during lockdown, I put app timers (1 hour a day) on my big three at the time (Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, but I got rid of Twitter years ago so that one is no longer an issue, at least), but I always found myself clicking the ‘add more time’ button, far more often than I would like to admit. It was too easy to do, and I needed more friction to really break the habit. I've had all push notifications, apart for messages, off since lockdown too, and I started doing ‘unplugged evenings’ on Sundays a few years ago, which essentially just meant that my husband and I couldn't use our phones on Sunday nights when we were together. We still do these now, and enjoy them, but I needed to make them more of a daily habit.

exactly a month ago today, one of my lovely internet friends, Kee, posted a Substack article titled the pursuit of freedom from my phone, which I absolutely loved. It's an incredibly honest post about her experience in how much time she was losing to her phone, and hearing that someone else was struggling, especially someone who has so many offline hobbies like I do, really helped me to feel less alone in my inability to put my phone away and engage with the things that I really wanted to be doing instead. We were chatting in the comments and she recommended the Opal app to me, so I downloaded it right away. I will be upfront and tell you that while I did have the 3 day free trial of Opal Pro, I cancelled it immediately afterwards so that I wouldn't have to pay a dime for yet another app, but I am very happy to let you know that I haven't missed any of the pro features, and it has worked wonders for me just in its most basic, and free, form.

the rules that I have set up include Opal blocking my social media apps from 8am - 4pm on weekdays, and from 9am - 12pm on weekends, so that I get my mornings back every day as I can't scroll first thing anymore, but this also allows me to be more efficient and less distracted on weekdays.

this post is a celebration of everything I have had time to do during my month without doomscrolling.

let's start with media - and before you judge me, I don't think that finally having the time to enjoy some shows which have been on my list forever is a bad thing, or means that I have just switched from a small screen to a big screen, it's simply enrichment in my enclosure and you have to give a girl that!

media

• rewatched the entirety of Sabrina the Teenage Witch on DVD

• started one tree hill on DVD (I finished everything else on this list but this is the longest show of them all and will take extra time - very excited about it)

• elle

• widow's bay

• the haunting of bly manor (all 9 episodes in 24 hours, I loved it so much)

• the haunting of hill house (can you tell we celebrate summerween in this house?)

• season 3 of the dallas cowboys cheerleaders

• season 4 of sullivan's crossing

• season 5 part 2 of abbotts elementary

• the final season of the bear

• motherland

• amandaland

• I will find you

read 9 books, one of which was a re-read of the turn of the screw, which if you have read it, you know how incredibly verbose it is - the fact that I had time for this alone is incredible.

everything else

• had four weekly calligraphy sessions

• sent five hand-written letters

• had six meet ups where I was much more present

• mastered the perfect at-home oat milk vanilla iced chocolate

• sat outside on a cold, (what a joy to be cold during these heatwaves), summer evening with my in-laws and stargazed for an hour while discussing a flower that I keep seeing everywhere and have fallen in love with. My mother-in-law has informed me that it's a variety of bindweed, and that it smells like vanilla. I love it even more, now. Yes, I could have Googled this, but this was way more wholesome.

• I have also implemented a rule in our house where if we think we know the answer to something, (where we know an actor from, a word that we definitely know but have forgotten apart from the letter it starts with), we just have to think, and wait. No pulling up IMDB in the middle of a movie, just wait. Our brains will eventually retrieve the information if we exercise them enough and give them time, it's always worked so far. (the word I couldn't remember but knew started with ‘M’ was montessori!) it's so much more satisfying to scream ‘montessori!’ three conversations later, instead of looking it up. I learnt this rule from Melanie Murphy, and I'm glad I did. Not checking my phone during movies, or automatically checking it during any silences or lulls in my life is a work in progress but I'm already feeling better for it!

• we went back out into my in laws’ garden the next day and played with the seeds from a smokebush which had fallen off, while chatting and watching the butterflies. Nature is still beautiful and fascinating, and the birds still sing in the morning, we just have to look up from our phones long enough to notice them.

• went on many, many walks to find and give love to friendly neighbourhood cats (right as I was writing this post, I took a break to go outside because my husband sent me a text to say he was on his way home and there were so many chatty cats out, so I obviously dropped everything to go see them!)

