Back in October, I began a knowledge-quest of studying for a Master’s in Psychology on top of my full-time job. After a short burst of productivity and optimism, balancing my many projects with the rest of my life started to get hard. I’ve been battling burnout for quite some time now and all of my creativity has seemed to vanish with it.

It’s not just been hard, it’s been demoralising and has taken a considerable toll on my self-esteem and mental health. But as I’m the kind of person who will just pretend everything is fine, I implore you to never ask me about it again because I will only lie to your face or make an awkward joke about it.

It has been really tricky to sit down and write stuff without forcing it into the few time slots I have free so I’ve had to resign myself to do so only when inspiration strikes me. Except it hasn’t struck me often. Or when it does, I’m in the middle of an unrelated crisis or deep in assignment hell.

So today, I honour the blogs that never were. Here are the many fleeting ideas I had for posts in the last 12 months that either never made it to fleshed out ideas, were abandoned in my drafts, or came to me as brief thoughts (while doing something else monotonous) that - let’s face it - probably could have just been notes instead…

The time I outed a catfish

There’s bound to be something therapeutic in offloading about your childhood bullies, but something tells me that writing about my experience with the perils of the online world in the early 2000s is actually less interesting for everybody else than it is for me. In the early days of the internet, it was really easy to hide behind an avatar which meant that it was also 1,000 times easier to get up to nefarious shit and one time, I was a victim once-removed.

This story only serves to inflate my ego that after weeks of being duped by an account with the most generic looking photograph of an emo girl, I finally clicked that a set of bullies, had Trojan Horse’d my friends and I in order to get dirt on one of us. It’s the kind of psychotic genius I partially admire but also find mental when I remember that we were all 17 and these women were in their 20s. To this day, I’m really proud of my own instincts and detective work - this is truly a tale of my more disturbing Virgo traits being used for good rather than evil.

My failed experience as a mentor

I was partially inspired by SearchingDan who has written extensively about his recent experiences and insecurities about being a mentor. Rather than an inspiring take, I started writing about how I tried my hand at mentorship of a girl I dubbed Jenna* and it went horribly, horribly wrong. How do you deal with a writer who can’t take feedback? I know we’re all sensitive sorts but this one was just still too raw and on the nose to talk about… Even though the time I was confronted in the ladies bathroom while on a time-tracked piss-break is kind of hilarious.

AI was invented out of envy for creative people

I try to steer clear of hot takes simply because I can’t be bothered with the aftermath. But I truly do believe there’s something in the theory that people who created AI, or at least regularly use it to pursue creative endeavours they otherwise have no experience in, lack a fundamental understanding of creativity and just want a way to covet it for themselves.

Admiration and appreciation for art is rarely about the quality of the output; it’s about the feat of human talent, intellect and capability. How do writers create worlds so vivid? How do they speak in words that make us feel so deeply? How have they learned to draw, paint, carve, and sculpt faces with complete accuracy? What did it take to film a scene which moved so many people to tears?

Sure, if you’ve seen the videos of all the fruit people having affairs on TikTok, you’d be right in thinking ‘a human could NEVER’ but what I often feel it boils down to, is that some people have ‘it’ and some people don’t. Part of life is accepting this but this leap in technology hasn’t evened the playing field so much as it has started to tech-out actual talent.

Many misunderstand AI as a tool to replicate creative work without the time, effort or suffering. I guess there’s also a somewhat adjacent take in there that people who value science, numbers and concrete things generally have less appreciation for beauty and aesthetic - which is why you never see any hot, cool, or well-dressed doctors. But actually that’s a good thing because do you really want a hot, cool and fashionable doctor sticking their fingers up your bum? No.

Every one has their place and sometimes you need to stay in your lane.

Stop trying to ‘Girl Boss’ me

I think we’re all in agreement that the ‘Girl Boss’ era is over. This covert internalised misogyny ‘pick me’ nonsense has always rubbed me up the wrong way and it just so happens that in 2026, I finally have a vocabulary for it. However, that’s never stopped various women throughout my life attempting to take me under their wing as a mentee - unsolicited - and turn me into the Girl Boss protege of their dreams. I know because of my origin story as a meek, shy, and quiet girl that I often, well into adulthood, get mistaken as someone who hasn’t got the confidence to send a slightly confrontational email.

I’m aware that because I take a while to ‘crack’, I often can appear aloof and unassuming to the undiscerning eye. I know that when I’m in mid-flow of a workplace rant after 6 coffees that it might SOUND like I need advice but I often know exactly what to do - I just want to bitch about it a little first.

But this is why more dominant, outspoken women tend to laser focus on me to make me more like them, much to my detriment and frustration. I’m sure the advice is well-meaning but to be frank, I think a lot of it because it serves a purpose for the other person. They’re usually on an ego trip around in the idea that they’re ‘just supporting fellow women’ and that somehow they are my salvation.

Look, there are more ways than one to showcase your expertise and talent, to set boundaries, be a leader, and have influence.

Not all of them involve forcing people like me to become louder or more aggressive. And also, if I didn’t fucking ask you, then I don’t need your help.

Why Christina Aguilera is my teenage icon

We all talk about the influence and deeply problematic scrutiny of Britney, but Christina (also known for a time as X-tina) was often a villain of the narrative.

So much so that admission for my love of Christina during the years of 1999-2008 feels like confessing to a guilty pleasure despite the fact she was also there on the frontlines, not just fulfilling the role as a pop deity and getting equally criticised for it, but serving. This woman was making pop history in her own right and while she still gets mocked for her warbling, her less than feminist quotes, and wearing assless chaps, it’s hard to dispute that if it wasn’t for her, the likes of Lady Gaga, Chappel Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter might never exist.

Despite my later, and equally problematic, denouncement of female blonde pop stars when I discovered punk and metal, Christina was always secretly chosen as my chosen diva. Despite the existence of Pink, who touted rebelliousness and tomboyish sensibilities; Avril, the so-called queen of the skate park; and Evanescence’s Amy Lee; the mall goth girl next door - Christina still felt more authentic to me than all of them put together. Yes she was still a pop star but she was also a serious musician and didn’t always lean into what was cool or prestigious. She dressed insane, her albums slapped, she could hit all the high notes, and - after my viewing of her MTD diary - I realised she was a real, down-to-earth- person who had clearly gone through some shit.

She doesn’t get her flowers enough in my opinion. And that’s all she wrote.

Here’s some ones I did write

I did manage to get round to producing a few posts this year; some of them better than others.

Oh well. Here’s hoping for more posts next year….

Tell me what you’d like to hear more of, see less of, and what you don’t even bother reading because don’t think I can’t see my open rates….

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Every single person I know loved Dolly Parton. There was simply nothing to dislike.

Whether you've belted '9 to 5' on karaoke at a work Christmas party, admired her outlandish fashion sense, laughed at something she said in an interview, or genuinely appreciated her business-savviness - which, as every music magazine in the last 20 years has pointed out, contradicted every assumption about her as a 40DD blonde - it's hard to argue that she's one of the most likeable stars of our time. And that's not easy.

Dolly was one of the few artists that transcended time and genre; everyone knew who she was and no one really ever had anything bad to say about her.

Something about this woman just seemed to radiate joy, kindness, and positivity. Only a person who is wonderful and good to their core could write the most devastating, heart wrenching breakup song of all time, and still tell their ex ‘I wish you happiness…and most of all I wish you love’.

There are many great female stars, and fewer still who capture the iconic status of Dolly, but the likes of Taylor Swift, despite their billions, can never hold a candle to Ms. Parton. She not only had smarts and talent, she had charisma to boot and a pure soul that no amount of PR training, record-label bootcamps, or social media curation could manufacture or imitate.

Of course, part of her charm was that Dolly was very much a darling of the American Dream. Country music practically defines North American identity and values so she quickly became synonymous with the nostalgic world of classic, kitsch and humble Americana. A plucky girl born in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, she grew up poor. Her childhood musical talents led her to perform on TV, later meeting fellow country legend Johnny Cash. She moved to Nashville after high school and began writing songs for other artists, before eventually recording her first country single “Dumb Blonde” in 1967.

But of course, Dolly was no dumb blonde. She was made of magic. She went on to write and sing some of the most iconic tracks in pop culture history and proved herself to be tenacious, smart, and self-deprecating in a way that meant literally no one could touch her. She disarmed critics with quick wit and negotiated things on her own terms.

She even had a brief acting career, and later became an active philanthropist and vocal ally of the LGBTQ+ community.. Among many charitable achievements, the most recent to memory was her famous donation of $1 million toward Covid-19 vaccine research (dubbed ‘the Dolly-vax’ by me) while other high profile celebrities were busy singing in their living rooms.

Yet the biggest legends often endure beyond their list of achievements; sometimes you just know a good egg when you see one.

Everything about her, despite being ‘fake’ (her boobs, her hair, her nails), was authentic and in her own words, “real where it counts”. She knew how to lean in to an image and a brand; she knew that cultivating an outlandish public personality was how to win people over while still being her.

She once said in an interview with Barbara Walters that she knew she looked ridiculous and that people made fun of her, but that she knew exactly what she was doing. The joke was never actually on her: “I’m sure of myself as a person, I’m sure of my talent, and I’m sure of my love of life’.

And man, she knew how to write.

One of the stories about Dolly I regularly think about is that Elvis begged her to let him sing ‘I Will Always Love You’. It wasn’t because she was precious about it. It was Dolly never felt quite right about it and refused.

Later, she gave it to the late Whitney Houston and it famously featured on the soundtrack to The Bodyguard; perhaps making her version even more famous than Dolly’s. Dolly later described in an interview that she couldn’t believe how ‘magnificent’ it sounded sung by Houston: “She just took it and made it so much more than what it would ever have been.”

There’s so many reasons why drag queens take inspiration from Dolly; many reasons why women adore her and hold her in high regard; why musicians cite her as the artist who made them want to perform; why even the most arbiter-of-taste men will never deny that ‘Jolene’ is an absolute banger.

It’s because in a world that can be cruel, in an industry that can be cynical and harsh, in eras and genres where women weren’t always welcome, Dolly was nothing less than a gracious, class act. She never took herself or what she did too seriously and still remained ahead of the game at all times, and confident in her skill.

She never had to diminish her femininity while doing it and never had to compromise who she was. She also never forgot her roots, no matter how famous or wealthy she became. She was just a regular generous person who shared music that people connected with, while making the world a nicer, more fun place.

And there’s something really special about that.

We’ll never know for sure what happened to the pieces she carefully chose to reflect her taste, to mark occasions, that she received as gifts, or the heirlooms that were passed down from my own grandparents. They’re just gone.

And while that doesn’t necessarily mean memories of her will be sometimes having that symbol of proof - an old Christmas card, a ring, an old photo, or even a prized biscuit tin filled with sewing needles can be the thing that connects us to a past that fades with memory quicker than any of us would ever care to think about.

The importance of physical items has never been more pertinent as it is right now because of their increasing scarcity - it’s a topic of strange melancholy for me. In the last 20 years alone, we’ve accelerated at pace from owning CD’s and DVD’s to streaming all of our music, movies, and TV online or via subscription. Books are now listened to via an iPhone or read on a Kindle. Photographs and videos exist in a cloud somewhere or are shared on social media; rarely are they ever printed, rendering photo albums obsolete without a confusing trip to Boots or a pricey hipster photo room.

Even letters, postcards, diaries, drawing pads and notebooks have lost their place. Sexts replaced love letters, emails replaced birthday cards, and expensive tablets digitised grimy sketchbooks. Paperchase, a shop that I spent endless hours in went into administration in January 2023 and since then, I felt that the end was nigh.

Big Tech vs. Small Analogue

I’m no luddite. I know that technology evolves and will continue to do so. I once felt excited about having millions of songs available at my fingertips. But there’s something quietly devastating about a loss of physical media - it’s unsurprising that Gen Z have started to yearn for it, re-popularising records, film photos and burner phones in an attempt to revive the pre-digital world of most Millennial childhoods.

Just recently , AI startup Anthropic were heavily criticised for acquiring books and destroying them in the process to train their AI models under the Project Panama initiative. The destruction of millions of physical, and potentially rare, books caused outrage amid the ongoing AI debate and of course, reinvigorated the ethical case for books as enduring cultural items. The destruction of books, whether it be by ignorant individuals, fascist regimes, fanatics, or a capitalist machine feels wrong to many, and for good reason.

In September this year, Sony plans to delete over 500 purchased film titles from Playstation libraries which will include titles like ‘Terminator 2’ and ‘Apocalypse Now’. This is an increasing issue with streaming services, as providers buy and sell licences back and forth. Not only does this mean that the preservation of these works, and the creative, sometimes groundbreaking efforts all the people involved in making it, are at risk of extinction. It means your favourite show can disappear from the platform without warning and it also means that subscribers often mistakenly believe they own paid and downloaded titles from the likes of Apple - when actually all they own is a licence, not a copy. Again, this means that if the platform goes down or rights are lost, so is the media - and your money.

Licensing and copies are tricky business in the digital age. Back in the day, rights could easily be lost due to studio disputes, leading to film reels and hard copies of movies or music ceasing production, albeit cementing value in their rarity. Not to mention weird issues like that song disappearing from The Muppets Christmas Carol. It’s also the reason I can never find re-prints of the terrible US remake of Ju On: The Grudge. I left the DVD at a sleepover in 2006 and I guess now I’ll never seen Sarah Michelle Gellar being terrorised by a Japanese ghost boy ever again. But most importantly, its a reminder that we don’t actually own our media or our data. We only own the things that we can physically touch with our hands.

And speaking as someone who already watched a once popular online platform go down and be erased forever (RIP Myspace), it’s never nice to be reminded how fragile these systems are. To couple this with the wilful destruction of physical books, that have long-since ceased to be be renewed for publishing and likely contain information that can’t easily be sourced online, it reiterates just how important it is to hold on to the physical world; particularly when they are relics with knowledge that is not as commonly circulated in 2026.

Sure, physical media doesn’t quite fit our minimalist aesthetic and it takes up space, but if I had to choose between boiling the ocean to read a badly written summary of Anna Karenina, or having the legacy of my tastes, hobbies, and interests reflected in groaning bookshelves and dusty boxes I can leave behind to my loved ones, I’d choose the latter every time.

Memory keepers are essential to society

I’ve made my childhood obsession with the Ancient Egyptians no secret and I think part of what fascinated me was not only that we know everything about them from digging up a bunch of their stuff, but that much of that insight is derived from their methods of commiserating the dead. They’d bury royalty with all their earthly possessions to take into the afterlife. If it weren’t for ancient civilisations and ancestors documenting everything, preserving objects, or indeed, dying and leaving them perfectly intact, we’d know nothing about what came before us.

I’ve always seen this as an important and poignant thing that humans do. Some things live on through story, spoken word, and shared knowledge. Other things live on through a physical archive. And in absence of one, we can always rely on the other.

Take for example, Alzheimer’s patients. My grandma now has advanced Alzheimer’s and despite being the kind of woman who could once tell you the exact shade of yellow worn by her bridesmaids at her wedding, she now cannot remember her own name to sign her own care documents.

Often to aid patients with cognitive issues and memory problems, physical objects and experiences are used to help trigger memories. It doesn’t restore them to the person they were but even for just a moment, they can recall a piece of a memory from childhood, or the life they lived. Without our memories, our identity is somewhat shattered so memory making is crucial to helping those people feel connected their loved ones once more, and most importantly, to themselves.

A song, a voice, a photo, a smell, an old toy, or walking along a street they once lived - it summons something potent and primal back from a jumbled, disconnected darkness so they can feel joyful and whole once more.

Even for the rest of us, nostalgia is a powerful drug and one that’s well documented for Millennials. It’s no coincidence that almost everything made now is a derivative of everything that has come before.

This is likely why such wonderful archivists now live among us and exist as pseudo-celebrities; our memory keepers. People who collect media, hoard it like treasure, and now have the pleasure of sharing it online are the kind of people who I appreciate the most. When you don’t have the funds to publish books or make documentaries, you can always count on someone with an obscure interest to be an unexpected custodian.

Laugh all you might at Instagram accounts sharing photos of ‘90s argos catalogues; screen grabbing past editions of Kerrang, sharing historic facts of Byker Wall, publishing photos from the indie sleaze club scene, and posting videos of themselves restoring old Barbie dolls. These are the people who are curating evidence of every niche we forget about, and every canon moment we took for granted. They are more valuable than we know it and I am reminded of this daily when I think about the binbag of Mizz magazines and copies of Smashed Hits I threw in the trash during a teenage phase of thinking it was uncool.

Imagine the account I’d run today with access to all that juicy late ‘90s and ‘00s indoctrinating content? I can only speculate about how much we’d pore over the problematic articles and outdated advice like archeologists must pore over broken pieces of an ancient Greek vase.

Being a person who preserves history, who records, or who collects is underrated. I appreciate this so much in others because it’s a standard I’ve always set for myself.

Granted, that some may consider me a hoarder of old schoolwork and childhood toys I can’t bear to part with, but from an early age I kept diaries and notebooks filled with thoughts. To this day, I don’t just use my planners for planning - I often write down exactly what I did on those days, where I went, who I saw, and during a dark period in Covid, what we ate for dinner. I often think that I should start writing down my best memories and funniest stories on paper rather than saving them for unread Substack posts, parties, or opportune moments, in case one day I forget.

