Write About Writing
I’m in the weeds with the book today. It’s tough, the rewriting, but it’s getting there. So instead of writing something brand new here, I want to share something that floated up out of my brain early in this process, when I was still dreaming about what the book would become. It’s a poem of sorts,…
Don’t Get Frilly With Me
To be a writer, you have to write.Obvious, I know. But recently I’ve been thinking about how often we skip over ‘first principles’ — the basic, fundamental facts — in pursuit of stuff that’s more glamorous or exciting.Between ghostwriting, coaching, editing, doing podcasts, going to events, and writing these newsletters, I spend a LOT of…
Freak Week
My friend Angie has an email newsletter called Kick Monday’s Ass. This week the subject line was ‘eating an elephant’. But because I am a child, my brain scrambled it on the way through, so I thought the subject line was ‘eating an elephant’s ass’, and I nearly died laughing. Eventually I realised that this was…
Cultivating Wonder
Today I’m listening to I Need Never Get Old by Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, on repeat, and loudly. It makes me wriggle around in my seat like a happy little kid. I can highly recommend it for the days you’re feeling like a bit of a grouch and for the life of you just can’t…
Samantha With The Good Hair
Today I was lurking on LinkedIn and a girl I went to high school with — Samantha — popped up in my feed. She was the top of the pile in my year. The coolest of the cool kids. (Turns out she still is — she works as a special consultant to the UN in…
The Cost Of Optimism
The take-away coffee — my first for the year — was as good as I hoped it would be. It was significantly bolstered by it being a spectacularly sunny, 23°C day, with a warm breeze whispering through the newly-leafy trees. It was a beautiful mid-afternoon break, promptly followed by a conniption about the amount of…
Hope On The Horizon
I’m going to get a haircut on Friday, and to have a take-away coffee and a walk tomorrow with a girlfriend.School kids ran down the street for their triumphal return to class this morning, and the sun was out, and warm.As lockdown slowly begins to abate, I can feel a tide rising. A deep, powerful…
Is That True?
Yesterday I wrote to you about the power of why as a way to explore yourself on a deeper level.Today I have another question for you to take with you on your next journalling session: is it true?Here’s why this question is important, whether you’re writing or relating or just trying to figure your shit out.Thoughts — which…
But WHY?
Imagine your cute lil four year-old self.You’re all squishy cheeks and wide-eyed wonder. You follow your grown-ups around, constantly asking why?Why is your hair white? Why don’t spiders get stuck in their own webs? Why can’t I put the cat in the microwave?There’s a pretty good chance a grown-up rounded on you one day (or many…
Proof Of Life
This week has been a brutal master class in the power of denial.In case you missed it, Meghan Markle, who is married to Prince Harry, told Oprah that during her time working as a royal, she felt suicidal, and that her requests for support were stonewalled. There has been a veritable tsunami of people calling…