• did a week-long Overcoming Overspending course run by Paige Pritchard (more on this later)

my thoughts and observations now that I am a month in

scrolling/opening social media whenever I want to is such a hard habit to break, and I am only at the beginning of this journey, but it is working and I am finding that I'm not rushing to open the apps as soon as they unlock anymore. I actually forgot that TikTok existed the other day which I never thought would happen. It always feels impossible to make changes until you make them.

for the days where I do find myself falling back into mindlessly scrolling, I always try to remember one of Michelle B's tips which she mentions in this video where she checks in with herself periodically while mid-scroll and asks herself if she's still enjoying her time scrolling. Asking ‘how do I feel right now? / am I having a 7/10 time?’ every now and then gives you a chance to realise that you're actually ‘full’ from social media usage, not enjoying it anymore, and then you can stop. For me, if I can't remember what I learnt or liked about the last video I watched, I am done!

during this month, I got two fillings (the cavities existed prior to be downloading Opal I promise, it wasn't like downloadable content from hell or something), but I noticed that when one of my best friends very lovingly sent me some beautiful flowers to congratulate me on how brave I was for getting a filling, I opened Instagram to post a photo of them simply out of habit, (after profusely thanking them privately, of course), but it was so interesting to me to be met with one of the funny ‘no, you can't do that' Opal screens at midday, on a random Tuesday. I was six days in at that point and I knew that I wouldn't be able to open Instagram for another four hours and yet, I still tried. Old habits really do die screaming, I guess.

I also do think that Opal sometimes gets my screen time allowance a bit wrong. My app timers which I had set before getting the app are still on, so when Opal blocks me out after only using thirty minutes of my daily sixty minutes, I definitely notice, but I'm actually okay with it the longer that I have the app, and the more I get used to being off of my phone for longer than I'm on it. I think that Opal potentially counts today's app usage over the span of 24 hours, instead of from midnight to midnight like my in-app timers do, which might explain this. I also think the on-screen Opal timer very visibly showing me how much time I'm wasting on any one app puts juuuuust the right amount of shame into me.

due to it being a month now, but also due to not knowing when Opal will kick me out prematurely, I have developed a very ‘get in, get out’ mentality to both apps which is amazing, I post what I want, have a look on the ‘following’ (there's a way to filter Instragram to only show you posts from people you follow and nothing else and it's life-changing) / ‘friends’ tab on TikTok, catch up on any messages that friends have sent and then leave the apps alone. It's bliss, and it leads me to my next point nicely…

I have learnt that the less I scroll, the less I spend, which is incredibly helpful as I have also been on an overcoming overspending journey for years, and I have realised that the two definitely go hand in hand. During Paige's course that I mentioned earlier, I learnt some new bits, but mainly had a refresher on things I've already learnt from her as I have followed her content for years, but two things to teach you if you're new to her work, and want to start this journey too:

1. make use of wishlists - I just have a mobile bookmark folder with everything that I ever want to buy, and then I revisit it every time I get paid, if I still want something after it sitting in the wishlist for 4+ weeks, then I actually do want it, and I'll get it, but a lot of the time, it was just some trending item I thought I wanted and by the time I gave it some time and space, the moment had passed and I could move on! beautiful things can exist without me owning them! who knew!

2. another principle of Paige's that I really like is the ‘did I know this thing existed 24 hours ago?’, which also helps with keeping me from impulsively buying the aforementioned trending item of the week before I check myself. I've also really implemented her ‘will future me still want this, or would she want the money back?’, and that also really curbs the impulse buying! Unsubscribing from all marketing emails also has the same effect. Paige has a podcast and a book coming out soon and I really highly recommend her work.

final observation, and I don't know the answer to this one, so maybe you could help me, is that I am worried that we are all so addicted to our phones because we are using them as a replacement for community. Most of us don't have friendship groups where we all live in the same apartment building, and will see each other in Central Perk in the middle of our work day every day, so we substitute the in-person connections that we crave, with our phones. There's no doubt that phones can be a fantastic tool for connection, of course I adore my friends and want to talk to them all the time!! However, it can also mean that we don't look our partners in the eye when they walk into a room at home, so then how do you do it all? how do you react to every meme, like every photo, answer every message, be available enough but not overly available to a point where it takes over your life?