In a world where nothing is ‘forgotten’, the irony that it actually pushes us faster towards forgetting is something I find terrifying.

The details of experiences often become exaggerated and hazy over the years. My memory has always been unusually sharp, but at 36 it’s not as reliable as it used to be. Even just observations about things I’d seen or conversations I’ve heard - however unimportant - will likely one day vanish into obscurity. This is why archiving - through information and physical items - is a concept so special to me, even if its only for our future selves.

Owning the DVD Mallrats 2 (notoriously hard to find, btw) arguably isn’t going to be nearly as poignant for generations to come in fairness, but the point still stands. Ownership of our taste and personal legacy is no longer entirely ours.

Yes, it’s wonderful that the internet became an online archive. Yes it’s great that digitised media enabled access and longevity beyond our wildest dreams. But if it all goes down tomorrow - and by that, I mean the capitalist mega-corps buy it all and hold us to ransom with hiked prices and questionable morals, all to prevent us from watching a beloved niche ‘90s rom-com - then we have nothing to show for it.

What Sony and Anthropic are doing might not seem like such a big deal now, but it’s akin to melting down something precious without permission, blissfully unaware of what’s truly been lost.

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Depending on my audience, I either feel like the most interesting person in the room or the most gut-wrenchingly bizarre and tedious.

When I happened upon the piece How to Become a Disgustingly Good Conversationalist I felt more frustrated and confused than enlightened. It’s not that any of the advice in incorrect or bad, but it both surprises me that:

a) This is not common knowledge in the way I had assumed. Surely some of these things are surely a given? Then again, in a climate where, as Father Karine eloquently expressed in the below quote, maybe it’s not that surprising we need to be taught the basics of social interaction because they’re slipping into obscurity:

“…modern life has been systematically engineered to remove interpersonal friction…. Phone calls are now texts. The negotiation with the cab driver or the Chinese take-out joint is now a faceless app order. And the most terrifying thing in the world — cold approaching a stranger with romantic ambition — is now a swipe that can be deployed while taking a hangover shit on your porcelain throne.”

b) That sometimes it’s not quite that simple. You might try in vain to hold an interesting conversation only to find that someone insists on derailing it to be about types of wheels and how much they cost.

The core takeaways of the Good Conversationalist article are that you should show interest in something the other person cares about, ask questions, throw in genuine compliments, and keep a list of fallbacks topics incase conversation dries up.

Perhaps its my execution that’s the problem, but I have tried all this and in my experience, it’s not something I’ve never been able to successfully formulate my way out of.

You either got it or you don’t.

This advice also is the exact opposite of everything I’ve seen true conversationalists do; the most charismatic people I’ve ever met can draw social interactions out of even the most stoic individuals and connect quickly without even trying. They aren’t asking questions and making someone else’s ego the centrepiece. They’re ones leading and steering it, while effortlessly holding the attention of the entire room. Their wit and influence is natural and in no way structured. Everyone ends up loving them. I envy them.

Spoiler alert: I am not one of these people. My husband is though, which is how I know first hand that this isn’t a ‘thing’ of pure fiction I have imagined. It’s not just about skill, it’s about energy. And my energy is always way fucking off.

My issue is that even when I think I’ve read the room, I quickly realise that not only am I incredibly room illiterate, but that I find demonstrating an semblance of literacy extremely effortful or a total breeze depending who is present.

My prime example is at work, where performing social norms is already a minefield layered with politics. If I don’t hold myself back from oversharing something that makes everyone deeply uncomfortable and/or provides later ammunition for a saboteur, I’m often left with literally nothing to say. There’s nothing worse than masking too hard to overcompensate for all the times you masked too little.

When I worked at one particularly young, hip agency, we’d regularly muse over the merits of a good sandwich, dissecting component by component and rating establishments in the local area. To me, that is standard lunchtime craic. Maybe then we’ll get into everyone’s Top 5 crisps.

At another, notably less cool agency of Actual Adults who preferred discussing the merits of double glazing, I once got laughed at in a meeting - during a chat about Veganuary no less - for saying that frying cauliflower and chucking it in a myriad of sauces is actually pretty banging, thus shattering the illusion that one month of conscious consumption need not be a prison if you expand your horizons slightly.

“Oh my god!”guffawed the project manager, throwing her head back in cruel disbelief before I’d even finshed my sentence: “I can’t believe we’re on this call talking about CAULIFLOWER!”.

Yes, scoff all you like at my highly relevant rampage that illuminates how ‘vegetables are yucky’ is a basic-ass take and that there are spices other than salt. Yet the merciless volume of conversations I was subjected to about school runs, routine inoculations, and the homemade flapjacks at a greasy-spoon cafe in the arse-end of their humdrum town were apparently totally fine and incredibly cool and interesting.

You can see why I have trouble figuring out where I fall on the Conversationalist Spectrum.

Whenever I’m with friends I’ve known for a long time, I can talk endlessly about bullshit, yet a decade later I realise that I don’t actually know what their job title is or how many siblings they have. We don’t do the necessary small talk that makes up your standard interaction a lot of the time and we all seem to like it that way. We can be serious, but mostly we just talk about stupid shit and somehow that feels more ‘collective’ and intimate.

For really close friends, I truly dive into the pool of interiority. We have long, deep conversations about why things and people are the way they before therapising each other about careers, relationships, and dysfunctional families. Yet this depth isn’t always appreciated on the other ‘type’ of friend who wants nothing more to banter in the pub. It’s a lesson learned the hard way but the context switch often gives me whiplash and I used to be very guilty of expecting all of the above from the same people.

And while it might seem like I’m the kind of person who is just more ‘open’ with people they know well, that script still often flips on me. Sometimes I’ll chat with someone I barely know and suddenly seem to turn into the quickest, wittiest, most entertaining version of myself to ever exist; like I’ve sniffed a metaphorical line of cocaine before taking the stage in a one woman show. The cashier at my local supermarket, my favourite barista, the staff at my regular lunch spot - some days it flows out and they get a version of me I wish I could bottle and send to every single job interview I’ve ever had / will have.

But in other scenarios, it’s stagnated and stilted. God forbid someone introduces their new parter, brings along a friend I’ve never met or LITERALLY ANY OTHER SITUATION where I can’t instantly gauge a person’s vibe and have to commit more than 5 minutes of my time. I lose all ability string a sentence together. I start clutching desperately at topics, spouting a stream of nonsense that’s both uninspiring and misplaced. I’ll probably bring up cauliflower again to be honest.

Sometimes I’m nothing but a pithy elevator pitch with nothing beyond the ride, and others I’m a 3,000 word essay no one can be bothered to read.

Up until fairly recently, I could guarantee that I’d be singled out by a total stranger for a good old chinwag about details of their life that you couldn’t torture out of me. Nowadays, I guarantee that if I walk into a room or go to a party, no one who I haven’t already known for over 15 years will make any effort to talk to me and will more often than not, avoid eye contact as if their life depends on it.

Unless of course there’s a deeply troubled and/or slightly psychopathic individual lurking somewhere - you can bet they’ll sit next to me, above anyone else, for a chat.

The mind truly boggles. I navigate life not knowing whether I’m giving too much or giving nothing at all.

Boring is in the eye of the beholder

Due to the fact I just can’t seem to nail the consistency, I assume everyone has this problem. That sometimes you find people you just ‘click’ with instantly and others are a bit more hard work. Oscillating between the two modes of social butterfly and weird recluse often feels like the more difficult position to hold than if you’re simply one or the other.

Getting a read on people has always felt like a very conscious and arduous task for me. Half the problem is that even if you’re performing as a person who is really charming and interesting, your recipient can be boring as fuck and give you nothing so you’ve no choice but to improvise. HARD.

That feels mean to say but it’s true and so often where I fall down. Good craic something I’ve taken for taken for granted. It’s always been rare for me to have to speak to anyone truly dull. Sorry to say, but my family and friends are just way more fun than most people’s.

Working various corporate jobs or having to mix with anyone outside of my own bubble has made me realise just how many poor conversationalists their truly are. People who have no hobbies, interests, or social life outside taking their children to endless kids parties and will earnestly reel off lists of the bride/grooms academic qualifications during wedding speeches.

As fascinated and enchanted I am by the afore mentioned ‘Socially competent’ people, I’m equally fascinated and, admittedly, a little disgusted by those possess none of those qualities.

Sadly, I’ve discovered that the average person is mind numbingly uninteresting. I find it wild and frustrating that in trying to regulate myself to the social context climate, I’m often the one who comes off boring.

I find it especially hard chatting to people who fall slightly outside my age group or cultural background. All of my jokes and references go out the window, and frankly, these make up an alarming proportion of my personality.

Selfishly, I only want to make time for the people who ‘get me’ and provide company enjoy while I run a mile from the people who make me feel like a pariah. That’s probably quite limiting in the grand scheme of things, but to me good craic - or at least craic I can get on board with - is the only time I feel connected to my fellow man.

And without human connection, what’s even the point?

But I’ve always loved clothes and have a really hard time getting rid of them. Even though I’ll never fit in them again, or won’t wear them until one day 10 years from now when a trend comes back around (or I realise that actually, I want to reintroduce it into circulation for no real reason other than a rogue Pinterest post - and please don’t comment on the fact I’m still on Pinterest), the sentimentality I attach to outfits has become something of a problem for my groaning wardrobes, and the boxes of ‘To Sell / To Donate’ outfits that I half-heartedly make effort to part with, but haven’t just yet.

I know twee is never coming back and doing aerial hoop has given me the most enormous lats but that bardot neck blue tea dress from Topshop circa 2013 reminds me of a great wedding I went to, where we got put on the best table for dinner and argued with a drunken uncle on the bus home. I have a sheer top I wore religiously, week in, week out with a peach satin bra and blue high waisted skinny jeans. I went through a vaguely slutty phase of wearing clothes that looked a little bit like lingerie, but not quite, with a gigantic faux fur coat that someone once mistook for the real deal and shouted ‘murderer!’ at me from a car in Jesmond.

People who don’t care about aesthetics or fashion will scoff; clothes are just clothes. But they do hold power and they do hold history. And perhaps that’s a little too profound for a mid-week newsletter from someone who often conflates fashion with the E-girl hashtags on Tumblr, but everyone has that one outfit that defined a period of time for them, where life was simpler and weekends were fun.

This became apparent at my nail appointment a few weeks back, where we got chatting about the magical promise-filled era our hometown in the early 2000s. I became a teenage goth in 2003 before evolving through some rather cringey suburban emo kid and aspiring rockabilly phases, into a bonafide wannabe indie girl by 2008, before reaching my peak as an American Apparel worshipping weekend warrior by 2012. As we reminisced about the vintage shops on Newcastle’s high bridge street, Miss Sixty jeans and how great everyone’s arse looked in Disco pants, we eventually skirted (pun intended) onto the topic of the ‘Fuck you / Hot girl outfit’.

This is always one that stays with you in your mind because it’s an outfit which defines a very specific mindset and moment in your life. The outfit you wore to show your douchebag ex what he was missing. The outfit you wore to stick two fingers up at the girl who bullied you. The outfit that, in your mind, announced your arrival, that would impress the cool girls and make your crush drool. The time and the place didn’t matter - it could be your birthday, New Year’s Eve or a Thursday night. The fuel and sentiment behind it is what drove its purpose.

All girls worth their salt had an outfit like this and remember it vividly.

Revenge Dressing

There’s something so special about cultivating such an outfit and executing a plan to wear it. Sometimes it’s an automatic decision that happens subconciously, and in seconds - a dress you borrow from a friend or picked up last minute in H&M while panicking. Sometimes it took weeks of browsing magazines and internet selfies, hunting down the pieces, then finding the balls to wear it outside.

And the story around it is always similar in sentiment.

”I had broken up with my boyfriend… I couldn’t eat because I was so distraught…. I went shopping to make myself feel better….”

The next thing you know, you’re throwing on a pair of heels and hot pants, taking your digital camera out in your envelope handbag and swearing with your best friend, after pre-drinks in her bedroom, that you’re going to have a great night and document the whole thing to put on MySpace because fuck that guy.

And when it hit, it really hit. You’d know the outfit had power because you’d get compliments wherever you went; friends, acquaintances you bumped into at the bar, strangers in the women’s toilets. There was something so delicious about that feeling - the dopamine rush of fantasy gratification.

Gen Z refer to this phenomenon as ‘the revenge dress’. Not all revenge dresses are dresses; some of them are white denim shorts or sequinned hotpants, others are black bodycon dresses with silk panels or pleather mini skirts with a sheer bra-revealing blouse.

As times change, the ‘hot little outfit’ does tend to become different; more modest. But the sentiment is the same - it’s the thing you want to throw on when you want to feel good. And through some miracle also signals to the world that you feel good.

Those moments become fewer and far between the older you get. For one thing, you’re probably going to fewer clubs and house parties, but you’re also less likely / less frequently holding yourself together from a traumatising heartbreak.

One day your hot little outfit becomes a relic at the bottom of your closet, reminding you of a time where you genuinely were trying to recover from what you thought was the worst time of your life, blissfully unaware that in the grand scheme of things, none of it would even matter. You’d barely remember the name of the losers you were trying prove something to by looking fantastic.

This is why getting rid of clothes feels like so much more than spring cleaning to me; it’s like throwing a way a piece of personal lore which is probably why the very act feels so melancholy.

Take heed, ladies under 35. Dress crazy and sexy while you can. Wear things that are over the top, impractical, uncomfortable and ridiculous that make you feel the centre of attention, even if its just for one night. Don’t let your memories fade into baggy jeans and a plain vest / beige skims obscurity. Make sure you don’t look back on your photos from a memorable house party to discover you and you friends all looked like the same girl with your centre park slicked back bun and clean girl makeup. Life is short, but the lifecycle of sequin hotpants is always shorter.

I was mid-luteal meltdown when I put out a poll on my Instagram a few weeks back, asking at what point did people finally realise their dream career, or even prioritising any career at all was something they should give up on.

Burnt out from working 45-50 hour weeks, I just needed to know I wasn’t alone. I was actually surprised to discover I wasn’t.

A few friends confided to me via my DM’s that they’d given up long ago. Some, because having a child made it impossible for them to ‘get back in the game’ and get anywhere. Others confessed that it was after a long series of disappointments and false promises that eventually led to them figuring out that ‘phoning it in for cash’ was a more sensible choice. A select few told me about how they’d pursued their dream career, but found it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be; that it had become a road to ruin and they’d had to finally admit they were beat. And of course, a minority did say it had pushed them to make a career that wasn’t perfect or considered ‘successful’, but fit into their life in a way that made them happier.

It may interest some readers to learn that every single one of these responses were from women.

That’s not to say men don’t have career struggles and meltdowns, but the sacrifice and struggle does seem to be disproportionate (if nowhere else, then in my own social circles at least).

It’s a hard pill to swallow for those of us who felt that the promise of a dazzling career was our lifelong focus. Some people don’t care about a career, but for those who do, success is everything. So much of our personal identity and purpose is tied to it.

So if you don’t climb the ladders, make the contacts, play the game and get the payrises or title bumps, you’re often left wondering what you did wrong.

Or rather, what other people did right that was always so tantalisingly out of reach for you.

I’ve written about this countless times before, but rather than wondering whether I’m just not made for one particular career path (and therefore, just need to unlock the magical hidden ‘something you love’ path), I’m starting to wonder whether giving up on the idea of having any sort of career at all is the way forward. None of the graft ever feels worth it.

All the hustle, the networking, the optimising; it’s exhausting.

What if I just had a job? What if I just made money from doing a thing for X hours a day - something I wouldn’t dream of doing badly, but also don’t need to do exceptionally well. What if I didn’t care where that job was, or what title I had, or whether I might get more money if I outperformed on a task? What if I never felt disappointment when the work I do wasn’t cool, or interesting, or noteworthy, or rewarding, or even appreciated? What if I wasn’t bothered by people’s responses when I tell them what I do for a living because I don’t need to be impressive.

I think Millennials, and especially Millennial women seem to return time and time again to the conclusion that we’ve been lied to. The realisation that the ‘you can do anything’ mantra was nonsense, is not a new one. Very few people get the luxury of doing something they love for a living without almost killing themselves in the process, and even fewer get handsomely rewarded for being good at something. Most people don’t get promoted 3-4 times within 10 years, or make Director before the age of 30. Many people never get awards, and many more don’t even get name-checks on the company Town Hall meetings, or so much as a Thank You card when they leave.

So I think its time I stopped buying into the lie and caring about the notion of a ‘career’. And most certainly double down on my disillusion about the existence ‘dream jobs’.

These are things accessible to very few people who likely dance on the knives edge between privilege and insanity.

I never got my dream job. I haven’t even succeeded in my current career. I’m probably not going to waste my time trying something else in search of another dream. I think pining for imaginary success that never comes for most of us IS overrated.

So yeah, sorry to be the one to say it, but you can’t have it all. You can have some things, but all of it? Absolutely not.

