That, which I'm sure my sister had already contested, and which sat like an extra weight on her shoulders.

On occasion, when my mother (the bearer of emotional support) did not know what else to say, she would call me inside my sister's bedroom and ask me to talk to her. Now, I know I mentioned that I was introverted, but you must also know that I did not fully speak until I was 4. I have always struggled with verbal communication, and I am still prone to long periods of silence in conversation if I feel extremely vulnerable. So, as you might imagine, sitting on my sister's bed with her, at 16 or 17 years of age, verbally challenged, sheltered from the world and with little knowledge of human suffering, I found myself unable to know what to say. So, in fact, I did not say anything. We both sat there, in the dark, in silence. I felt that we were more distant from each other than ever. Sometimes I would listen to her crying in the middle of the night, and yet I did not move from my bed. At those times I cried along with her - both of us, children, crying alone.

My parents gave everything they had to help my sister, including the best private psychotherapy, but they did not and probably could not fathom the needs of myself and my youngest sister. When I look back on it now, I can see how we were asked to give emotional support to her, but never supported ourselves in the way we needed to be. All the energy went to her. We were all just trying to survive.

My survival ended up as my coincidental escape. At 19 I left home for uni, and I was busy with my own newly found struggles and revelations. I knew my parents were both at home, and so I was able to be complacent. She had someone else who was better to handle the situation.

In the years after I left, my sister overdosed with suicidal intent twice. The first time I think we all assumed - or hoped - that it was accidental. A one time mistake. I asked my parents if I should come home. They said not to. I didn't. The next time it happened was more worrying. I asked again if I should come home. My parents said, no it's okay, and I didn't. I remember video calling her. I needed to talk to her, to understand. Our parents were in the background, but she spoke regardless. She detailed the hospital stay and the overdose. She said that this time she really thought she was going to die, and I could see the fear in her eyes. She looked so young.

It seems ridiculous to me, how I didn't go home during those times. It seems ridiculous to me, how we as a family were unable to come together to support each other over such an awful ordeal. I had little contact about the wellness of my sister from either my parents or her during those years. I only heard from my parents when something had happened. I know that my family and I love her (so, so much), and I'm so happy that she is alive and well today. But then, why does it feel like we, if not failed, didn't win?

It seems that in the end our support was reactionary - hoping the volcano wouldn't erupt, but paying no attention to the activity below the surface. To this day I am not sure of how much we helped her (me more so). My sister still does not know the reason for her depression or her low self esteem. I am not saying that all depression needs a reason, but highlighting this in context to us - her guidance and her support system. My sister copes how my parents cope, by working, ignoring and hoping the problem will stay gone. I have spent much of my adult life the same - emotional responsive to initial incidents, but later deeply repressed. It has brought me here: with unprocessed guilt and pain, with trauma that still wracks me as if it happened yesterday, with limited ability to connect with people. Sometimes I feel I am always hiding a little piece of myself. I think that's terribly sad.

I'd like to be free of this weight, this weight that has nothing to do with her but with my own inability and insecurity. My own learned, restricted ways of coping. Pushing everything down works, but deep down, I know I've always been miserable in some sense. I've pushed that pain into suffering, I've unconsciously internally berated myself for so long - and I'm sure my family have too. It's time to break upon this ridiculous prison I've been holding myself in, and hopefully bring some others with me.

It is still Saturday 9th November, and it is now 20:55. Thank you for reading what I've been holding close to my heart, and take care of those around you.

At 1am on a random Friday, whilst singing passionately from my dedicated karaoke playlist, I realised that it’s been a long time since I’ve been silly.

For me, this year’s summer has been great fun - meeting a lot of new people, doing new things and watching my art bloom back to life. But it’s all been ‘appropriate’ fun, safe fun, the kind of fun where you talk and joke with people respectably. The close friends who I was able to channel this side of myself with have long since departed, from school to uni and throughout my mid-late 20s. In this new space, I have much less incentive to act out stupid things with my stuffed animals, execute weird dance movements or perform crappy songs from Highschool Musical.

Something my friend said recently sits at the forefront of my mind - ‘I didn’t think you’d be a karaoke person’. I’d heard that from my ex as well. When people look at me, they don’t see someone who would happily make a fool of themselves.

I think I probably seem uptight. I’m a pretty guarded and reticent person by nature - layer on top of that a bluntness and quick, dry sense of humor. I drink and party little; I’ve not done any drugs other than one edible that made me throw up. But, contrary to appearance, I actually love being silly. I have little qualms about being embarrassing enough in public to make my friends and family wince or roll their eyes, or essentially, generally looking a bit of a tit. And that’s something I miss dearly, I think.