I've read about people who designate an hour a day, (can be the same hour every day, or a different one), to catch up with their phone-based responsibilities, before returning to their in-real-life life, and maybe that's the answer? or maybe it's more frequent meet ups, (while also keeping the cost of socialising in mind, so maybe virtual watch parties? I love these, I have one scheduled for tomorrow!), maybe it's starting traditions like regularly occuring meet ups which take the back and forth out of planning, or weekly phone/video calls/voice notes?

what do you think? let me know!

Leave a comment

usual rules apply - take what resonates, leave what doesn't!

to start with the obvious:

🪄 anything I can do to get off of my phone has super helped! it really is this damn phone sometimes, and this little rectangle, apart from the fact that all of my lovely friends reside there in between our meet ups, can do a lot of damage sometimes. I have been doing puzzles, writing letters to friends, going to the cinema, reading six books a week (May 22nd - 29th 2026, I will always think of you fondly), watching Off Campus front to back twice in the same week, making a real dent in my tv/film list, listening to records, (I have been especially dancing around the house to Florescence, Maisie Peters can do absolutely no wrong), and learning new words to expand my vocabulary!

a good mix of both useful, and whimsical activities there.

🪄 went on a pre-booked Santorini holiday for our five year wedding anniversary - I'm semi joking about this one because it is absolutely not plausible to do this every time I fall into a depressive episode, (I mean, a girl can dream), but it is worth mentioning because it was so lovely to spend a full nine days wearing my very favourite outfits, eating incredible meals, taking in the views, and petting as many cats as possible! any break is a break, even if we take a week off to sit at home in bed. I will absolutely be doing that more when I feel like this, too.

🪄 speaking of wearing my favourite outfits, I usually dress my very best even to go get groceries anyway, but especially when I'm not myself, the ‘look good, feel good’ thing really does work wonders.

🪄 engaging with my community, in any way that I can, whether it's going to town meetings, staying with someone who has fallen over, assisting out-of-towners who need help with booking a cab, spending locally, anything I can do. help thy neighbour as they say. it does feel good to feel like you belong somewhere and that you're making a difference. love and belonging isn't on Maslow's hierarchy of needs for nothing, after all.

🪄 going on walks, even if it's just a very short walk to see if any neighbourhood cats are out and in the mood to grace me with their presence, sometimes they'll even let me pet them, and heal me with their purrs!

🪄 creating more and consuming less. I saw a video recently, (looked everywhere for it, and I can't find it, I'll keep looking!), which said every time that we get the urge to check how well the last thing we put out into the world is, or isn't doing, we should ignore that urge, and create something new instead, and it's so true. A lot of the things I create aren't for public consumption but whenever something is, I do, as we all do, fall into the trap of checking likes, comments, and views, when that isn't the important part about creating. It's about loving what we make, and building momentum so that we can create even more. I write, I scrapbook, I journal, I do calligraphy. I create more.

🪄 schedule joy into your calendar, and always have something to look forward to. at the time of writing, I am two weekends into a seven weekend busy period, (and probably wouldn't advise more than this without a rest weekend!), but the point I'm making is that I'm so excited about everything I have done so far, and everything I have coming up. Pasta catch ups, pottery painting, celebrating two birthdays, and a festival that my family and I attend every year. it's all worth feeling excited about, and any tough week feels better when you know that there's a gorgeous day out at the end of it.

🪄 I recently hosted a DVD weekend with one of my best friends, they provided My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and I provided Wuthering Heights plus snacks and drinks in cute glasses, it was so much fun. I also introduced them to my favourite drink, the ever-delicious Hugo Spritz, which was very refreshing and super needed during the May heatwave!

🪄 I also got five new tattoos in the same week, and I absolutely love them all! there is nothing like a tattoo appointment that you booked in months ago finally approaching, and getting to customise your avatar with cute stickers! Three of them were done by Jade at Love More in Brighton, from her sheet of mini flash, and the remaining two were custom script tattoos done by Maly at Luna Nova in Surrey. I'm huge on getting positive affirmations tattoed on to me, and I've wanted these two for a while. I absolutely love all five tattoos and I have now completed my tattoo list, (not the first time I have said that though! I now have 42 tattoos so it doesn't take much for me to get more!) Maly, Lucile (co-owner of Luna Nova), and I also went for dinner afterwards and that was so lovely, too! Doing things for myself and travelling on my own again after my accident has been a little scary, but it's important to regain independence and confidence, and I'm proud of myself.