This isn’t actually that weird or new. When I was 14, I remember setting up a MySpace with my age set to 100. I remember listing myself as 18 on FaceParty (lol) with a profile picture that was likely some obscure graphic with song lyrics over the top. I remember going on band forums and seeing posts full of content and language my parents would have probably shuddered at and thinking how rad it was I could chat to fans who were infinitely older than me, and probably, definitely not pedophiles.

Back in the day, all forms of social media had legal ages in places to cover their backs but these were loosely policed. It spawned a generation of Edgelords who would go on to create some of the best lore on the internet. But it came at a price.

“It never did us any harm!” I hear the Millennials cry.

That is largely debatable. However, we were a product of our time. That world we grew up in no longer exists.

The world in which we, as adults, now engage with social media is a far cry from the pixelated porn, scary chain letters, virus riddled Limewire downloads, and dodgy chatrooms we once knew.

In it’s place is something arguably more sinister yet more subtle. We joke constantly how being online is giving us brain rot, making us hate ourselves, polarising opinion and giving way to extreme content of every flavour. If it’s not hate spewed in comments, it’s AI-enhanced images of emaciated women peddling slimming injections, ‘fake’ stories, unsolicited pornography, violent imagery, and a near-constant stream of problematic bile.

Many people of adult age are opting out of social media, so why would anyone argue that children, who are among the most vulnerable in our population shouldn’t also be opted out of the online hellscape?

Young brains are malleable. Teenagers are still developing their self-identity (and are prone to being sensitive towards external judgement) but are also still growing that all important Prefrontal Cortex that stops you acting like a dick. An adult is better at differentiating truth from untruth; they can make educated guesses and decisions more readily, they (for the most part) have an easier time with nuance and assessing consequences. We know all the content we see on social media is skewed bullshit.

I know some kids are better at all of this than others and are mature enough to navigate the world with a more developed sense of morality than some adults. But when there’s nothing in place to protect the grown-ups, what chance do young people have to protect themselves?

Look, I get it. Banning something outright is rarely 100% effective. The online community also brings people together and theoretically explore yourself and your interests, so you can connect with others. But young people almost always find a way to do that. If anything, social media is one of the biggest time-sinks in history, with people spending hours scrolling rather than creating or meeting people. They will find a way around this and will probably get on social media channels anyway, if they don’t decide to create their own.

I was intrigued to find out my friends teenage daughter and our college-aged nephew have social media accounts but never actually post on them. Why? They’re terrified. They’re not sharing content, they’re merely consuming it. And heaven knows there’s other ways to consume content that’s infinitely less toxic than social media.

I don’t believe for one minute that the children would yearn for the likes without modelling their behaviour on adults baiting for engagement.

Big Tech has also shown it’s not really all that bothered about the wellbeing of its customers, so it’ll take years of appeals, legislation changes, data, and lawsuits to introduce more regulations. Policing the internet is like trying to lasoo the wind.

For now, a blanket ban is the only thing that’s going to help gatekeep young people from getting sucked into the same mechanism that has many of us adults trapped.

And they’re really not missing anything.

For the first time in a long time, every single person I went to watch it with left the cinema unanimously agreeing it was one of the best films, and best horrors, we’d seen in ages. A true masterclass of quality and creativity in lieu of big budget and big names. It’s also one of the few horrors that’s genuinely filled me with terror and left me feeling rattled afterwards.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since, because what’s so deeply unsettling about this horror has only really just occurred to me. Intentional or not, Obsession is not your run-of-the-mill ‘love spell gone bad’ or stalker thriller - it’s a film that uses the darkest analogy for a very real threat that’s becoming the new trope du jour; the wish for women to have less agency.

[Warning: spoilers lay ahead, plus references to sexual violence, assault and descriptions of graphic scenes]

The setup

The film follows protagonist Bear (Michael Johnson) who has a hapless crush on his best friend Nikki (brilliantly played by true star in the making, Inde Navarrette). Rather than risk rejection by confessing his feelings to her on a ride home, he purchases a ‘gift’ in the form of the One Wish Willow and wishes that she would love him more than anything in the whole world. As the tagline goes: Be careful who you wish for.

The movie itself is a genuine feat. The base concept is nothing really new; a misguided wish that goes wrong, a love spell that backfires. It might even seem old hat. Yet it’s how it’s executed that takes the genre to new, disturbing depths.

The nuance in characterisation is near-perfect. There are fun, subtle red herrings, callbacks, easter eggs, and misdirections throughout. The foreshadowing is subtle and the unbearable dread is slowly built in every scene. You never know what Nikki is going to do next while under the thrall of magic and that genuine unpredictability is what keeps you on edge.

Perhaps best of all, it never truly reveals or over-explains its own rules or lore, unlike the more ‘spoon fed' narratives that are so current, which is possibly why it manages to retain its own mystery and (excuse the pun) magic. By the time things take a violent and brutal turn, you genuinely feel there’s no way out of this that won’t be wretchedly bloody and depraved.

It takes the best bits of Fatal Attraction, Fede Alvarez' Evil Dead, and Possession and mixes it with flavours of Hereditary, Pearl and Weapons.

The only option Bear is given is to die, so the wish ends and Nikki can be free.

Girls just wanna have fun

Horror is often a cultural barometer for current fears and anxieties. Any horror fan worth their salt knew that post-Covid, the absurdity of current affairs would slowly start to shape the genre and a sub-genre would emerge.

Perhaps this is why it fascinates me that the genre, and particularly the prominence of women in it are finally having a cultural moment of sincerity and proper appreciation. This is also likely why Nikki feels the real protagonist of this unrelentingly mean-spirited tale. Bear is a guy whose primary concern is whether he may or may not be friend-zoned. Rather than put himself in a vulnerable position to make a real connection with a woman, he takes a supernatural shortcut which removes all of her agency. Is that not where fiction and real-life begin to converge?

Once you notice it, it’s an unsubtle metaphor for the attitudes of the manosphere - the online movement dubbed as such for its toxic attitude to masculinity and anti-feminist rhetoric. From the entitlement seen in online dating and the ‘Nice Guy’ archetypes, you have a film which cleverly captures current anxieties and turns the ‘crazy girlfriend’ concept on its head.

It’s also broader than that. We’re at a place where we no longer have the patience to build real relationships or work hard to maintain them; many prefer simulations of relationships that can be discarded when they become tiresome or inconvenient. Bear’s preoccupation with instant gratification and absolute certainty is what seals his fate.

Interestingly a lot of recent films have played with this idea of control. The manosphere and rise of ‘red pill thinking is largely grounded in fears about power and who really has it.

Companion was one of my favourite films of last year, following a [spoiler] sexbot who turns on her manipulating ‘boyfriend’ and breaks free from his thrall. Weapons, one of the best horrors of last year. plays with similar themes of getting others to do your dark bidding, while Get Out and Nosferatu similarly kept their leads under the thumb of otherworldly master manipulators. Don’t Worry Darling, Pearl, MaXXXine, Ready or Not, and Midsommar, all toy with female characters who mentally or physically break free from an institution that removes their agency and freedom, with their emancipation often being the ironic recoil for their oppressors.

Sound familiar?

Sitting to the left

The tension in Obession creeps slowly because initially, no one is really sure if the spell has worked. It’s confirmed by Curry and the cast that Nikki did in fact reciprocate romantic feelings for Bear but this is denied genuine growth or exploration because of Bear’s wish. The ‘real’ Nikki seems to disappear into an unknown sunken place; it’s never stated whether she is possessed or controlled by an entity,, if her soul is elsewhere or if she’s simply being pushed out of her own body Being John Malkovich style by a new, different or darker part of herself.

Instead, Bear enjoys the benefits of a relationship completely devoid of depth or authentic emotion. Sure, they look happy in their little montage but the sinister side-effects of Nikki’s growing obsession means that Bear has to deal with the reality of a woman who only exists for him, who thinks of nothing else, and engages in toxic and violent behaviours against the things which compete for his attention and affection. The disconnect between his fantasy and reality is pushed to extremes.

The parallel between what Bear conjures and how women are talked about in certain corners of the online world is obvious. A woman with agency is an unappealing threat, where outcomes can’t be predicted or controlled… while a submissive, malleable target is more ideal. Yet the cries of ‘but no, not like that!’ ring out as Bear realises that having a one-dimensional, single-minded partner isn’t so great after all.

Seeing Nikki act jealous, possessive, and emotionally manipulative towards him, with such a vague underlying threat of violence is a deliberate exercise in irony.

As Nikki exhibits increasingly disturbing behaviours such as gifting him dead things (much like a cat), writing some Substack-worthy ominous prose about incestuous love, and watching him sleep, it really take a lot for Bear to reckon with himself about what he’s done. Even when friends express concern he is taking advantage of her mental state, which is initially attributed to drugs or a breakdown, he responds in denial.

Yes, there’s something wrong with her, but he won’t admit that it’s his own doing.

Rather than ask for the wish to be reversed during a horrifying phone call with the One Wish Willow’s manufacturer, he merely asks for it to be changed despite evidence that the real Nikki is suffering somewhere. It’s hinted that when Nikki soils herself by standing in the same spot for hours, waiting for Bear to come home, that this is an act she’s done before which Bear has overlooked, because being with her is more important to him than her wellbeing.

One particularly potent scene is right after Bear finds out Nikki lied to him about her dad having cancer.

“Does it matter?'“ she asks, before we cut to them having sex.

She moans with pleasure, but her face is emotionless. It’s been widely described as a rape scene because effectively that’s what it is - the real Nikki isn’t consenting. On one level it’s darkly comic; because this douchebag guy doesn’t care this hot girl is a dangerous, unhinged liar, but it’s tragic, because at this point he knows the real Nikki would never do such a thing, which makes his abuse of her body all the more upsetting.

Putting the ‘manic’ in Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Right up until the final act, where their friend Sarah who harbours a crush on Bear, is bludgeoned to death by Nikki in one of the most drawn-out, shocking scenes; and the moments where Bear contemplates suicide, Bear puts his own self-interest first.

His love for Nikki is pure infatuation - completely superficial, even on a friendship level. In a moment of clarity, the ‘real’ Nikki; who we learn has been fighting against the new, defective version all along, watching like a passenger as her body is taken over, begs Bear to kill her.

He declines, instead questioning if being with him is ‘really so bad’. True love requires sacrifice and instead Bear selfishly fails to do the right thing at every turn. Of course, the performance means it’s impossible not to feel sorry for him in such a desperate situation but an asshole is an asshole. Bear is a perfect villain.

Obsession is Bear’s shortcut to intimacy that doesn’t actually exist, and as we reach the crescendo it becomes all too apparent that Bear has guiltily kept her in place, begrudgingly dealing with the side-effects until they are impossible to ignore.

The execution is not overly ham-fisted, but the message is there. Nikki has no agency, no control, no freedom while the wish is in play which is precisely how some men in some corners of the internet want women to be.

Obsession is the kind of horror that comes along once in a generation and darkly captures current moods with aplomb. I think Curry likely has a long career ahead of him but most of all, that post-Covid horror has finally found its new fixation.

and I will be back with Episode 7 of this month, but in the meantime you can check out episode 6 where we chat age gap relationships!

We’re also interested in hearing about your celebrity crushes….

• Who was your all-time obsessive crush, and just how obsessed were you?

• Did you ever get to meet them and what lengths did you go to?

• Who is your biggest ‘hear me out’ ?

Emotionally Invested Podcast

6. Age gap relationships

This week, we talk about age gap relationships, including Eileen Kelly’s (31) recent article for Vogue about her relationship with Anthony Kiedis (63…

Listen now

3 months ago · Ellen Forster and Nicola Muthurangu-Hall

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Put your money where your mouth is, be the change you want to see, and in the words of a Bono-parody song in an ill-fated, problematically casted 2000’s comedy film, ‘we gotta do something’.

Despite neglecting my Substack lately, my comeback is to say something reasonably important that people might want to think about…

The outcomes of the UK local elections have been a rude wake up call for anyone who currently lives in a bubble of denial about far-right propaganda. Now, granted that the majority of people have not, in fact, voted in a racist party to stop immigrants so much as they have voted in racist candidates to manage what happens with their local potholes and wheelie bins - yet the uptick in support has been concerning.

I’m no economist or political commentator. I’m well aware there are Reasons people, who aren’t outright cranks are switching towards parties like R*form, ranging from misinformation and poor education to frustration, need for change, and disenfranchisement. But one notable factor is that in a sea of warring parties, the candidates for R*form are the only ones who ‘appear’ (to the average citizen) to be doing something.

In my constituency, they were the only ones who seemed to be actively canvassing; knocking on doors, introducing themselves, and listening to people (or doing a pretty good job of pretending to). When you have floating and first-time voters, disillusioned people and those who are just generally unsure, some guy turning up at your door with a flyer and a smile surprisingly goes a very long way.

It doesn’t matter if they deliver on their promises, or if everything they say is a lie; that moment of connection can and IS the reason that they’re now taking the lead.

If you’re on the Left, it can be easy to sit there and say damning things; the people who voted for them are stupid, they’re master manipulators, we’re all fucked etc. does a really good job of explain why that’s not such a great approach.

But historically, a lot of the problem when it comes to the rise of conservative right and extreme right wing politics is the lack of action from the opposition.

A (very) brief history on the rise of fascism

Psychologically, our brains love to categorise. It eases cognitive load and gives us a ‘short-hand’ for what and who we’re dealing with.

We also love to connect and relate to other humans. It helps us understand how to navigate the world and our place in it. Therefore, we tend to favour other humans who share characteristics with ourselves or demonstrate characteristics we recognise and value.

It’s been proven time and time again that, although self and group identity can shift depending on context (for example, journalists will happy criticise Substackers until of course we have to unite to defend the craft of writing and creativity against AI), we’ll always go out of our way to prioritise the needs of our in-group, and view ‘out-group’ members with suspicion.

It’s this basic mechanism for which implicit bias, racism, and xenophobia thrives.

Exposure to diverse groups and assimilation of out-group members eventually quells these prejudices, but ultimately, a less palatable outcome is that out-groups get scapegoated, dehumanised, and discriminated against.

Unsavoury parties lean into this to gain power and prestige. And the greater threat that the out-group is portrayed as, the easier it is to manipulate people’s fear and suspicion towards them into something that can be used.

The rise of fascism always tends to follow a similar trajectory.

Extremism and group intolerance often emerges in times of societal uncertainty. An economic shock, followed by scapegoating, grievance politics, and an erosion of institutions that facilitate mistrust (think about everything you see criticising legacy media, NHS, etc.) leads people to put their faith in new organisations, and often, the wrong places.

Social change requires widespread recognition that the status quo is ‘illegitimate, unstable, and insecure’1 and that alternatives can exist. The problem is that, currently, the most prominent groups demanding ‘social change’ are ones who are unlikely to deliver on promises and erodes equality.

Equality inaction

I don’t have time to get into the specifics of anti-intellectualism, classism and the other complexities of social psychology, but in short, people do not see much need to take action until Bad Things directly affect them - or become absolutely impossible to ignore.

This is often why the middle classes sway votes; because the threat of downward mobility resonates far more as a reason to take action, than taking action to enable a less privileged person to access the same resources.

This is also what makes social change difficult. While it could be a case of educating others with oppositional views, this is often where the Left fall flat both presently and historically.

The Left often fail to make similar ‘emotional’ appeals as the Right, and neglect to fully understand the reasons underpinning discontent without excusing or judging. These were cited in Wilhelm Reich’s ‘Mass Psychology of Fascism’ as reasons why oppositional comment to right-wing ideals often fail to take hold or effectively ‘fight’ fascism. The Left instead argue rationality, and their efforts, both in terms of presentation (demonstrations, protests) and positioning can isolate peers with less awareness and different needs.

And calling a spade a spade, a lot of people on the Left just aren’t doing anything.

One of the reasons I admired Japan so much is the collectivist approach to making the world a nicer place. For the most part, they keep their streets clean, their infrastructure efficient, and care about preserving their culture and environment.

It’s a particularly Western affliction to only think of yourself and not other people. Millennials especially love to post about political action on social media but will themselves fail to apply it in real life or contribute in a meaningful way.

Gen Z prioritise their own time over providing input. We all much prefer to block and delete people who disagree with us than have an uncomfortable conversation, even if it means we’re having it on behalf of more vulnerable people who are less able to speak out without consequence. Many people, not just younger ones, are also just not turning out to vote. Some by choice, some through apathy.

It’s always someone else’s job; someone else’s problem to fix. The issues are never urgent enough for any pro-social action to be taken. The Right seem louder because, objectively, they are doing more.

And they’re getting away with it because everyone else is doing nothing.

So what is there to do?

Look, this ain’t a political blog so you’ll have to rely on your own conscience to figure out who to root for, though I think my leniences are pretty clear. However, I think it’s important that now the chips are down, we’re not just passengers about our own future.

It might seem terribly uncool to be politically aware to some, but one day you’re probably going to find yourself doing one, if not all, of the following; attempting to own a home, paying your taxes, navigating job loss or health cares, having parents who are sick in hospitals, grandparents in a care homes, children to raise, and assets to manage after you retire and die. You’re going to have to rely on the laws and resources available in your country, and they may well not be sufficient enough because some assholes stripped them all away.

