Writing.
I write about life, work, people and place. Expect oversharing. Here are some of my most popular essays from my newsletter, The Primordial Scoop.
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She Cried for Five Years
After a two-week hiatus I’m back, writing to you from the other side.
We moved. House, city. Life.
We had no internet, intermittent childcare and the emotional heaviness affected everyone - and I’m including the cat in that statement.
Unbraiding Sweetgrass
“Hold out your hands and let me lay upon them a sheaf of freshly picked sweetgrass, loose and flowing, like newly washed hair...Breathe it in and you start to remember things you didn’t know you’d forgotten.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer, ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’
Stop Waiting. Start Being.
Waiting to take action is actually one of my crummiest qualities, along with self-righteousness, inconsistency and all those failed attempts to stop drinking in the week.
Waiting for Friday night. Waiting to lose weight so I can buy jeans again. Waiting for the children to grow. Everything is just waiting.
Do You Love Your Work? Part Two! ❤️
Take a space walk between your deeply-held attitudes towards employment and the outer galaxy of important work that does more than build value for shareholders.
You don’t have to be in an ashram to start imbibing your very important human existence with meaning, in big ways and small.
Do You Love Your Work? I’m Really Asking
Do you love your work? My father was a taxi driver. My mother did different things but mainly shop work for the last decade of her working life. Did they love it?
The notion of loving your work is a modern one, that marks a certain privilege.
Why Do We Get All This Life If We Don’t Ever Use It?
Shirley Valentine is a housewife in Liverpool, who lives in a nice semi with her awful husband. She spends her days talking to the wall, reminiscing about being that young schoolgirl with great legs and bags of spirit.
What happened to her? What happened to us all?
How to Be Yourself (Today)
Do you read all those articles and watch all those videos about authenticity, and agree with everything, and then go out in the world and absolutely do not do any of it?
Me too.
Being authentic is one of the hardest things in the world, or I find it to be so.
Is It Time to Stop Trusting Our Gut?
Trust your gut, they say. Your intuition. Your feelings.
But what if your gut is the most unreliable voice you know?
The gut is for younger, bigger emotions. We’re older now and the stakes are higher. With a family in tow and money on the line, it’s time for a new set of skills. I can’t rely on the gut alone.
It’s time for a meeting of head, heart and gut.
Your Mistakes Can Die Tonight.
My friend is low. My friend is lonely. He feels cut off, typing away in a room in a house. Zoom calls are a poor substitute for interaction with colleagues and god knows they’re forcing us to create a whole new work persona, like we weren’t forcing it enough already.
Cheerily smiling and waving into your own laptop. “Yes, I’m good, thanks. Are you?”
Of course not! No one is.
“She’s All Right, But the Goldfish is Dead.”
My brother Declan is five years older than me. He is a journalist, and has lived in London, New Zealand, Istanbul, Athens and now Abu Dhabi.
He lives like an International Man of Mystery.
He is always posting pictures from amazing cities and no one ever knows who takes them. Who does take those pictures? “A friend.”