🪄 while we're discussing customising my avatar, I also dyed my hair. back in mid-March, I sat down with my hairdresser and I told her that I was bored of my hair and didn't know what I wanted - I knew that I didn't want to go blonde, or red again, and I also knew that I couldn't lose a lot of length because I have bangs, and I'm not cool enough to pull off the Dora the Explorer look! she worked her magic and gave me some dark brown highlights which I absolutely loved, and then at the start of June, we went in and added some lighter pieces of brown for some more dimension, and I love it even more, now. during the heatwave, I took to embracing my natural waves a bit more, and enhancing them with overnight plaits for heatless curls, and it looks so cool with my newly brown hair, very Allie Hayes, and I'm into it. never underestimate the power of a haircut which makes you feel like you again.

🪄 finally found a replacement for my favourite satin liquid lipstick which has been discontinued (RIP, ‘Brave’ by Rare Beauty) which has also made me feel more like myself again! It's one of the Hourglass matte lipsticks in the shade Tigerlily, and I love it so much! (wearing above)

🪄 treat yourself to the little things if you can - they don’t have to be expensive. while I was in Brighton, I had some time before my tattoos, so I headed into Daisy Daisy just to look, and I found the birthday cake jellycat that I so desperately wanted to be my 30th birthday gift from me to me. I had literally looked everywhere for her towards the end of my 29th year, ended up giving up, only to randomly stumble upon her now that I'm halfway to 32. she was not in the budget for this month but! oh well! always get the trinket! my desk is FULL of trinkets and I love them all!!

more affordably, my husband and I got both kinds of fries after going to the cinema the other day because we couldn't decide if we wanted chunky chips or skin-on fries. life is short. get both.

🪄 go big or go home when it comes to celebrations. it makes everyday life feel more special. while we were in Santorini, we went to a wine tasting, and both absolutely fell in love with the Santo Wines Assyrtiko (a Greek white wine) so we brought a bottle back home with us, and opened it on the night we came home from our Finding Emily and fries date night for no real reason except that we were having a good night! life is special and we should celebrate it!

🪄 in the complete opposite vein to celebrating, I have screamed, and shout, and let it all out. a lot. I have cried over devastating things like thinking I will never ever get used to my composite bonding, I'll always hate that this happened, and I'll never get over it, to much smaller scale events like accidentally hiding a column in an Excel spreadsheet only to find that it just will not come back

🪄 slowing down. this one has been huge for me. I used to race through everything in my life like I was being hunted by a pack of blood-thirsty bears. on the day that I fell and hurt my teeth, we were already late to the retirement party so we were rushing to that, and I was digging in my tote bag trying to find the congratulations card so that I could have it in my hand ready to go, and then, the next thing I knew, I was on the ground. maybe if I had slowed down, taken a breath, known it was okay to be late, that it didn't matter, things could have been different. take it slow. everyone would rather that you arrive late than injured. I promise. I also learnt from this TikTok that rushing only saves about 4-5% of time, which really opened my eyes! it is absolutely not worth the stress and overwhelm that it creates in our bodies.

🪄 going to the dentist and booking in for two fillings for the cavities that I did not know I had, because unfortunately self care isn't just painting our nails and bubble baths, it's also keeping an eye on our health, our finances, and all of the other things that we keep putting off.

I know that a lot of this post is specific to me and what has been helping me, and I hope that it'll give you some ideas of small joys that we can still access while sad, but really and truly, do what works for you so that you can feel better. If you need to declare it summerween in June and start your Gilmore Girls rewatch now, (oh, sorry, this one is also applicable to me), do it.

If you need to spend a weekend in bed, only leaving to refill your water bottle or to charge your tablet so that you can rewatch Off Campus for the third time, do that, too.

I lean quite intensely into my comfort shows and my fangirl nature when I'm feeling down as it gives me something to take my mind off things, so if that's also you, you're not alone, and don't ever let anyone shame you for that.

if Substack worked the way that Piczo did back in the 2000s, my page would currently be playing Edge of the Earth by The Beaches, because I have had it playing on a loop since hearing it in the show.

in the words of Sheryl Crow, if it makes you happy, it can't be that bad.

life is too short to be so serious, and we need our little joys!