If you’re doing any of those things already, ask yourself why you don’t care enough to make them better?

Everyone thinks they don’t have a horse in the race until its too late, and in the West, we have a built-in ignorance that war, famine, and poverty will never happen to us. And the Right are woefully unsympathetic about helping people who come to the UK to get away from those things - even if it means they contribute to making things better.

My soft line of persuasion on the 2016 Brexit Referendum was: if you don’t want things to change, then just vote to stay.

My hard line of persuasion on current UK politics is: if you want things to change for the better, you’re really going to have to do something, and fast.

So here’s a few things you can do

• Register and turn out to vote: For the love of god, if you do nothing else on this list by the time General Elections roll around, please do this.

• Join a party: You can vote in internal elections, attend discussions to shape policies and campaigns, and have a say over who runs as a candidate. They don’t have to be a perfect party with a perfect leader. The infighting is another debate for another day. But think about who stands for what’s important to you, and realise you can help actually shape that if you try.

• Contribute to your community: Actually work with other people to try and make it a nicer place. Clean beaches and parks, create safe-spaces, help people find hobbies and interests that enrich their lives and make them feel valuable.

• Having uncomfortable conversations with people you disagree with: And try not being a jerk about it (even if they’re being a jerk to you). I know, it’s HARD. Really hard. Some people will never listen or agree, but it’s worth holding strong for the handful of people you might get through to.

• Correcting misinformation: both online and in-person.

• Volunteer and join organisations that lobby causes you care about: anti-fascism, anti-racism, environmental groups, whatever takes your fancy. Help women, help children, help animals, help old people, help disabled people, help disenfranchised kids from shitty areas and people fleeing countries where human rights are stripped away. Remind those people that someone cares.

I know this is a departure from usual, lighter, fun posts but accountability has to start somewhere and the more I learn, the more I’m realising change doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted because my life is now a sprint to juggle multiple responsibilities, with varying degrees of success and competence.

I am balancing an (often-more-demanding-than-it-should-be) full time job, with a part-time Master’s degree, a weekly aerial hobby, writing this newsletter, pitching a movie, writing a short film (yes, I know - another thing, I am insane) and, most excitingly of all - launching a podcast with my fellow media obsessed pal . And that’s on top of being someone’s wife, daughter, friend, and erratic confidante who has to feed and clothe themselves, bathe, run a home, sleep and exercise.

I am in my ‘creatively inspired to do lots of shit’ renaissance era, but also in my ‘drowning in side quests’ era.

And everyone who knows me is probably sick of hearing about it but it really, really bothers me when I’m not immediately good at things. It bothers me even more when I try really hard and am still not good at them.

This degree is proving more challenging than I could have ever imagined. Having the time to do it on top of everything else is tricky, but understanding it is quite another.

Psychology degrees involve a surprising amount of maths and statistics - things I failed MISERABLY at in high school (the D I got for my GCSE’s still occasionally haunts me). It also seems to have way too much chat on neuroscience and biology.

Who’d have thought from a science degree? I am strictly an ‘arts’ girlie and having to think in a completely new way is destroying my will to live. All I want to scream is ‘my poor neurons!!’

When I was younger, the one thing I could rely on was my discipline and aptitude around wanting to learn new things. I was the type of kid who would read the Dictionary for fun, really appreciated a chunky Encyclopaedia for Christmas, and would voluntarily give presentations on ancient civilisations in class, much to the frustration of my classmates. A fucking nerd, basically.

My intense interests and insufferable thirst for knowledge rewarded me with a reasonably successful academic career. I didn’t excel in all subjects, but I was good at English, art, media, and history. Writing was ‘my thing’ and I barely even had to try that hard to do it. It was a skill which I managed to fine tune enough that as I grew up, it just flowed out of me.

I wasn’t the most popular kid nor the most athletic, high scoring, funny, intelligent, or talented. And when I got older I wasn’t ‘hot’ or ‘cool’ or ‘fashionable’. But hot damn, was I good at academia. If I applied myself enough, I could always scrape some admirable grades. That was and is a core part of my identity. Ya gal can’t help out in an apocalypse but I can always be good at learning.

Not being good at this degree has been a humbling experience. I managed to get some decent scores on my initial assignments, but not being top of the class has had a tough influence on my ego and sense of self.

I have cried over more assignments than I can remember. I have had weekly meltdowns of ‘I can’t do this’ than my husband probably cares to deal with. Everyone in my group chats probably has whiplash over my threats to quit.

When I tell people I’m upset over not being good enough, they quite literally laugh in my face. “You’re learning something brand new'“, “you’re also working full time”, “just try your best”. This is also usually followed by raised eyebrows and ‘did you used to be a high achiever by any chance"?’

I know they’re right, but they’re also wrong. I’m not wired that way. I get all of my validation through being good at assignments. When I’m not good at them, I wonder who I am anymore.

It’s ridiculous. I’ve spent the latter part of the last 6 months rationalising with myself that I won’t burst into flames / lose my job / die / be abandoned forever, if I don’t get the highest grade.

It’s actually very annoying. A classic Virgo trait that’s also completely unbearable; both for me and everyone else around me. Thinking this way takes a lot of unlearning.

I think I suck at psychology. The truth is, I’m probably just ok at it.

Yet I persist. I imagine the reward of sucking at something and still doing it anyway is better than not trying it all. I think?

Emotionally Invested

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A quick round-up

I have been feeling super inspired after revisiting the late' ‘80s / ‘90s / early 2000s era where DIY aesthetics reigned supreme. I read Kathleen Hannah’s autobiography ‘Rebel Girl’ in December last year and it really made me think how people like Kathleen basically ‘built’ their entire scene (and movement) with fellow artists.

This timed perfectly with seeing music legends Deftones live, my recent viewing of Beastie Boys Story (2020), Hip Hop Evolution (Netflix), Ghost World (2001), Wild at Heart (1990), Hackers (1995) and whatever the hell Emerald Fennel thought she was doing with her interpretation of Wuthering Heights - a book we seemingly both read at 14 but clearly had very different takeaways.

Needless to say, it’s transported me back to a simpler time where my intense obsession with pop culture took hold and the world felt exciting!

This is your PSA to start fucking about doing stuff you enjoy, making stuff you like, and creating dumb shit with the people you love while you still can.

Just y’know. Don’t try to do it all at once like I am.

Among other things, fans of the video game are annoyed about the shows ability to stay faithful to the source materiel by not thoroughly delving into some of the lore and backstory on specific locations and events. Or at least not in the episodes that have aired thus far.

No doubt there’s also been criticism on the characters, the absence of other characters, the accuracy of costumes and set-pieces etc. Frankly, I’ve seen this all before.

This is living proof why super fandom isn’t always a positive thing - because people become so prescriptive about seeing their favourite piece of media being brought to life on screen, that anything which deviates in the slightest way immediately ‘ruins’ the viewing experience for them.

I mean this respectfully. Grow the fuck up.

Ruining your own enjoyment

I get it. I’m not exactly a purist, but I do think there needs to be some loyalty, or at the very least, a nod of respect to source material.

You can’t make a Spiderman film then rename the main character Brian Barker, and have him get bitten by a dung beetle.

But you do have to tolerate the fact that often source material that gets picked up by a production company, another creative or even another fan, will be interpreted in a completely different way. Both how it was intended, and how the wider audience receive it on an individual level.

And when money is on the table, it adds another layer completely.

This is why we all are begrudgingly tolerating Emerald Fennel’s disastrous looking adaptation of Wuthering Heights; why some of us prefer the movie of The Godfather than having to read Mario Puzzo’s original novel, and why the extremely corny Lara Croft: Tomb Raider failed to resonate upon its release in the early 2000s, other than catapulting Angelina Jolie to stardom.

I see and hear this a lot with game adaptations, Marvel movies, absolutely anything from the Harry Potter universe, Game of Thrones, or pretty much any classic novel adaptation. People get really anxious and upset that specific scenes are left out or that characters are changed, or don’t look exactly as the book described.

With the exception of exact remakes (which let’s admit, are largely lazy and by definition should remain faithful to the original film), it’s a misconception that any media based on something else should be designed to appease its fans by doing things EXACTLY as they were in the source material.

It’s called an adaptation, not a reconstruction

Let’s start with the basics, because this is the point that most people struggle to accept.

Source material; whether it’s a book, comic, game, original film, or TV show is rarely created to translate into multi-media. Before the age of Remakes and Adaptations, J.R.R Tolkien probably never envisioned Lord of the Rings becoming a film trilogy, a board game, a questionable TV series, or a bunch of memes.

Books were written to be books, and so on and so forth. It’s their quality, their rich visuals (depicted or described), enjoyment and appeal that often leads them to be picked up by creators in other friends, and committed to the screen.

It’s fairly normal to consume something and wonder what it would look like in another context. Who would you cast to play your favourite book character? Does their house look more like X or Y? What if this entire thing was a musical?

However, creating something that’s both original and high quality is often quite difficult. Having recently embarked on my own film-writing adventure, inventing worlds, characters, plot points, dialogue, locations, themes, and actions is hard work. It rarely exists in a vacuum and involves years, if not decades, of inspiration, taking influences from other works, and re-drafting over and over.

And whatever it is you’ve produced was likely crafted to work in its intended format. Mary Shelley wasn’t worrying about how you’d execute the scene of re-animating a dead body or what SFX needed to be used when she wrote Frankenstein.

Legendary graphic novelist, Alan Moore famously has criticised film adaptations of his own work:

I'm very pessimistic about adaptations from one medium to another. I've got a very kind of primitive, Puritan view of it. I tend to think that if something was derived for one medium, then there's no real immediate reason to think that it's necessarily going to be as good or better if adapted into another one. There have been very good stage plays that have made some very good films. But there are not so many differences between the theater and the cinema as there are between the cinema and, say, reading a book or reading a comic.

The 2009 adaptation of Watchmen notably edited the finale, where an enormous outer space monster is teleported to New York City, destroying everything and everyone, was replaced with a nuclear bomb. Despite most of the film being replicated frame for frame, this change, which was described by many as ‘un-filmable’ at the time, meant that, in the end, it just didn’t quite work. It didn’t capture the dread, spirit, and foreboding of the text.

The contents of the book, with its many flashbacks, sub-plots, and B-role style narratives, obviously also couldn’t be fully committed to the screen. The runtime was already pushing towards 3 hours.

The 2019 TV series however is a different beast. It took the source material and went in a completely different direction with mostly new characters and a new story. It is not faithful to the book but worked better and was much more well received.

Why? Some of this is likely because Watchmen the graphic novel is meant to be consumed as such. Watchmen, the TV series, is meant to be watched.

Same, but different

One of the things I’ve learned since writing a screenplay is how different your approach needs to be than say, writing a novel.

The biggest thing you’re dealing with is that you can’t just tell your audience everything. You can’t explain the background of a character, fun factoids about their past or what they’re thinking like you can in a book. All of the context, whether historic or underlying, needs to be revealed over time via dialogue and actions.

While writing my 2nd draft I stumbled upon this amazing piece ‘You’re writing a book so stop writing a movie’ which perfectly outlines why both modern literature and film-making are failing simultaneously. Because one is always conflating it’s craft with the other.

It’s quite hard to find a throw-away scene, or a redundant scene, on film… because everything costs a lot of money. If there’s a pointless scene that shows people doing stuff they’ve already done, someone is going to notice and cut it before millions of dollars get spent.

The best novels don’t subconsciously ‘cast’ their characters by describing their eye-colour, and they can tell us things about a character’s inner thoughts. By contrast, the best films only include scenes that are there for a reason. You can’t show every single thing. You must pace things so your audience don’t get bored or figure out the plot twist right away, but the approaches across both mediums are very different.

SubMakk

You're Writing a Book. So Stop Writing a Movie.

We’re in a golden age of TV (if not quite a golden age of full-blown cinema), so I don’t blame anyone for consuming a vast proportion of their narratives on screens. But so many issues I address with my writing students stem, I suspect, from subconsciously internalizing what works on the screen and trying to make it work on the page…

Read more

10 months ago · 1840 likes · 26 comments · Rebecca Makkai

The same rules apply elsewhere. People who write for the stage will undoubtedly tell you that it’s very different to writing for the screen.

Games, even more so, have a completely different narrative structures because you’re immersed within them as a player.

So this is the fundamental thing fans don’t understand. What works for one, doesn’t always work for the other.

To copy it beat for beat in a TV show would lead to some very long and boring scenes. You need to create a shorthand for your audience, so having them wear a dirty old T-shirt gives the ‘nod’ to their personal situation and inner world, rather than us having meandering flashbacks to their childhood. And you can’t have everything about that world explained (say like in a certain recently completed retro sci-fi show that insists upon spelling it out for its audience like they’re stupid.)

When things reach Hollywood, plot points, scenes, and characters are often cut up, amalgamated, merged, and contorted so they translate better in their new medium and are more appealing. Yes, it can sometimes be disappointing when the latest Harry Potter TV series doesn’t include Harry’s extremely niche visit from book 6 to Barry Basset’s Sex Toy Inferno in Diagon Alley, but it’s likely been changed because it just doesn’t work.

Fan-service is slowly ruining art

While part of me does enjoy seeing how a new director or actor reinterprets a piece of media, I have to reckon with the parts of me that used to get on a high horse about being a long-time fan of the source material when it’s been sexed up, dramatised, politicised or twisted to appeal to a current cultural norm.

For example, why did the sex club in Dune: Prophecy feel so deliberately salacious and tonally off, aside from the fact that it was based on the far inferior sequel books written by Frank Herbert’s family?

This is largely the reason why period drama’s often tweak costumes to align with current fashions, or play up the ‘costumey’ aspects of the visuals, because no one wants to watch unwashed, syphilis riddled elites with bad teeth and teeth get busy.

I now engage with the parts of me that are open to seeing something different.

This is why Marvel’s Multiverse and fan fiction are so appealing to audiences. They let people reimagine their favourite characters and plot points without having to do any of the hard work or violating the OG version.

And not all adaptations are created equally. Super Mario Bros (1993) and The Hobbit are widely accepted as being fucking terrible. The Shawshank Redemption, Last of Us and 2001: A Space Odyssey are lauded. Some are beloved in their widely differing iterations (The Shining, being a perfect example). But the lack media literacy is largely down to the attitudes from fans.

The weird symbiotic relationship between media and audience, accelerated by online fandoms and social media, means that the consumer now influence creators more than ever.

It’s not unheard of for producers to demand reworks and recuts to appeal to fan reactions; killing off or not killing off ‘fan favourites’ and rewriting storylines that just didn’t land (‘it was all a dream!’).

The problem is that it always feels disingenuous.

It dilutes the product too much and makes the output suck. The audience can smell a rat.

Everything becomes more predictable and designed for appeasement of (usually) immature adults who can’t handle discomfort, require neatly tied up endings, and absolutely everything spoon-fed to them with little room for ambiguity or mystery.

Not to mention the fact that audiences rarely appreciate just how difficult it is to get something right, letalone create something new from scratch. Honestly, try a creative writing class THEN try to complain about the ending of your favourite sit-com.

I do of course have some exceptions. I think stage-musical adaptations of films are laughable - especially if they contain repurposed pop music. I refuse to go and see the paltry, cringe-inducing imitation of Mrs. Doubtfire on stage. I will simply watch the original film starring Robin Williams.

And to be honest, that’s what some of you should do too.

If you’re seriously upset that your favourite set-piece is being left out of Fallout, do me a favour and just go play the game instead. Everyone will feel a lot better.

Her recent Substack ‘I do not want children’ x3 did not do her many favours in standing up for child-free people. For every perfectly valid and personal rationale presented read as an acidic hot take that was only ever going to rub parents up the wrong way. She’s currently being put on blast by the internet mum brigade (some insane, some vindicated) trying to explain to her why actually, she’s wrong.

The problem is that in many respects, she isn’t. That’s clearly how she feels and she’s entitled to that. Some, but not all, of the things she said were perfectly reasonable. However, it all falls apart when it comes off as an attack. I knew the moment I read this sentence, they were coming for her…

Parenthood is largely for people who are desperately broody. Even then, those people so often really fuck it up, and fuck up their own lives along the way.

If you haven’t read her article, then I’m sure you’ve probably seen countless other similar debates; usually led by women on either side of the fence who feel their decisions are being too harshly judged by the opposite party.

So before you read on, let me lay it out for you. I am a woman in my 30s who does not have kids. I don’t care if other people have kids or not, but truthfully, I often feel my morality - like Jameela’s - is brought into question because of it. I won’t blindly defend her. But I do understand that she’s likely coming from a place of self-protection.

If she’s anything like me, she probably has to excuse, explain, and defend her child-free status constantly to people who probably don’t care enough to listen anyway.

‘So do you have kids?’

It is of course silly to conclude that somehow one choice is right, and the other is wrong. You do not need to pick a side then condemn the other.

The parenting discourse has gained traction because more Millennials are declaring that they are opting out of parenthood, while those who opted-in call for greater government support and community.