I’m not complaining about the respectable type of fun that lends itself to picnics and pub banter, but there’s something wondrous about being silly or stupid and just letting go. I love being ridiculous and completely without finesse. Of being ugly, unremarkable and likely very cringey.

It goes without saying that life has the tendency to get serious very quickly. External eyes and the fast moving river of work/eat/chores/sleep encase you and makes you forget about this kind of fun, about the absurdity of being alive. It truly is ridiculous how caught up we all are in what we should and shouldn't do.

In the wee morning hours, I thought back the early days of youtube, full of amateur, mediocre content - bedroom lip syncs, 144p dance trends and crude animation. The dirty but (fairly) wholesome underseed of creative youth. Videos were just messing around with friends, unconcerned with what you looked like or who would be watching. I think that's beautiful, to live without living up to anything.

After a summer of connecting with people and letting myself be known (yes, necessary even for introverts), I need to remind myself that this is also important. Whether it be show others or just experience alone, putting on strange voices and shaking these weird limbs around and singing with a hairbrush on top of my bed is both senseless and significant. Because life is not serious (even if it is).

As the days grow shorter as we edge into winter, I plan to sing and play and be ridiculous. And I hope I don't forget that.

Thank you for reading these important, insignificant thoughts - feel free to share or reply with any feedback!

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Lately I've begun to sit and observe what's going on around me.

I tend to idealise making the most of my down time. Of maximising a commute by learning a language, reading a book, drawing or contributing in some way to my art career. Call it capitalism or just human propensity - the idea of making something of my short span of life consistently hangs over me.

But in recent months I've slowly stopped feeding into this ethos. Instead I try and take notice of what's around me, mutely observing the landscape and the details within it. Using all my senses to detect and listen to life.

My favourite place to observe is on my current commute. It's around an hour to an hour and a half - from countryside right into the midst of bustling Londoners. While before I'd try to preoccupy myself (mostly with shitty Duolingo Spanish at the time), now I just watch. I watch the view out of the window - the summer clouds or the sudden downpour, the rolling fields, the ugly industrial landscape. But most interesting of all, I watch people on the tube.

If you've been to London, you know that it's understandable to distract yourself on the tube. It's dark, dirty, ill-ventilated (if at all), and people strive to not make eye contact. But that's why I like to make it a point to actually look.

Young families, homeless people, political youths, groups of girls with plastered-on makeup and flashes of thigh. Tattoos, rings, yellow shoes. A man shaking his jean-clad leg. The sound of someone whispering to themselves. There are many different characters and textures - people from all manner of backgrounds and ethnicities pass under the same sun. Most don't make eye contact; many are on their phones or listening to music. Some people look straight ahead, thoughts taking them far away from physical reality.

The tube interior is grimy and I look at the peeling posters, the walls that used to be white. I feel the hot air, the breeze from the briefly opened doors, the state of the new and worn seats. I watch all of this nakedly, without distraction and without any real, moral judgment.

I think that we do a lot of processing without realising it. Even in moments where it looks like nothing is happening, our brain is active and we're unconsciously chewing stuff over.

I take nothing of concrete value away from observing people or places. It's not for any particular enjoyment, but I think that it's good to let my brain do nothing. To not try to escape. To let it soundlessly work in the background, away from the constant stimulation and external expectation of life.

It's also humbling. I'm not trying to feed my ego, to push or pull anything. I'm merely being present. Being present is a beautiful thing - you expect nothing, you just sit there and watch and notice and let pass. It's releasing, to be able to let pass.

I've often repeated this to myself: Stop trying to get away from life. When I pick up my phone I think, what am I trying to run away from? Have I chosen a life so bad that I don't want to live it? When I make social media posts, am I being productive just for the sake of productivity? Or am I actually enjoying making and growing?

Slowing down has made me think a lot more about my intentions. It's not about the modern concept of a slow life, but actually taking in both the good and bad that I experience every day. What kind of choices I make, even the small ones, and how it joins together in the construction of my life.

“Remember that you chose this life - whatever one you're living right now. So look at it directly, observe its faults and ridges, and don't turn away.”

Life is very interesting when you take the time to look. When you are able to quiet yourself and learn from silence. Old habits are hard to break, but I'm trying to do this better. So that I can notice and enjoy the one life I have.