In short, I was not doing well.

When I had my final session on may 21st, I cried when I re-read the notes from my first session, because I had come such a long way in the year since my referral. I'm writing this post so that I can use it as a resource to prove to myself, (my brain loves proof), that if I ever find myself in a bad place again, that I can use the tools I have learnt to get better again. This is mainly a post for me, but if you're like me and you struggle with anything that I do, maybe it can be a resource for you too.

Saying all of this, I understand how incredibly easy it is to add other people's compulsions/triggers to our own lists, so if reading this would harm you instead of helping you, please do feel free to click away from it, and I'll see you in my next post! <3

The main OCD beliefs that I struggle with the most are overestimation of danger, overimportance of thoughts, (magical thinking), and desire for certainty, so the majority of this post will discuss my experiences with these.

I guess we'll start with what brought me to my GP in the first place which was that I was experiencing panic attacks whenever I left the house, even while I was out doing things that I enjoyed with friends, I would not feel truly safe in my body until I was back at home, and it was starting to ruin a lot of good things for me.

There's nothing wrong with being a homebody, but for a homebody, I am also an incredibly social person, and I enjoy wearing my whimsical outfits and having fun on the weekends. I'm terrified of going to the doctor, but I decided that enough was enough, and anything that kept me at home in pyjamas instead of swanning about in a cute dress had to go.

It turns out that like everything, it goes back to my childhood - I was raised to believe that everyone and everything outside of the house was a threat, and that kind of core belief takes up residence and burrows deep into your bones, and then that overestimation of danger started bleeding into other areas of my life, and unfortunately for me, into my home.

Ways that overestimation of danger shows up in my life:

(please skip to the ‘everything that helped’ section if you need to)

• if my husband uses mold spray anywhere in the house, (important), and I smell it, my brain convinces me that I have eaten it, and I have been poisoned (untrue, and yet terrifying)

• I am incredibly wary of bread, and afraid to accidentally eat mold. the same with tinned goods, I am vigilant about checking cans for dents out for fear of botulism

• I can be hesistant around new foods for fear that I'll be allergic to them, which can be particularly annoying as one of the best things about recovering from my eating disorder has been my enjoyment of food!!! I like trying new things! this one sucks!

• feeling the need to urgently change my pad every four hours on the dot, to avoid toxic shock syndrome, because it says to change “every 4 - 8 hours”, and my brain tends to latch on to the minimum amount of time before something becomes worrisome, instead of the maximum

• could not take my prescribed anxiety medication because I read the side effects and decided I would rather stick with the devil I know. I luckily ended up not needing the medication as therapy helped enough, but I absolutely hate this one. I think medication works wonders for people and I hope I would be able to take it going forward, if I ever need it again in the future

• the compulsion to fully empty my bladder before falling asleep. If I feel like I need to go even slightly, I'm afraid that I'll wet the bed (this has never happened, but compulsions are not logical)

• my brain skipping steps and thinking ‘cut = sepsis’ instead of cut + bacteria + infection = an opportunity for sepsis to occur. black and white thinking was ruining my life.

• needing to count syllables and only feeling safe and comforted when I'd get to a syllable of five, when people were talking to me/when watching TV. this one was hellish, 10/10 would not recommend.

• felt unsafe in my body unless I took my lunch breaks/signed out of work when the time on the clock was a round number, because other numbers are bad and evil. I genuinely believed that my colleagues would notice and judge me for this. I've since stopped doing this, and nobody has said a thing. the cage of my own mind is made of nails.

• being afraid of petting cats in case I am allergic and I just don't know it yet. deeply upsetting. if we're friends in real life then I bet you have no idea how badly I struggled with this, I was in post-pet panic attack central a lot of the time, but you'd never know it

• seeking reassurance that I wasn't in danger, which would bring me some short-term relief before I needed a top-up, so I'd ask again, and again, and again

The good news is that I currently don't struggle with any of these, so if you are future Esha and you're reading this, here's a reminder that it can get better.

Everything that helped:

• watching my therapist purposefully hit a tin of baby carrots against her desk a few times, denting it, and then eating the whole thing. exposure therapy is the wild, wild west, and I applaud every single therapist out there who do these exposures for us. she did not get ill in any way and it did wonders for my brain. the brain loves proof.