Yet disagreements bubble over online about whether or not parents should or shouldn’t be allowed to bring children to pubs, weddings, comedy gigs or on public transport because some child-free people without kids find it a bit annoying. Child-free people are equated with sectarians. The parents are branded inconsiderate and entitled. The non-parents are branded selfish and lazy. And amidst all of it, bigoted idiots with outdated, sexist views laugh because the propaganda has worked.

There are no winners; just mostly women on both sides feeling ostracised and attacked.

From personal experience, the further I get into my 30s, the more I find that some people with children seem to have a real problem with the fact I, and others, don’t have them.

It’s not always reflected in what they say but how they react.

I notice when people’s attitudes change towards women after they learn she has a child or is expecting. I remember every single time I’m covertly pushed out of the conversation as soon as the topic of parenting comes up in a social situation, like it’s some exclusive club that I can never be part of so have nothing of value to add, and no business being there.

When I started writing a past version of this article, I started screenshotting all the tweets, Reddit posts and threads where strangers would rage bait by asking derogatorily about the lives of people with no kids. There were many. Some people even occasionally use my child-free existence as a punching bag for what is likely their own internalised frustrations.

“Your house is lovely - you can tell you don’t have kids…’

“Another holiday? Must be nice!’

“Where’s this? We can’t go out for dinner every week unless we have a babysitter”

I know it’s probably not intentional for most, but some people really do seem to like reminding me that my child-freeness makes them feel bad. Or they’re a sicko who gets get off on implying that their decision to have children somehow makes them morally better than I am. It’s weird.

Child-hating bog witches

Let’s start with the elephant in the room. One assumption people tend to have about me because I don’t have kids, is that I must hate kids. Actually, not all people without children hate kids or are evil. Well, some are. Likely because they had miserable childhoods. Their wounds run so deep they forget what it was like to actually be a child. Or they never really had much of a conventional childhood in the first place to understand how kids actually behave when they’re not being pushed to the sidelines.

But just because I’m not a mother, doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy being a rich (aspiring) wine aunt.

It has definitely become a little too ‘cool’ to hate kids, which is awful because children can’t really do anything about the fact that they’re kids. They’re a very vulnerable group and we’re all collectively responsible for ensuring that they grow up normal and that the world they inherit from us is infinitely better than the one we inherited from the previous generation.

But it’s also cool to hate child-free people and one evidently fuels the other.

The thing is, factually speaking, some children are actually really weird and annoying. Usually it’s parents I find more annoying, but like anything in life, some people - regardless of age - just suck. And, let’s be honest, it also depends how you find them.

I am actually super cool with babies. Even crying babies. Yes their crying is irritating but I’m pretty sure nature programmed us to find their cries irritating so people will go and tend to their various needs. Kids aged 4-12 are also pretty sound. This is when they start to get proper personalities, do strange, low-key hilarious things and begin shading their own parents in public. Older teenagers are also fine. You can swear in front of those ones and they can tell you whether or not your jeans look ‘cheugy’ .

Toddlers though? Absolutely not. They are demanding, terrifying and sticky little dictators. It’s not their fault, they can’t help it - but I definitely don’t trust them to get too close. Those guys are all fluids. I’ve had too many of them tell me they have a present for me, then hand me old gum from the bottom of a restaurant table before coughing in my face.

And teenagers? I remember enough from high school to know they can be cruel and vicious. Again, it’s not their fault. But I don’t want to be bullied by someone who doesn’t know what a VHS is.

I am utterly convinced that anyone who says they hate children is only ever actually talking about their experiences with *these kids* because that’s when children are at their most unruly, unpredictable and chaotic. Chaos makes people uncomfortable. I can understand why people would hesitate to hang out with them or wouldn’t want to sign up for looking after one permanently.

By and large, I also think some of the hate also tends to be hyperbole. Much of it also boils down to a rising general lack of tolerance for other people. You can’t be too annoyed when someone’s kid is loud in public and you can’t be too annoyed that people might get frustrated that your kid is being loud in public. It’s a public space. We’re all entitled to be there.

I do however, wonder how much of this rhetoric exists because child-free people are stuck feeling like the pro-natal part of society is more widely accepted and all-consuming. Maybe they don’t actually hate kids, they’re just misdirecting their anger?

‘The done thing’

For the last few centuries, having children has become the next aspirational life milestone after marriage and owning a home.

It’s what our parents, grandparents, and likely great-parents did, albeit with some mixed results. Some people, despite not being ready or equipped to parent seem to do it anyway. A select few go ahead because they’re chasing for more excitement and meaning and think parenting is the only way to do that.

Culturally speaking though, conservative types often argue that women are designed to be housewives and child bearers, and that its feminism and modernity which has ‘deviated’ women from this path.

Interestingly, this isn’t actually the case. A Washington Post article in 2019 wrote that being child-free is actually nothing new, and due to economic circumstances such as war, birth rates were actually low around the turn of the 20th Century. The ‘baby boom’ is what has rewritten our collective history to have us believe that the 2.4 nuclear family model is the historic norm. Childlessness was actually pretty common during the 1500s.

There’s also an enduring, somewhat subconscious view that having children is not an individual decision, but an ethical and economic one that impacts a wider community (despite the evidence that many parents feel more abandoned by society than ever, but that’s another topic for another time).

Conservatives especially enjoy referring to falling birth-rates, with the example of Japan, to make rearing-children a question of existentialism - ‘do your bit’ for humanity by procreating.

That means that anyone who defies this is viewed negatively. I hasten to point out the thousands of disparaging words we’ve used for unmarried, childless women in history (crone, spinster, old maid, barren etc).

Of course, we now live in a world of choice - not to mention instability. Falling birth rates are not just about women rebelling against stereotypes; there are thousands if not millions of men who also agree that bringing children into the world can be financially and economically challenging, and that actually perhaps some of us are not equipped to deal with the complexities of parenting in a world that’s becoming even more complex.

When women’s bodies are at the centre of discussion, women should be able to decide, but to lay the blame squarely on women being somehow corrupted when there are so many other influences, feels unfair.

Wicked women

Whenever we explain that we don’t have kids, it’s never my husband’s morality, virility, or sanity that’s questioned. It’s always mine. Like I am somehow defective.

People mentally and physically pry into your business; probing for gossip about your mental, physical, and sexual health completely uninvited. They speculate that you must be selfish, or a bad person - a potentially bad PARENT. They quip that you can’t afford it or that you’re not ‘mature’ enough; that you’re probably barely capable of looking after yourself, let alone a child.

A personal favourite is when women are accused of denying their partners of a child, instead choosing to prioritise their career, or their health or whatever like it’s a bad thing. Such a world view is so single minded that people can’t possibly imagine why someone wouldn’t want a child, as if it’s the only viable and sensible choice.

By the time we got married, I could feel the silent pressure closing in around me - the expectation that I might soon be making some sort of ‘announcement’. I had a paranoia that everyone was constantly staring at my uterus, willing me to bear forth plump little babes to be tomorrow’s civil servants.

I did even have a few rude people ask me outright, then give me the whole ‘you’ll change your mind’ shpiel. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. What does it have to do with anyone else?

I found that I was often patronised in conversations about parenting and flat out excluded from others. Because I don’t have children, my general opinion on issues that might affect their education and wellbeing are often dismissed. I’ve had women suggest to my face that they are somehow more enlightened, in-tune and empathetic than me because they’ve given birth; that they now care more about other people than I do and can somehow sense things I can’t.

Let me tell you, many child-free people worry about the wellbeing of children more than you might imagine. It’s often how they reach the conclusion not to have them.

Celebrating choice

Most of my friends with kids are totally cool and so are their kids. And I will never not support their choice nor would I ever dream of judging or giving them unsolicited parenting advice. But I’d be lying if I didn’t sometimes feel that everyone who ‘switches teams’ is going to abandon me as a friend - after all, nobody wants to rebel alone!

I worry that they suddenly think I ‘can’t relate’, that I won’t want to hang out with them anymore, or see their kids. I do, but I also selfishly want the occasional child-free meet-up to gossip salaciously.

But it can get weird. It’s completely normal to celebrate new babies, and swoon over scans, and turn up to extravagant baby showers with expensive gifts. It’s an every day occurrence to have someone else’s life choice living, breathing, talking and EXISTING right there in your face.

But the uncomfortable silence that follows openly sharing that you don’t have or want children, especially in circles of suburban parents? That seems to really offend people. It puts you in a box of ‘other-ness’. I guess it makes people feel like you’re judging them even when you aren’t in a way that child-free people could never truly reciprocate - because having kids is so widely accepted and normalised.

I listen intently when parents - often mothers - talk about the disadvantages they face. The poor healthcare, the traumatic births, the shit parental leave, lack of government support, overpriced nursery fees, limited career opportunities. Then there’s the discrimination, the constant criticism and anxiety and fear and guilt. How hard it is getting no sleep while wrestling with an angsty toddler, and why they feel like shit whenever they can’t go for pizza without dumping their kid on a stranger or have people tut at you. I know that even having one kid isn’t enough; even as parents they’ll be constantly badgered for another and judged on stupid stuff like giving their baby formula over freshly pumped breast milk.

I fully accept all of these truths, and while not experiencing them myself, I endeavour to empathise.

Sometimes I don’t feel like child-free people are given the same grace.

Granted, we have one less dependent to look after - but we also live on the other side of the same shitty coin that is the patriarchy. A system that literally tells you that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Two sides of the same coin

I was helped towards the realisation that the most snarky parents making me feel like crap perhaps don’t have such a problem with my lifestyle choices as they do with their own. Perhaps there is a tiny part of them, that they don’t want to acknowledge or admit out loud, that they regret having children; that even though they might love their kids very much, they are mourning the path not chosen.

It works both ways too - that’s perhaps why some child-free people are so judgemental towards parents, so damning of their parenting methods, and so resentful of their children.

I often refer to the adage ‘two things can be true at once’ and in the world where the choices are ‘to have children or not to have them’, both paths can suck as much as they can also be great. You just have to make it work and commit to your choice because there’s no going back.

Many of my friends clearly feel comfortable enough to be open and god-honest with me about the challenges they have so I’m fully clued in should I ever join the other team. They will tell me how lonely and isolating it can be being a new parent, especially when none of your other friends have kids and others cut you out; never asking how you are or making an effort to maintain contact. They talk about how jealous they feel when their friends are on nights out or jetting off on holiday. Or how sometimes they hate when they have to decline an invitation to an event, but equally feel the pain of being left out because everyone has assumed they’ll be too busy with the baby to attend.

I never judge them for sharing these perspectives and it never feels like a judgement or a slight on me either. But for every person that shares this, there are countless others who are intent to put divides between our worlds.

This too shall pass

Emily Maddick wrote in her piece ‘Society is afraid of single child-free women’:

“It’s giving oxygen to the resurgence of far-right politics currently sweeping across Europe and America with their limiting views on women’s role in society and ownership of their own bodies.”

When Roe vs. Wade was repealed in 2022, it made abortion illegal in 14 US states. This suggests that becoming a parent is becoming even more intertwined with morality and that reproductive choice is becoming more and more vilified.

This is also why Jameela’s essay was never gonna float - it unintentionally leans into the right-wing fantasy that 30-something Leftists are trying to destroy femininity and good old fashioned family values. Some of her piece was accurate, some of it was clearly written to be funny, and some of it was bluntly insensitive, but overall it made her decision appear competitive and morally superior. She’s fallen directly into the trap.

I don’t like buying into the culture war of Parents vs. Child-free people. Of course we need people to have children - and for people who really want children (and for the right reasons) should be able to have them, receive the correct support, and be able to provide those children with a decent quality of life.

But equally people who don’t have kids or choose not to should be supported too - even just solely from a moral standpoint. And not just by mean-spirited people who complain about babies crying on planes - by people who have kids and understand that it’s not for everyone.

I’ve had a draft of this general stream of consciousness for a while, so here’s a few other pieces that inspired it by looking at things from a few different angles:

• Parenthood’s PR problem

• Kids Ruin Everything

• An open letter to my friends who are mothers

• I have never met a mother I wanted to trade places with

• Are you choosing to have kids or are you just giving into peer pressure

• There is a big uncomfortable reason why some women don’t have children

• Rise of the pathological mother

• People hate children

• Women are supposed to want to be mothers

• How dare someone without kids try and give parenting advice

• People panicking about my fertility triggered a crisis in me

New Year tends to be a time of reflection and forward planning. It is also a time for comparative suffering and documenting achievements - less so for introspective growth, and more to showcase on social media. I’m sure some people don’t see it that way, but it’s the world we live in now.

I’d been thinking a lot about ‘s recent post ‘Pics or it didn’t happen’ about how we’re obsessed with documenting events but not always actually, actively experiencing them. At the point of publishing this I might have finally finished Naomi Klein’s Doppleganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (which has spent months on my reading pile in lieu of countless psychology textbooks) which talks about our ‘digital doppelgängers’.

These uncanny valley avatars look and sound like us, but are a poor, 2D imitation of the real thing that exist online; reduced to data points to train algorithms - a version of ourselves we try in vain to maintain control of, but is often skewed and misinterpreted by strangers with their own agenda.

And then I saw a bunch of photos of myself taken over Christmas, including a brutally unforgiving passport photo, in which I look really ugly. In such circumstances, the mind often wanders… I don’t want to be remembered like this.

‘The camera never lies’

Much of life is now experienced through the medium of social media, smartphones and camera lenses.

People will record entire gigs, spend hours preening themselves for selfies, and video intimate moments of their lives with captions that share their innermost thoughts. They need social proof of their existence.

In many ways, this technological advancement is fascinating. I’m sure people in the late 20th century were thrilled that likeness no longer had to be captured by sitting for an oil painting. Today we can glance through pictures in our camera reel to be transported back to a time or a place.

One advantage is that this content provides hard evidence. It helps us recall those events with greater clarity and relive them again and again.

There’s one problem with that though.

Camera’s don’t actually capture memories.

Memories recorded via technology are referred to as ‘mediated memories’. Roberta Bartoletti, Sociology Professor at the University of Bologna, wrote about this in ‘Learning from Memory: Body, Memory and Technology in a Globalizing World’ - that ‘exteriorising’ our memories contributes to forging our individual identities but also becomes part of a ‘collective’ public memory.

The digital format is of course, a trigger, not a ‘pure’ memory; it’s a visual imitation which can’t fully convey the other sensory experiences of that moment nor the nuances, context, or internal emotions and thoughts of the people involved.

But while human memory - even at a collective level - is unreliable (more on that later…), so are cameras.

You only need to look at the ‘Blue or White dress’ debate, filters, and photoshop to understand that cameras distort reality. I’ve Googled this many times because I need to maintain my delusion that I am actually gorgeous but sadly extremely un-photogenic.

With the added power of AI our trust in what we see is now even more depleted.

So yes, we have an accessible digital archive, but it’s not always a credible substitute for remembering experiences.

More to memories than meets the eye

This habit we have of documenting everything is also not just messing with our perception, but our skills of recollection.

Research conducted by Binghamton University in 2021 found that taking photos actually impaired memory. Their experiment, which involved participants taking photographs of pieces of art and simply viewing others, found that people had more difficulty ‘recollecting’ the photographed pieces because they were likely ‘over-relying’ on the camera to capture the details. This is called cognitive offloading.

And when we’re too busy concentrating on getting the perfect shot, it means we’re disengaging us from the thing we’re trying to capture.

Usually experiences become ‘encoded’ in our minds. We process it via our senses, and our brain makes the connections about what it means. The more attention you pay to these experiences, for example, because it stirs strong emotions, the more vivid the memory becomes. You’re also more likely to recollect it frequently, making it richer . By contrast, when you ‘record’ an experience digitally, it’s reduced only to picture and sound.

So if you stand at a gig and film the whole thing, you’re not really experiencing it. You’re not watching the artist, feeling the swell of the crowd, or registering the key changes - you’re distracted by the act of recording it.

If you should ever even decide to watch the videos back on your phone, you might remember being there but your recollection won’t be as vivid because you weren’t allowing yourself to take it all in.

The human mind is a complex thing

At my wedding, nobody recorded the speeches except for one, which was a 6 minute poem written by one of our best men. The other speeches, including my husband’s, are lost to the sands of time.

But they weren’t, obviously, because we were all there. I remember them. I don’t remember every single word, nor the reactions around the room, but I remember how I felt and the things they said. I am left with a poignant albeit imperfect memory. Just because no one recorded it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I’m also perfectly fine with the idea that not everybody on the internet was privy to such a private, deeply personal part of our wedding day except the people we asked to be there.

If you’ve read this far and wondered why photographing everything is such a big deal, you also need to understand that memory is a significant tool in forging our identities, if not online, then internally.

From an early age, how we experience and interact with the world is grounded in how we process, perceive, and recollect memories. Eventually this builds over time, shaping us into who we become and how we think.

The study of mnemonics, which investigates systems and stimuli which help us improve our memory, are often deployed for those who have trouble with remembering things. Digital archives are helpful for those scenarios.

But as I’ve explained, lasting memories are clearer and more easily recalled when they are connected to strong emotions.

Technology creates a disconnection in this process, which risks distancing us further from our own humanity.

