If you’ve spoken with me about books at all in the last year, I’ve either recommended you read only classic Sci-Fi or I’ve enthusiastically talked your ear off about two books, one – Little Fires Everywhere, and the other – Where the Crawdads Sing, both exquisite. Usually, around Autumn time, I start getting a hankering …
Why I Started Painting
Last year something called me to pick up a set of brushes and start playing with different types of paint and art styles. I began painting watercolour flowers and clouds on tiny scraps of paper, taping them to the walls of my flat which fast became an ever-changing gallery. I’m not entirely certain what I …
Does coffee make my anxiety worse?
I love coffee. Everything about it is utterly seductive from the smooth taste to the way the steam drifts upwards in curls and dissipates into the air. It wants me to drink it, and I want it too, but I resist for my own sake. I spoke with my doctor a few weeks ago about …
Regaining Balance
No matter what you are healing from the path is never a straight line and believing any different is contrary to reality: We ebb, flow, rise and fall through life. When things are good it’s important to recognise that and likewise when things start to go off-piste. Personally, I struggle to find a balance between …
Routine
Those who have met me IRL know that not only am I likely to trip over myself at any given moment, but I am also a walking contradiction. I want to live in a hot country, but hate hot weather. I’d very much like to learn to cook but have the patience of a small …
Book Review: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
When it comes to reading I’m quite fussy; it takes quite a lot to keep me interested. I admit I have the attention span of a small, very easily distracted child… and I’m 32… and it’s only getting worse! I’d heard great things about Celeste Ng’s second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, even memorising the cover …
Slow Living
I like my life. I built it this way: everything stripped back to the bare bones with only loved things allowed. I started here, in a tiny studio flat I once hated, with a cat that insisted that swinging from my arm by his teeth should be his sole method of transport, and the quietness …
Am I the Lobster in the Ballroom?
Following on from the last post I wrote about Liz Gilbert’s book, Big Magic, I’d like to share some thoughts on one of the parts of the book which really struck me. Towards the end of the book is a chapter on trust and in particular an anecdote about a costume party… Liz writes about …
Reading List: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
Liz and I have a somewhat odd relationship. We’ve never met and she has no idea who I am, yet I feel a familiarity about her. Perhaps because in all her writings as Elizabeth Gilbert, her voice seems so intrinsically “her” on the page that she could almost be sat across a table in a …
4 Reasons you should know your Myers Briggs Personality Type
I do this thing, which I have adorably (cough cough) termed as “Pinterest Therapy”, where I pin everything within the wormhole of Pinterest, which resonates with me on various issues I’m dealing with at that moment, and eventually, over time, I don’t feel the need to pin on that topic anymore. (I find this a …
Being OK with a Calm Life
On the wall of my studio, is a small quote pinned by the place where I make my morning coffee and nowadays I often come to rest on these words. It’s okay to be happy with a calm life And, boy, I haven’t always believed that. There’s always been a battle to fight when it …
On Minimalism for the Soul
Life is full of stuff we don’t need, want or even realise is there until it falls out of a cupboard while you’re trying to remove a blockage from the u-bend of your bathroom sink. Ok. So it wasn’t just anything that (persistently) fell on me, it was one of those Wii boards we all …