  

• something else that really helped with this one was reading about whatever the fear is, (e.g. botulism), from a non-sensensationalised source. you would be shocked at how little was actually reported on this, from official sources.

• the realisation that people don't talk about the amount of times something went right was also huge for me. I thought that hold luggage going missing was constantly happening, but it turns out that it isn't, it's just that we only hear about it online when it does happen, which can trick our brain into being fearful unnecessarily

• the acknowledgement that none of us really have control. if you read my last post then you'll know that I recently injured myself quite badly - the first thing my mother in law said to me when it happened was that I was wearing sensible shoes at the time so there was nothing to blame, and she's right. You can do everything “right”, and accidents can still happen. We don't have the control we think we have, and it's a grave misuse of our imaginations to spend our time worrying and ruminating about things we can't do anything about

• my therapist told me a story about a time where she injured her knee in such a way where every condition for sepsis to occur was met, and instead, it healed up perfectly well and that was it. the worst case scenario is not a guarantee like our brains try to convince us that it is.

• behavioural experiments really helped my compulsion to count - my therapist would play videos from my favourite shows and say ‘okay, this time, you can count on your fingers for 30 seconds as we watch’, followed by another 30 seconds where I was not allowed to count. It was tough but at my core, I am a rule follower, and I complied. Once my brain could see that I could stop, the compulsion became a lot easier to manager, and it still is easier to kick if I start again, now. I'll keep saying it, but sometimes the brain just needs proof. The more that you can show your brain that you can cope without something, the easier it becomes to do from that point on.

• in the same way, I tripped a few times when we were in Greece and managed to catch myself/not have a traumatic injury like the last time I fell, which rebuilt my confidence with going outside solo again

• a concept borrowed from Internal Family Systems where you talk to the compulsion and hear what it has to say about why it's there was also incredibly helpful for me, my syllable counting compulsion told me that it was there to comfort me, but I realised that I now have other means of finding comfort, and so I could let this compulsion go

• remembering that my thoughts are not all facts, and not all helpful - identifying unhelpful thoughts and cutting them off by looking at evidence for and against

• sometimes a moment of distraction is also enough to remove the urgency of a compulsion, I no longer think about my bladder profusely before bed because I used to do cat-themed logic puzzles instead of going to the bathroom again until the urge went away. It wasn't a real bodily need, so it didn't last through the distraction.

• over time, my reassurance seeking got better - I went from ‘omg, I think I'm dying” to ‘can you come in here and see if you can also smell toast?’ which is far more logical of a question

The main ‘overestimation of danger’-esque thing that I am now currently struggling with is how I would absolutely love to adopt a cat, but I have never had a pet before, and I am nervous about what it would be like to have an adorable but unpredictable animal in the house, and how that would impact my life. I used to think that I was slowly poisoning myself and my family and now I am worried about my trinkets being accidentally broken - isn't it wonderful the things that we have the space to worry about when we heal?

Ways that overimportance of thoughts (magical thinking) shows up in my life:

(please skip to the ‘everything that helped’ section if you need to)

• I would not let myself listen to/sing certain lyrics for fear that I would manifest them into existence, I absolutely adore the entire Wuthering Heights soundtrack, but I 100% could not listen to House unless I was outside of the house - you can't die in a house that you're not in, I guess!

• I could not wear the red nail polish that I was wearing when I found a benign breast lump back in September because I had incorrectly assigned meaning to the nail polish and thought I'd find something else if I wore it again

• struggled with journalling anything that wasn't gratitude journalling, could not write down anything negative because what if someone found it and thought that my joyful, bubbly, happy-go-lucky thing was just an act?

• thinking that any feelings of anger made me like my Dad, even though I am nothing like him and express anger in a completely different way to him

Everything that helped:

• recognising that manifesting is about intention. I am a spiritual person and I do actively manifest things, but when I do that, I play the frequency vibration for the thing I am trying to manifest, and I intentionally focus my thoughts on to what it is that I want. Absentmindedly singing along to a song is not the same thing, and my brain knows the difference

• I also went to Against the Current's 15th anniversary gig, and listening to them sing ‘Paralysed’ reminded me that there is a younger version of me who loved this song and had no issue singing along to it, which gave me hope that there's a future version of me that could do it too

• I wore the red nail polish again, and nothing bad happened. I did fall into a depressive episode the next day, and I still didn't think to blame the nail polish colour because I knew it wasn't because of that. It did take me a full six months to wear it again, but the fact is that I did it

• overcoming my fear of negative thoughts has been life-changing for me. journalling away rage is one of the most useful things that I have learnt to do. I'm now not sure what I was afraid of someone finding in there, that I'm a human? who feels other feelings beyond happiness sometimes? of course I do!