Unreliable narrators

Outside the bounds of an English Lit class, we know that that one person’s recounting of events is not always an accurate and true representation.

In psychology, this concept has a name; hermeneutics. Hermeneutical phenomenology is a research approach in which recollected lived experiences are analysed based on a subject’s interpretation of them.

A core understanding of this approach is that there is no fixed truth.

We know that the human mind often likes to fill in blanks with logic (confabulation). It can remember things falsely (The Mandela Effect), has a tendency to reshape it’s interpretations under stress or trauma (Memory Distortion), and can be influenced by other witnesses (Social contagion).

Your memory of a single event might be very different to mine, even though we were in the room at the same time, seeing the same thing.

While we can’t trust ‘mediated memories’ we can never truly trust our pure memories either. Whenever we recall an event, we are usually only actually ever recalling the last time we remembered it.

Is it better to have an imperfect recollection of the life events that resonated with us, or a mediated memory that is less influential and poignant?

Life in a hollow highlights reel

Instead of enjoying an experience like travelling, or watching a performance, or going to a party, I’ve occasionally spent more time taking photos to upload onto my precious, curated social media feed.

I get caught up in looking like I’m having fun that I forget to actually have fun.

I know I’m not the only person who slips into treating meaningful moments like shallow photo opportunities.

And to Bartoletti’s point, in seeing that content, we all participate in an illusion. What might look like a fun holiday in the Maldives is likely not the reality.

We only see the perfect moments; not the food poisoning, bad weather or terrible service. That’s when individual memory is overshadowed by the ‘collective’ memory, open to be interpreted however other people choose.

Historically, we tend to gloss over the bad parts of memories when we retell them. It helps us present the best version of the truth we’d like to share.

‘Forgetting’ however is sometimes just as valuable as remembering. Brains were never designed to remember every single thing - we are only meant to hold onto what’s most important.

Just because technology allows us to document everything, that doesn’t mean everything should be documented.

Forget about it

As with everything, there’s a balance to be maintained.

We are constantly exposed to highly edited ‘highlights’, reinforced falsehoods and prominent moments in our lives being reduced to pixels (without properly allowing ourselves time to sit with them). But simultaneously, we’re also archiving everything to the point of obsession - we’re not enabling ourselves any privacy in our experiences nor the ability to ‘forget’ imperfection and move on.

Sometimes we just need to put the phones down. Have a conversation. Watch the gig. Revel in the time spent with family. And sometimes, it’s worth documenting so you can look back.

If you threw your phone in a river tomorrow or developed soap-opera style amnesia, it’s nice to have some evidence that you actually lived your life.

Here’s your reminder to stay present in 2026 and to not just collect data on experiences to post on your socials come December 31st.

What do you think? Do you whip your camera out at every gig, gym sesh, party, or meal? Or do you have other means for cementing your memories?

I’ve been a huge horror fan for years, and frankly I enjoyed this way more than the actual big-budget, professionally produced feature films we actually bought tickets for. I felt genuinely inspired by how creative people had to be and the fact that most of it was done on a shoestring.

A somewhat entitled thought came over me that weekend; that I’d really like to try and write something. Nothing flash. Just a 10 minute short. My husband constantly talks about how good screenwriters - any screenwriters, in fact - are hard to find and that he’s not much of a writer-guy himself.

He directs. That’s what he does. If I could write something half-decent, he would definitely consider shooting it. So I thought, why not?

There’s several problems with this way of thinking - for me at least. The first is that I’ve never wrote a proper screenplay in my life. The second, is that I am a horrible, obsessive perfectionist who oscillates between brief episodes of complete self-confidence, and long drawn out periods of self-hatred fuelled by a harsh, and often very mean, inner critic.

Plays and screenplays, unformatted, unfiltered, and raw as a kid? Yeah sure, that’s easy. Drafts for commercials or short scenes produced for a media class? Definitely doable. A loose script for a poorly made University documentary during my undergrad. Fine! But an actual film, with ideas I’d thought of, dialogue I’d penned, and scenes I’d chewed over? Hmmm

I have no real formal training. I’ve not even been to a dedicated screenwriting workshop. I’ve read the odd book about it, but never quite had the stones to give it a go.

I knew it was considered mostly a ‘boy thing’ and incredibly difficult to get into. I know that a lot of grown-ass men want to do it anyway, then get disheartened when Hollywood doesn’t come a-knocking based on the fact that they call themselves a screenwriter alone. And ideas from scratch are very hard to come up with.

I now fully understand why people write fan fiction and pitch reboots.

But then one day an idea came to me. Instead of forcing my way with vague ideas that weren’t even mine, or trying to project manage a brainstorming session like I used to do at my old agency (which used to involve mining people for ideas based on an incredibly prescriptive brief) the idea just popped into my head.

Then came the scenes, then came the characters, then came the dialogue.

It’s probably the quickest and easiest thing I’ve ever conceived and actually written down. Usually my ideas float into my mind at inconvenient moments and by the time I commit them to paper or cloudspace, I’ve forgotten them.

Now I had a new problem. My 10 minute short horror film was now about 30-40 minutes long.

I could stick with keeping it as an episode, which might later be added to an anthology, or I could flesh it out further and make it a feature. So that’s what I did. I accidentally wrote an entire feature film in just a few weeks.

Don’t talk shit about my baby

A lot of the content on Substack is often lamenting the curse of being a writer.

“Can you call yourself a writer if you don’t actually ever get down to writing?”

“Writers spend too much time procrastinating and ruminating about writing, that they never actually get to work.”

“Writing is the hardest thing because no one understands what it’s like to be a writer, but simultaneously everyone thinks they’re a writer.”

And perhaps most important of all; to be a writer you have to let people actually read and comment on your work.

That’s the part I was most scared about.

For at least 12+ years I have worked as a copywriter and content writer. Before that I was an amateur wannabe journalist, smug with high scores on their Creative Writing module. And even before that, I was a swotty English student with a snotty, pretentious blog. I’ve earned my stripes as a writer and more often than not, my spirit has been crushed by it.

While academia may have served me well, anonymous comments on my work do not.

I have spent my entire career ghost-writing, taking extensive feedback from managers, clients and stakeholders pulling out their metaphorical red pens to ‘correct’ my work. I am used to criticism. I’m numb to it. But I also don’t care about receiving feedback most of the time. It’s par for the course.

My passion is not always writing about mops and buckets, sending press releases about winter sales, or making SEO-optimised headers ‘snappier’ so it doesn’t really matter if it needs changing. Although, sadly some of the people who feedback on my work also barely register me as a human being, let alone a person with ideas and feelings.

I’m so used to accepting people talking negatively about my work that I instinctively lay down and let myself take a good kicking, as if a part of me enjoys it (it doesn’t); holding out in vain for that one kind person, who once in a blue moon, will tell me they’re really happy with what I’ve produced.

A personal piece of work is very different. And it’s almost worse when you ask people you know well to read it. The highs could be higher, but the lows can feel much, MUCH lower.

My husband read it and gave me a glowing review. He isn’t afraid to be honest with me, and he works in that industry. He’s seen a lot of scripts, many from amateurs like me, and many which are very, very bad. I was absolutely thrilled, but legally I also know he has to be kind to me so I was still suspicious.

I then asked more people to read it. Some had notes but they gave me good constructive feedback too. And resources to help me make it better. And bits they felt compelled enough to tell me they liked!

Was I better at this than I thought??

The mentally ill part of me still doesn’t quite trust this feedback. Where is the big red pen? Where are the endless notes and edits? Where are the nudges about budget, and product placement, and ‘I don’t like this word’ jabs?

When you’re allowed to be creative, with no money on the table, and people who care about your art but also know how hard it is to put it out there, writing is so much more fun. Who KNEW?

I guess this is happening

The huge disclaimer here is that I am still not a screenwriter. I am just a writer who now has one screenplay and delusions of grandeur.

Still, it has given me the motivation to writer other stuff. Other screenplays. Maybe short stories. And god knows what else. It’s the first time I’ve felt excited about anything related to my own writing in ages, aside.

I don’t get quite enough freedom in my job or in my studies to truly embrace my ‘writer’ persona, and while I’ve been writing my Substack for 2 years now, the validation is often hit or miss. (By the way, if you read this regularly, a small sign to let me know you do and that I’m not just screaming into a void is much appreciated).

I’ve made multiple edits now to my script; finessing scenes and building out my world, planning the beats, and am getting to realise more and more about my characters each time I revisit. The best part about it is that it just flows out of me. I don’t have to think too much about edits, or using specific phrases, or who might watch it. I just need to get from A to B in the most creative, succinct, entertaining, and funniest way possible.

I’ve found myself telling people about it and experienced the joy of them also getting really excited plus happy to chat about their own private writing, like we’re all in a secret writing club.

I’ve also been to another local film festival since and have definitely seen delusions greater than mine committed to the screen. If they can do it, why can’t I?

So we’re going to pitch it. It might go somewhere. It might go nowhere. It might get twisted beyond all recognition and ripped to shreds by people who know way more about this sort of thing than I do.

I also know I’ve learned so much in this process. Not just about my husband’s job, or screenwriting, or film-making, or film-festivals, or pitching.

I learned that a horror-comedy is the genre they implore you to stay away from on film-making courses because it’s the hardest thing to get right. I learned this after, of course, I wrote a horror comedy.

I learned never to start your movie with an alarm going off. It’s cliche AF apparently. I didn’t actively know that, but now I’ll never forget it. That was a humbling scene change.

I learned you must show, not tell. You can’t cheat like a novel where you can share your characters most inner thoughts, or cut to the chase in the first paragraph like you would in a piece of marketing copy (where all the reader wants to know is what you’re selling). You can’t just answer all the questions with pithy exposition 👀.

It’s also incredibly difficult to not only describe what’s on camera before you even get into the meat of it, but map out entire conversations without it sounding unnatural - and then format everything scene by scene.

Groan as you read this, I also learnt a lot about myself. That there is creativity and ideas lurking inside of me still, even though I rarely let that side of myself out to play.

That sharing your deeply personal work doesn’t have to be scary. People can get just as enthusiastic about your ideas as you are, and will happily amp you up.

It may be the last screenplay I ever write, because I’m not entirely sure where it came from. It flowed through me like a medium; becoming the easiest thing I’ve ever written, like it was the most natural thing in the world. I genuinely looked forward to adding to it and would get lost in the task for hours.

If I achieved nothing else in 2025 (and believe me, I’ve spent the latter half of the year beating myself up for not really changing much), this is one thing absolutely no one can take from me.

See you all in 2026.

But it’s not the reality for most - unless you’re really, really lucky. Whether we choose to admit it or not, often dysfunctional is the norm.

This makes the holidays tough, which I’ve written more about here:

Most families in 2025 don’t even follow the ‘classic’ nuclear set-up; in fact many are categorically more like a nuclear bomb. Some families are small. Some are huge (but no one actually gets along or likes each other). Throw in feuds, estrangement, what my mam calls ‘funny relationships’, travelling between cities, and of course, the delicate balance of underlying tension and tolerance; the concept of a Perfect Family Christmas does not always live up to expectation.

Which is why I think that community is what’s more important than ever - especially anytime life gets hard. Life is lonely otherwise and lonely people tend to feel it even harder during the holidays. And I don’t just mean in the literal sense. You can still feel lonely even within a family or community that doesn’t fully understand or accept you.

Humans just want to connect

Like it or not, social connection is a basic human need.

I didn’t realise until I got older, but like ‘the children yearn for the mines’, I yearn for community.

Maybe it’s an *Only Child* thing. Maybe it’s because my wider family are either physically distant or so absent, unreliable, and fragmented that it’s often like having barely any extended family at all.

My small family unit and I have always been on our own.

Maybe it’s because I never had a huge group of friends at school; just a close handful of deeply trusted individuals, plus a scattered group of good friends I’ve ‘collected’ over the years from different points in my life.

But by the time I got to my mid-20s, I knew that belonging to, contributing to, and feeling the weight of care and support from a larger community was the thing I’d been missing from my life.

I think having a Perfect Family Christmas shoved in your face during the holidays can turn up the dial on this pressure cooker. Blood ties don’t always equal community and it’s often the gap between reality and expectation that causes stress and disappointment for many.

Finding your people

Obviously my husband is a big part of my ‘community’ but he has also taught me a lot about the value of it. Being from a South Indian background, community and collectivism is baked into the culture. Cousins are considered as siblings, friends are considered as family, neighbours are considered as… more family! If you’ve ever been to an Indian wedding or visited a Hindu temple you’ll know that only one rule applies; everybody is welcome.

My husband’s family have unquestionably accepted me and my family as part of their own - and they go to great lengths to show up for one another regardless of whether kinship, lineage, or legal pieces of paper are involved. This is why my husband has spent 20 years well integrated into the local skateboarding scene and has many friends - not just from his shared hobby - but from his career as a freelance director, which is all about community and collaboration.

I’ve endeavoured to take a leaf out of his book. Not only have many of his friends become mine too, I have my own, newer friends that I’ve met through work, hobbies, and shared interests.

There’s plenty of people I know, chat to, and spend time with from industry circles, Substacking, and even my niche interests (ghosts, celebrity gossip, Eurovision to name a few…). I have good neighbours who bring us veg and tell us gossip. Hell, even my nail tech, hairdresser, and local barista I would consider part of my community.

If this sounds like a brag, that’s because it is. I am filled with gratitude that my community is bigger than it was 15 years ago.

In different ways, these are the people who in one way or another, are getting me through the rough times, if they’re aware of it or not. I didn’t have this a couple of years ago and it’s been something I’ve intentionally tried to embrace and build because I truly believe it’s a key to health and happiness in the long run.

And if those are the kinds of people you like to share the holidays with, (as well as or even *instead* of your actual legal, flesh and blood family) then that’s ok.

Collectivism versus Individualism A.K.A Why you’re all so lonely

I came across an article a while back about how you shouldn’t be dating if you don’t have a support system. Granted, I’m not in that position but the topic intrigued me because it leans into something I’ve spoken about before. The Loneliness Epidemic and its links to hyper-individualism; particularly how it destroys community .

Some wider reading on this below:

• The Mainstreaming of Loserdom

• The Male Loneliness Epidemic is a Self Made Crisis

shoes and shots

discomfort is the price you pay for a fulfilling life

I find myself asking this more and more: since when did boundaries and routine become more important than growth, adventure, and being there for others? Why do some people dread going to the plans they made, and would rather go to bed early so they can wake up for their morning routine? I won’t lie, I’ve been a victim of this. I think after the pandemic…

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a year ago · 18240 likes · 275 comments · jacqueline

Hyper-individualism is rapidly on the rise. There are many intersectional aspects to this as well including cultural, technological, and political facets.

A quick refresh is that, for the UK at least (and most nations in the West) we abide by an individualist society that favours freedom, individual thought, and behaviours. To simplify, it’s ’every man for himself’.

Collectivist societies emphasise the needs of a group over the desires of an individual. It seeks to place more value in loyalty, support, and group thinking.

Each have their pitfalls, sure, but I’m not here to talk about that today. At this moment in time the individualistic aspects are so grossly exacerbated that it seems nobody wants to do anything that doesn’t ‘serve’ them individually or instils them with discomfort.

A few examples might be:

• A person doesn’t bother to tell kids not to play in the road because they’re ‘not their kids’, even though they are clearly at risk.

• A person doesn’t feel like they should have to spend time with their friends because they need to ‘protect their peace’ and assumes said friends should be understanding rather than upset about that.

• A colleague refuses to help out with a project at work because it’s ’not their remit or responsibility’ even though their colleagues could really do with the extra hands.

It’s not that the needs and concerns of the individual aren’t important but when they are prioritised over collective needs, it creates a vacuum. If everyone thinks this way, it begins to erode community.

This is exactly what we see when we hear that youth centres are being closed down because kids just aren’t socialising in the same ways, but simultaneously have nowhere safe to go.

That childcare costs are through the roof due to supply and demand because without the help of grandparents, neighbours, relatives, and siblings (not to mention the fact parents also have a right to work, socialise, and have time alone) childcare becomes an unavoidable but required service.

The death of work culture. The degradation of towns, green spaces, high streets and neighbourhoods. The male loneliness epidemic. Old people calling their local GP for a chat, simply because they’ve not spoken to another living soul for days.

They say ‘it takes a village’; to raise children, to care for old, sick and disabled people, to rebuild homes and communities, to provide emotional support, and to create something the things that make life a bit richer and nicer. It’s getting rarer to see.

I felt that during the Covid lockdowns we did actually get quite close. Being forced apart made us crave togetherness and connection. But somewhere along the line, it shifted back to extremity.

And now we have people painting flags on roundabouts to intimidate people they feel ‘don’t belong’, arguing over whether children should be allowed in public, throwing litter from car windows, and doling out accusations of ‘trauma dumping’ (another spicy topic I’ll be writing about another day) whenever someone tries to reach out.

We care more about ourselves - and self-care IS important - but it shouldn’t be at the cost of other people. I touched on this in another post but if you can’t even be decent to the people in front of you, how can you ever expect to save the planet or people in war torn states?

Found Family

So how do you re-engage or seek out community when things like Perfect Family Christmases are out of reach?

For starters, I’ve always been a big fan of the concept of the Found Family. That is, the community you create for yourself.

If you watch Drag Race you know they talk about this a lot in the LGBTQ+ community, because often living authentically for these people has led to them distancing or being distanced from their family for survival. Instead, they find the love, acceptance, and support of a family in their community. It turns an absence into a gain.

We often don’t get to choose our family, and frankly, sometimes no matter how hard we might try, they don’t choose us back. But you can choose people to share your life with, letting them in, and trusting they’ll catch you when you fall.

It doesn’t always work out. It takes a lot of patience to find your people, a lot of practice weeding out the disingenuous ones, and hard work to keep the good ones.

It also requires trust, openness, and vulnerability which is scary AF. Especially if you’re not super outgoing or sociable- and definitely if you’ve been burned before.

You also need to uphold and return the energy of shared burden. It’s simply unfair and impossible to outsource all of your emotional support and needs on just one or two people. You also need to accept that not everyone can be everything to you, at the same time.

The holidays is about the family you choose

Despite this slight philosophical detour, I’d like everyone to take this as permission from me (a completely unqualified stranger on the internet and/or your Weird Friend for those who know me IRL) to not feel as bad about not having the ‘Perfect Family Christmas’ if that’s something you’re worried about.

It’s fine if you feel overwhelmed and annoyed by your family because they do and say weird stuff. It’s ok to be disappointed when you have family that don’t show up for you - especially when you always show up for them. It’s also acceptable to make your own decision about whether or not you choose to spend time at all with family who have hurt you. If your family is just 3 people or 20, it can still be perfect.

Community is yours to curate. It sometimes has to involve compromise, but also you don’t have to make that trip down south this year if you’re always the one visiting. You don’t have to feel guilty for spending Christmas at home with just your partner and kids. And you certainly don’t have to cancel a night at the pub with friends in lieu of listening to your uncle spout nonsense about immigrants.

Support networks can be forged outside of people who just happen to share your last name or a common ancestor - but have nothing else to offer you. Family doesn’t have to look like a Tenenbaums-style fantasy.

The important thing is that it’s there and that it can be grown.

Posts have been a lot less regular lately because I have been knee deep in academia but I’d love to hear about the things that wind you up about the so-called Perfect Family Christmas. I might even have time to reply!

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But it is definitely old enough to start thinking about what getting older means. And not in a The Substance kind of way…

While I might still wish to spend my evenings scrolling ASOS, chatti…

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This week, numerous people dropped in my inbox to yap with me about Lily Allen and David Harbour’s messy split, including screenshots of the juicier lyrics from her new album West End Girl.

Admittedly, I’ve never been much of a Lily Allen fan. That may come as a surprise considering I usually enjoy outspoken women and the more elusive ‘pop star with brown hair’ but I didn’t really ever mesh with her vibe. I like her voice and style but I always felt rubbed up the wrong way by her Nepo baby status, faux-working class accent, ‘Pick me’ tendencies and public spats with other (usually female) celebrities.

She’s continued in failing to endear me over the years with further stories of her cheating on her ex, sleeping with her best friends’ crush, and weathering accusations of racism.

But time moves on. People change. They mature. In the last few years she’s been through a sort of rebirth. A more demure, straight-talking celebrity mum; an earnest actress; newly slim, sophisticated, and chic, wearing Dior mini dresses. Part of this seemed to be down to her 5 year marriage to Stranger Things actor, Harbour, who moved her into a New York brownstone and paraded her around showbiz parties.

The trend of nerdy Hollywood guys and British pop star wives should be studied in a lab - Taika Waititi and Rita Ora very much serve the same vibe - but it’s now come crashing down.

Lily’s album lays the relationship bare in the most brutal fashion, exposing Harbour’s alleged cheating, sex addiction, manipulative behaviours, and ‘ethical non-monogomous’ tendencies.

Open door policy

It’s hard not to acknowledge (especially in the wake of the Life of a Showgirl flop) that there’s a fair few bangers on West End Girl. And regardless, it serves as a war cry for every woman who has been betrayed or has had a messy divorce / break-up with some ungrateful loser guy. We feel sorry for Lily. It sounds rough.

It’s easier of course, to understand why many see her refusal to stay quiet as a victory; a two-fingers up to being dignified and taking the high road. Yet one does have to wonder where in the grieving process ‘publicly humiliating your ex’ wins out against ‘exposing your children to a world where everyone thinks their step-father is a cheating perv’?

It doesn’t quite display the emotional maturity you’d expect from a 40-something mother of two but I understand the ‘burn it to the ground and salt the earth’ approach. He trifled with the wrong girl.

At the core of this epic lore, now committed to Allen’s discography, is a topic I see coming up time and time again in relationship discourse; ethical non-monogamy.

The idea of open marriage has went more mainstream in the last 10 years; particularly in open-minded, liberal, leftist circles. Two-person marriages are often dismissed as ‘vanilla’ in a landscape where sex positivity and porn culture reigns supreme.

To me, it seems strange to merge the two constructs; the conservative, traditional model of marriage with the concept of having romantic and sexual relationships with multiple people at once.

I saw a funny comment about Allen vs. Harbour on this specific point: ‘When people tell me they’re in an open marriage, I always say which one of you asked for it, and which one of you lays awake at night crying’.

I digress, ENM in these sort of contexts just seems like applying a layer of capitalist consumerism to sex and romance. One person forever is just not enough anymore.

Pussy palace paralysis

Like everything else we consume, there’s too much choice. You can’t *just* have Netflix because they don’t have all the films you like, so you also get a subscription to Amazon Prime. You want Spotify but you don’t want the ads, so you’ll upgrade to a better, more agreeable plan so you don’t have to put up with the annoying interruptions.

Celebrity men in particular seems to view their romantic partners in the same way; chasing a newer, exciting, younger models as they move up in status. And then there’s your everyday people who do the same. They want the blonde, the redhead and the brunette; the woman who does things their wife won’t do; who makes up for the things not available to them in their current partner, whether it be one who cooks better meals, likes the same movies, or has bigger boobs.

The astounding entitlement that many modern men display towards having their every sexual desire, every fetish, and every fantasy catered to (despite the reality or their existing commitments) can only be a result of the brain rot created by unrelenting access to porn - and the lie that we can and ‘should’ have it all.

Choice paralysis is pervasive issue in my day-job. I’m often tasked with trying to reduce anxiety for online users who just can’t choose between one thing or another.

A perfect illustration of this is when my great-aunt and her family lived in Soviet-occupied East Germany. They talked of only having 3 choices of wallpaper for their homes. When Germany was reunified suddenly they had endless choice on wallpaper. They did not view this as a positive thing. They were overwhelmed. How could you possibly decide when you suddenly find yourself faced with so much access to so many options?

It’s difficult to know what their ‘arrangement’ was exactly but marriage to Lily alone was clearly not enough for Harbour. Why does it always seem to be guys who blossomed in later life, who suddenly find themselves rich, successful, and admired - perhaps even thought of as handsome - that go down this path? Are they all unhappy with their lot and making up for lost time?

‘Pick Me’ Prizes

As the below piece pointed out, it’s unlikely that Lily was completely unaware of Harbour’s more curious qualities from the get-go. In fact, it’s interesting that a woman like Lily would become a target. I guess because she seemed like she might actually be cool with it.

Allen has never struck me as a woman who has ever really questioned whether she centres men, letalone the impact it might have on her interpersonal relationships. It makes sense she’d fall head over heels for a guy who made her feel special and ‘not like other girls’. Some of us distinctly remember her ‘shitter than Amy Winehouse’ meltdown.

Many have since re-examined the Architectural Digest tour of their home, where their incredibly weird dynamic now seems incredibly obvious. Men like Harbour rarely transform over time; they are usually a carnival of red flags which women choose to ignore - either because they’re dazzled by the ‘switched on’ charm and can’t believe someone would be so interested in them, or because deep down, they’re vulnerable and insecure.

When people are unsure of the reality of a person or worse, unsure of themselves, they’ll often lean into the fantasy or twist themselves into all kinds of shapes just to be loved (or at the very least, not to feel alone.) This makes for a dangerous battleground when it comes to settling down.

“You’re so broken”

Expectations of sex and relationships in 2025 seem to be higher than they’ve ever been despite multiple pieces of research that suggest nobody under 30 is actually having sex.

Women are pressured to conform to porn-fuelled beauty standards that look obscene in real life, but fantastic through a camera lens; helping them cultivate a ‘perfect’ online avatar that’s far removed from their real, flawed, imperfect selves. While many will claim that inflated lips, tiny waistlines, and ‘clean girl’ aesthetics are for them, and them only, it’s likely because they’ve not quite registered the connection. Many more will be doing deliberately it in the hope of appealing to the men who set such standards.

And is it any wonder when the mass trauma of porn sees young men ogling women who *are* nothing but avatars to them? One-dimensional characters they’d never actually have to take out for dinner, existing purely to enact sex acts in varying degrees of depravity, purely for the viewers pleasure, until they finally put down their smartphone to go to bed.

The term ‘sex addict’ is often banded around whenever a famous man is held accountable for any sort of cheating, suggesting that they have compulsions they can no longer control. The blame often falls squarely on their partner, as if they’ve failed somehow. It’s probably why Lily has jumped the gun and told her side of the story before the Stranger Things press tour starts. Sheriff Hopper isn’t going to have the luxury of painting himself as the victim first!

While I try in vain to withhold my judgement (and will undoubtedly be labelled a prude for equating morality with ‘not wanting to force your partner into agreeing to extra-marital sex’), Harbour’s exposure is merely one thread in an ever-growing tapestry of unrealistic expectations on relationships with an unhealthy combination of aspiration and self-loathing at the root cause. It just so happens that he is now the most famous example.

It’s difficult to tell where this particularly meaty morsel of a story will go. This scandal has been doing the rounds in blind items and anonymous Reddit posts for months, and there’s already been suggestion that Allen has been deliberately ‘smeared’ ahead of going public.

With all that said, cheating is viewed as less of a moral failure in this day and age. Male celebrities careers have recovered from far worse. Yet the dirty details, if true, paint a picture that even the rich and famous can’t escape the consumerist machine and a longing for signifiers of cultural capital.

’You’re only as valuable as the woman (or women) you feel’ should maybe be the title of Harbour’s clap-back track. It certainly seems to be an increasingly popular ideology. Truthfully though, no one can have it all.

Not in their careers, not in their friendships, not in their marriages - not even in their online subscriptions. A large part of being an adult is realising that and accepting it. Committing to one thing or one person is about making peace with the fact that sometimes the other things will disappear.

But when a computer screen is dangling the other options in front of you 24/7, do you have the stones to switch it off and stand by the choice you made?

That means there are more gems to be discovered should you want to get into the festive spirit. Despite absolutely nobody asking for this, today I give you an updated run-down of even more titles you can add to your list.

🥣 Weapons (2025)

My best horror of 2025 so far is Zach Cregger’s follow up to Barbarian. We unravel the mystery of how a class of local school children - bar one boy- disappear into the night without a trace. As the paranoia mounts, nothing will prepare you for the plot twist. Meme’d to death, Weapons is already gathering cult status and the conclusion is incredibly satisfying on what feels like a fresh, original horror.

If you love this, you might also like…

The Monkey (2025) - Wonderfully weird films about creepy toys seem to be very en vogue right now. Based on a Stephen King short story, a family are terrorised by a series of horrifying deaths, seemingly caused by a family heirloom toy.

Cuckoo (2024) - Euphoria’s Hunter Shafer stars as troubled teen Gretchen, who encounters strange goings-on during a family trip to the Bavarian Alps.

LongLegs (2024) - I didn’t rate this thriller which follows a serial killer and their connections to the occult. However it’s definitely worth a watch if A24 branded horror is your thing.

Together (2025) - Alison Brie and Dave Franco star as a couple on the verge of a break-up. When they accidentally uncover a strange underground temple, silly, fun, and stomach churning body horror ensues.

🧪 The Substance (2024)

Straight out the gate, let’s talk about the horror film that’s been hot topic of conversation in the last 2 years. The Substance by Coralie Fargeat is now the first film that comes to mind when the words ‘body horror’ are mentioned. It wasn’t always this way, but this deliberately graphic, sexed-up and salacious ‘male gaze’ tale of ageing starlet Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has had the intended impact. Part sci-fi, part dark comedy, Elizabeth seeks extreme measures to preserve her youth. What many have identified as a commentary on beauty culture fails to deliver on such promises but if gore and shock value is what you’re into, you’re on the right track.

If you love this, you might also like…

Maxxxine (2024) - The third instalment of Ti West’s X series sees Mia Goth return in the role of adult filmstar Maxine Minx. Having survived the massacre of the first film, a mysterious source threatens to expose her past.

The Ugly Stepsister (2025) - Far superior to The Substance is this Norwegian black comedy which is a twisted take on Cinderella. Elvira competes with her beautiful step-sister for the hand of Prince Julian and is forced to take grim and extreme physical measures to win his heart.

Immaculate (2024) - Sydney Sweeney runs into trouble as a nun in a convent when she appears to have an immaculate conception - with some sinister implications.

Fresh (2022) - Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan star in this romantic dark comedy-come-nightmare. Noa can’t believe her luck when she meets the wealthy, successful, and handsome Steve - but much like your average Tinder date, he’s harbouring a gruesome secret.

☢️ The Toxic Avenger (2023)

Starring Peter Dinklage, Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon, this remake of the 1984 Troma classic combines superhero lore with high camp gore and gross out gags. For the unfamiliar, the story follows downtrodden janitor Winston Gooze, who transforms into the toxic avenger after falling into a vat of toxic waste. Equipped with superpowers and a deadly mop, this horror comedy stays true to the tone of the original (think splatter-tastic deaths, boobs, and childish humour), this is perfect for people who don’t like scary movies but want to watch a fun horror.

If you love this, you might also like…

The Toxic Avenger (1984) - The OG cult classic is wildly over the top and politically incorrect. Not for the faint hearted, there’s also at least four sequels should you wish to make a marathon of it.

Class of Nuke’Em High (1986) - Director’s were big into nuclear waste in the ‘80s. The self-explanatory title explores what happens when the students at a local high school are exposed to radioactive fallout.

Destroy All Neighbours (2024) - Crafted in the vein of Evil Dead 2 meets (niche Ryan Reynolds movie) The Voices, hapless prog-rock musician is tormented by the nightmare neighbour he accidentally kills.

Psycho Goreman (2020) - This eccentric horror comedy takes inspiration from H.P.Lovecraft and Clive Barker’s Rawhead Rex. ‘I do not care for hunky boys’ may be the best line in a movie. Period.

🩸Mads (2024)

I initially didn’t like the look of this French ‘one-shot’ horror but it turned out to be a surprise gem that refreshed the (in my opinion) tired zombie genre. Promising more of what made REC great, and delivering on what 28 Years Later could not, we follow three friends during an evolving zombie pandemic; the source (and reality) of which is unclear. Created with a cast of first-time actors, this film is ideal if you’re looking for tense, anxiety-inducing horror with a decent payoff.

If you love this, you might also like…

Host (2020) - Despite being made in the pandemic on a shoestring budget, this meta-reality horror set entirely over a Zoom call hits all the right notes. Things go very wrong when a group of friends hold a virtual seance.

One Cut of the Dead (2017) - This Japanese zombie horror breaks the fourth wall in the most astounding ways. Part comedy, part-documentary, part masterclass in film-making, if you like Inside No.9 or The Studio, you’ll love the surprising places this will take you.

When Evil Lurks (2023) - The Spanish horror deals with a demonic outbreak in a quaint countryside town.

Smile 2 (2024) - Much better than its predecessor, Smile 2 amps up the drama, creepiness, and emotional pressure.

⚰️ Satan’s Slaves (2017)

This Indonesian horror brings a refreshing twist on the devil worship cult trope. Four siblings are forced to reckon with the supernatural after their mother mysteriously passes away and their father leaves town for work. With shades of Insidious, Hereditary, and The Omen, this film is full of genuinely scary moments that create a palpable sense of dread while also having you root for these tortured kids as they fight to protect their home.

If you love this, you might also like…

Night of the Reaper (2025) - This B-movie style retro horror takes inspiration from Scream and I Saw The TV Glow. Deena takes on a babysitting job with a serial killer still on the loose.

Oddity (2024) - This Irish supernatural horror follows a blind medium as she unravels just who is responsible for the mysterious, violent death of her twin sister.

The First Omen (2024) - This surprisingly good ‘by the numbers’ commercial horror expands the franchise with a tense prequel set in a Rome orphanage ran by nuns.

Late Night with the Devil (2024) - Found footage moves in a new direction with this possession-style chiller starring David Dastmalchian.

⭕️ Bring Her Back (2025)

The best horrors are usually equal parts terrifying and harrowing. Michael and Danny Phillipou follow up Talk to Me (2022) with a film that plays with the horrors of real-life as well as the supernatural. Fostered siblings Andy and Piper go to live with Laura (Sally Hawkins) after their dad passes away. Sharing a home with Laura’s mute son Oliver, Laura’s disturbing mistreatment of Andy shrouds an even darker truth. This could easily be set in the same universe as Talk to Me, as it explores themes of life after death and the sense of longing created when those we love pass away. However, the intense, graphic violence pulls you back to reality and you’ll find that your empathy for each character switches at almost breakneck speed.

If you love this, you might also like…

Talk to Me (2022) - A group of teenagers contact the dead and discover the dangers of playing with the unknown.

The Rule of Jenny Penn (2024) - If you’re looking for horror rooted in the grimness of reality, look no further. John Lithgow plays an elderly psychopath terrorising his co-residents in a care home.

Speak No Evil (2024) - James McAvoy leads in this remake of the 2022 Dutch film. A family go to stay with friends they met on holiday and realise they’re not quite who they say they are.

Heretic (2024) - Hugh Grant takes a near-perfect turn as a villain trying to teach two Mormon girls the value of religion. Best described as Martyrs-lite.

💄Night of the Demons (1988)

There’s been a lot of revisiting of Troma movies in our house of late, but Night of the Demons certainly earns its ‘80s cult status. Gore, nudity, questionable fashion choices, and tongue-and-cheek humour are part of the charm of any ‘80s horror but Night of the Demons holds up to the test of time. A group of teens head to an abandoned house on Halloween and accidentally awaken something demonic from the crematorium below. It’s easy to see the influences from the Evil Dead franchise, and perhaps even parallels in shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but NOTD is the perfect all-rounder for any scary movie night.

If you love this, you might also like…

Night of the Demons 2 (1994) - This camp sequel sees a group of Catholic school-friends accidentally unleash the same evil that fuels local legend.

Return of the Living Dead (1985) - This cheesy comedy horror has a lot of inexplicable scenes but is great if you’re searching for something that toes the line of spooky and silly.

Society (1989) - The original Beverly Hills body horror that reached cult status for it’s gruesome and gooey scenes. Billy discovers the awful truth about a secretive society lead by the towns cultural elite.

Demons (1985) - Lamberto Bava’s cult classic is heavily influenced by producer and co-writer Dario Argento. The attendees of a mysterious film screening held in the beautiful Metropol cinema find themselves wrestling with hellish forces.

🦇Nosferatu (2024)

In a league of its own, this is *the* arthouse vampire movie to see, directed by Robert Eggers. Featuring an all-star cast including Willem Dafoe, Bill Skarsgard, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Nicholas Hoult, this remake of the 1922 Symphony of Horror is visually spectacular and chock-full of dread. While it’s probably not great if you’re looking for jump scares, Nosferatu is the hipster thinking-man’s horror. Don’t listen to the idiots online who took all the wrong lessons from this classically Gothic horror (Count Orlock being an abuser should be an interpretation, not an active condemnation of the source material - have you EVER even read a vampire novel??) - it’s haunting and brilliant and, in many places, unintentionally funny.

If you love this, you might also like…

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) - Francis Ford-Coppola’s highly stylised adaptation of the original novel is a visual feast if true horror really isn’t your thing.

Sinners (2025) - Set in Jim Crow era Mississippi, this Michael B. Jordan vampire fan fiction is equal parts action and horror, with a dash of Baz Luhrmann-style musical.

The Lighthouse (2019) - More weirdness against stunning scenery. Eggers creates the perfect claustrophobic setting to torture Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson.

AntiChrist (2009) - Lars Von Trier’s shocking arthouse horror delves into the darkness of humanity.

Tell me which horrors you would add to your list - or better still, give me your recommendations…

Today I joined the 10,000 think-pieces on Substack about Taylor Swift following the release of her latest record, The Life of A Show Girl.

There’s nothing that hasn’t already been said, and said better. We’ve acknowledged that it’s not a great album but she’s now too big to win anyway; that she never was nor has been a showgirl; that marriage makes her writing boring; that capitalism makes her a poor ally to other female artists; that her beef with Charli XCX is weird and her ongoing victimhood feels childish; that she continues to wrestle with accusations of not being a real feminist, that some of her marketing decisions extort fans, that her whiteness makes her unintentionally racist, that she shuns politics but is the ‘Hilary Clinton of pop music’ - and that she doesn’t actually read.

She has been dissected from every possible angle. All takes have valid criticisms from inside and outside of the fandom. Everyone is probably sick of hearing about it.

But I suspect the thing we don’t like the most about her is the veneer of perfection and infallibility - and that for once, she’s failed to live up to it.

I am no Taylor fan. I’m a casual observer. She has some nice songs and I probably wouldn’t complain if they cropped up on my Spotify shuffle. You have to respect some of that hustle. But equally I find the way she, her marketing team, and her own fandom “Mary Sue” her incredibly annoying.

As touched upon in Charli’s song, Sympathy is a Knife, the reason many people probably don’t like Taylor is because she reminds us of everything we can’t be.

We can’t all be slim, blonde, blue-eyed, leggy billionaires with countless awards, famous friends, a worldwide fanbase, a famous fiance, or opportunities as far as the eye can see.

She reminds us of the smug overachiever girl at school who teachers loved and somehow always won every single competition.

She’s the lauded work colleague that gets constant praise and rewards even though her craic on lunch break is awful.

She’s the wealthy friend who fails upwards while you try hard and get nowhere.

She’s the popular attractive girl who complains that it’s so lonely at the top.

It’s the Anne Hathaway’s and Rachel Berry’s of this world. Earnestness is strangely insufferable.

And the problem with all of those people is that to the outside world, they never set a foot wrong. Their perfection makes them unrelatable and unlikable.

In psychology, we call this the ‘Pratfall effect’ - we find people more likeable when they make mistakes and we dislike people who don’t display the type of imperfections that humanise the rest of us.

Who would you rather go partying with? The girl who is going to cry in the smoking area before doing 3 shots and dancing on the bar? Or the girl that’s going to be in bed with a facemask by 10pm because she has pilates in the morning?

Anyone who has ever lived and breathed perfection has always been instantly annoying to me - including past versions of myself. I can’t stand being around people who always say the right thing; who always look fantastic; who always eat right and work out every day; who try too hard and never seem to do anything bad. It brings out the insecurity in me about reaching status that I can never aspire to, let alone compete with.

Perfection feels fake and disingenuous. It makes you suspicious about what people are hiding. It’s no coincidence that people often speculate about Swift’s feuds, her personal politics, or if she’s the type of person who might scream at their personal assistant. We don’t want to see perfect people fail - we just want to know they can.

Being ‘adorkable’ is not the same as being existentially flawed either. Neither is being incredibly intelligent but liking biscuits a bit too much. Or being beautiful but clumsy. These palatable flaws are often what people like Taylor Swift point to, to say ‘Look! I’m just a normal girl like you!’. But mere mortals can tell when it’s still a front.

The messiness is all hidden away. Except this time.

Taylor Swift produced something that didn’t align with her near-perfect or imagined ‘perfectly flawed’ back catalogue and self image. We have so much perfection fatigue with her that we all jumped when we saw her mess up in real time.

For what it’s worth, I probably won’t listen to TLOASG but it’s made me appreciate that Charli is actually kind of a genius with her take. Taylor might speak to billions of people around the world, but Charli speaks to that little bit of us that we don’t really like but know is there. That is the mark of a true artist, not a pop star.

This week I started my post graduate degree. This decision has involved over 12 months of planning, 5 years of deliberating on the right subject, and over a decade of ruminating on whether it’s worth doing at all.

I wrote about this back in May; how making important life decisions, even though they might excite you, are terrifying. I touched on the fact that I am the queen of self-sabotage - and that, thankfully, there is some science behind it. I described why I fear change and how I always feel a terrible instinct to take the easy, less scary way out.

Well now that I’m here, those instincts are still screaming at me. Everything has finally fallen into place so to speak, so WHY am I having this huge meltdown even though I finally got what I wanted?*

*And hopefully the answer is not that I’m just insane and beyond saving.

The storm before the calm

Life has finally let up after a chaotic few months. I have started my course. Work has quietened down. The stressful family emergencies which reared their ugly heads at the end of summer have now, for the most part, resolved themselves to the best of their capabilities.

I have started to go back to normal. I’m suddenly a little more keen to pick up my social life again. I’m actually looking forward to planning. We’re making moves to schedule holidays and do more work to our house. I have fuel in the tank to get back to my aerial classes, to write my Substack, and to pursue other creative ventures. I’ve started working on some exciting (and top secret) personal projects, both by myself and with others, that are making me realise I could be using my time and skills for other things I feel passionate about, instead of giving myself solely to my existing career.

I wrote my first ever screenplay (a 10-minute horror-comedy short which grew legs into a fully fledged feature film) in less than 4 weeks and got some great feedback on it. Admittedly that feedback is from my own husband but with 10+ years in the game as a director (and 16 + years in the game as my long-suffering life partner) I can trust him to tell me the truth.

Yet for some reason, the quietness, the blossoming opportunities, the fresh start, the feelings of acceptance and new found worthiness, feel scary to me.

Suddenly I’m afraid that I’m making a huge mistake. In true ‘Sylvia Plath and her smug fig tree analogy’ style, I’ve started to question whether taking one path will close off another. Whether I can truly juggle these new opportunities and responsibilities without losing my mind, or leaving enough time for anything else.

Granted, ‘anything else’ is meeting my GoodReads target, watching the latest topical TV shows, and scrolling my phone mindlessly but the premise of having no free time for 2 years has me spiralling.

‘WHY AM I LIKE THIS?’ I scream into the void, as I navigate my frightening, newly blissful-seeming life.

‘I DON’T KNOW’ it shouts back.

As Nietzsche once said: if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

“Addicted to anxiety??”

Chaos is something I am far too familiar with.

I encourage you to think back on a culturally important historic moment; series 7 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. In one episode, Katya tells RuPaul about her struggles with anxiety, stress, self-doubt, and overthinking.

Katya, who has been open about her struggles with addiction, was then put completely on the back foot when RuPaul suggested that anxiety was another thing she was addicted to.

“I’ve never thought of that before?! I’ve been addicted to alcohol, crystal meth, cocaine… Addicted to anxiety? 🫢🤔” - Watch this iconic moment here

As this article that I've already shared (on the neuroscience of self-sabotage) outlined, people who are used to chaos, discord, and instability form an unhealthy familiarity with it.

They unconsciously find themselves in situations, relationships, and mindsets that continue to fuel their anxiety. It’s not something they welcome or enjoy, but the chaos feels like home. It’s something they can recognise, and to an extent, predict.

So when this starts to dissipate and they begin to feel comfortable or safe, it can arouse feelings of suspicion and unease. They might ask themselves: how long will it be before things go wrong again? Is this really what I want? Am I finally happy things are going well?

And naturally, this tends to bring up a lot of weird, unwanted feelings. Routine feels boring. Security feels uncertain. Change feels threatening. Being outside my personal comfort zone feels absolutely terrifying. I am still petrified that I’m going to fuck this all up somehow.

As I wrote in May, all I want to do is retreat to my old life or blow it up even though both of those things are what I fear the most. The OCD is OCD’ing harder than it has in a while and it’s because I’m *finally* getting what I want out of life.

Positive self-talk

When I get like this, I have to really have a word with myself. Sometimes LITERALLY. I need to drag myself back from the cliffs edge and remember why I was so adamant I wanted the thing in the first place.

I also need to remind myself that decisions aren’t rigid. It’s ok to make bad decisions, and make mistakes, and change your mind.

And I definitely need to convince myself that the Universe and my own brain aren’t waiting in the shadows, ready to make everything fall apart just because I’ve managed to achieve a moment of contentment. Invasive thoughts are powerful and scary things though.

If we’re being realistic, nothing worth doing is ever easy - and it rarely comes without sacrifice. It also requires a healthy dose of external validation.

Back when I was at school, my parents weren’t super focused on pushing me academically because I was a little nerd who liked learning. While Art was my main interest, English was the ‘special subject’ where my particular talents emerged.

I wasn’t great at everything (the D in Maths still haunts me despite the fact I now work with datasets almost daily) but by the time I got to GCSE age and later, college, I had a faculty of teachers pointing out to me that I had potential. The construct of academic reward was one that steadily built my confidence.

I even got put forward for a special and rare qualification. This is an unapologetic brag (just let me have this…) but in 2008 they had qualifications called Advanced Extension Awards which were aimed at the top 10% A-level students across the UK for their specialist subject area. 50% of students who sat these exams would fail. In my class, only me and one other girl passed. Only 18% of students who ever sat these exams achieved a Distinction. I was one of them.

To say I thrive on validation from academia is an understatement. This realisation was the confidence boost I needed to work hard at my undergraduate degree to get a First. I feel like those structures reward me for hard work, my creativity and my natural skills. I am motivated by the little numbers they write on your papers to signal a job well done. The stress and effort always felt worth it.

I thrive much less in workplace environments. Especially ones in which I am paid specifically for my creative skills. I find the social constructs and hierarchies difficult to navigate. I can never quite work out how to network, climb the ladder, or promote myself in the right ways. I find mixed feedback confusing and autocracy disheartening. My ego has taken a significant slump while wrestling with the world of work because it’s a game which I still don’t really understand, or at the very least can’t replicate the desired results as effectively as I’d like.

So returning to academia is not just a personal pursuit for knowledge but a very expensive vanity project. One that challenges me and teaches me new things, but also one that I hope will help me remember that I have a lot to give to the world if the right opportunity presents itself.

It’s no coincidence that I’ve suddenly hit a creative spike because perhaps my self-esteem is finally recovering. How ironic that being at peace (and pushing myself towards achievement) is the thing that now gives me anxiety. The last frontier. The therapy Final Boss.

I know that the definition of chaos here is narrow. You might be wondering why I am failing to acknowledge academic pressures as chaos. Perhaps because it’s a chaos I’ve had too much distance from for too long and forget what it feels like - because it’s the kind of chaos I’ve actively coveted. Or maybe it’s because I can only stomach small doses of chaos in situations where I do have some degree of control (I often wonder where the Old Me went when I begin to revel in healthy conflict and debate).

But the doubt has resurfaced itself this week and I’ve found myself wondering, can I still do this?

So wish me luck on this 2-year long journey, with it’s screenwriting detours, it’s sporadic blogging, it’s ill-advised creative writing tasks. Let’s welcome the weird side hustles and the difficulty juggling work and study. Let’s find out how I manage to sustain a healthy marriage, a bustling social life, helping my parents use a Bluetooth speaker, and keeping up to date with celebrity gossip - all while I learn an ACTUAL SCIENCE in place of learning how to write film reviews. (I’m not discrediting film reviews, it’s just that one of those things comes easy to me - and the other doesn’t).

As they say, today is the first day of the rest of my life.

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A quick round up

It’s been a little while since I did one of these, so here’s what’s keeping me sane while I lose my grip on sanity. And none of them involve the Taylor Swift ‘Life of a ShowGirl’ discourse.

📺 The Studio (Apple TV) - Despite it’s short first series run, I’m absolutely obsessed with this sit-com about the life of Hollywood studio head Matt Remick (Seth Rogan) and his team. Fully embracing cringe comedy, this reminds me of a flipped mirror version of Extras which (personal feelings on Ricky Gervais aside) is one of the best comedies ever written. I am already poised and ready for series 2.

📺 Platonic (Apple TV) - You can tell I’ve got a free subscription to Apple TV recently - and that Seth Rogen is their number one talent). This fun, light-hearted comedy with Rose Byrne is an easy, wholesome watch about the ups and downs of a male-female friendship.

🎬 Bring Her Back (Danny and Michael Phillipou) - Expect a full blog about the latest horrors I’ve been enjoying this October to add to my growing guide of recommendations but this has been one of my 2025 favourites. A truly harrowing horror from the directors of Talk to Me; foster kids Andy and Piper go to live with Cathy and her mute son Oliver. It becomes quickly apparent they are guarding some terrifying occult secrets.

🎬 Weapons (Zach Cregger) - The director of Barbarian returns with an intriguing mystery-come-horror that unravels why 17 children vanish into the night without a trace. Already a cult classic in the making, especially due to the appearance of everyone’s favourite diva Aunt Gladys, Weapons was one of the few horrors that delivered fully on its promises and then some..

🎭 Inside No. 9 STAGE / FRIGHT Live - I’ve been a fan of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton for as long as I can remember, even though League of Gentlemen definitely traumatised me as a child. The live version of their hit TV series Inside Number 9 is truly something else and I’d argue, one of the best things ever committed to the stage. It works as a love letter to both the theatre and horror as a genre. Without giving away any spoilers, the celebrity guest appearance brought me more joy than I could ever describe.

📖 Rebel Girl (Kathleen Hanna) - As if I’ve not got enough reading to do, I’ve started to dig into Kathleen Hanna’s autobiography. As the front woman of influential riot grrl band Bikini Kill, iconic Noughties trio Le Tigre, and the person who influenced Kurt Cobain to name the legendary ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, I just know this is going to be filled with some absolute gems of wisdom and historical pop culture goss. Also if you’ve not checked out 2013 documentary The Punk Singer, I would definitely recommend.

That’s all for this weeks unhinged, angsty diary-entrant style post. I would like to thank Sal Saperstein for making it possible. Leave me a comment or subscribe. Your gal needs the validation right now.

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