• since leaving therapy, I've been working on strengthening my inner therapist voice, and I know that she would say that it's okay to be scared, or angry, and to feel all feelings. emotions aren't meant to be feared, and they do need to be expressed. It doesn't make me angry like him, it makes me angry like me, and it's 100% not the same thing

The desire for certainty is a massive struggle of mine, and it's what the bulk of my therapy work was around, even though I had no idea that I struggled with this when I first started.

I once sobbed during therapy because I could not tell where a friend and I stood, I thought that we would never speak again, and then I started to cry harder because I felt so stupid about ‘wasting’ a session on this, when I have been through so much worse, and this isn't what I came to therapy for. My therapist looked at me, and very calmly said ‘you can never get too far from the onion’, meaning that everything we struggle with, even if it seems unrelated, it's all layers of the same diagnosis. It turns out that me keeping an internal tracker in my head which pinpointed when I last saw or heard from each of my friends, and feeling upset if I deemed it to be too long ago for any of them, was very much the onion. It was my inability to cope with uncertainty, my need to know that everyone is okay with me, and nobody is mad, that I haven't accidentally upset anyone and they just haven't told me yet, but the truth is we can never have 100% certainty on other people, because we can’t know what they don't tell us, we can only control ourselves.

What I had to then control myself to not do is send an impulsive, poorly thought out message to blow everything up, I had such a deep fear of uncertainty that I would rather have done that to gain some clarity than sat with the feeling, and coped with it. You'll be pleased to know that I did not, and would not ever send a message like that, but here's everything I did instead.

• sat with the emotion with kindness and compassion - being accepting of my feelings and not putting limitations on what I allow myself to feel

• somatic therapy - closed my eyes and visualised the hurt I was going through, worked out where in my body that I could feel it, gave it a colour, a shape, and then it seemed more bearable and I could envision it decreasing in size

• learnt that there's a way to care about my people and my friendships without having them consume me whole

• meditation and breath work

• poured into my numerous hobbies instead of allowing myself to overthink and ruminate

I'm currently waiting on a follow-up dentist appointment to find out if the tooth sensitivity I experienced once I got back into the UK is due to the barometric pressure change on the plane, or if it's because my nerve has died, and I need a root canal. It's currently been ten days since I found out those are the options of diagnosis that I'm looking at, and I have barely thought about it. If I need a root canal on tuesday, then I very likely already need one today, so there is no point worrying about it and going through it twice. As you can hear, OCD therapy has done wonders for me.

When I first got hurt a few weeks ago, all I could think about was why this happened to me, right as I had made all of this OCD progress, and had only one remaining therapy session left, and then I remembered a tiktok that I reposted back at the start of the year, which is about how sometimes we are assigned a mountain to prove to others that it can be moved, and then I wrote this post, so that in the case that we have the same mountain, you can watch me do my absolute best to move it, and know that you can too.

I'm not going to lie and say that it's going to be easy sailing for either you or me, but we're going to try, and if we do slip up and revert back to our instinctive lizard brains like I did in the emergency dentist office at the start of the month, we're going to remember that our brains sometimes work on instinct to protect us. I was terrified that I had spoken too much and moved all of the numbing gel around and so now it wouldn't work. I had already been in enough pain that day, and if I had to feel the composite bonding procedure on top of that, I would have lost what was left of my mind, so my brain sent me on an reassurance seeking spiral in a bid to protect myself from more pain. It felt humiliating to ‘go backwards’ in that moment, but I understand now that it was just my brain reverting back to factory settings and aiming to protect me. Healing isn't linear.

Before I go, I want to leave you with this TikTok. 41.1% of people with OCD struggle with suicidal ideation and I am a part of that percentage, so I took the Zero Suicide Alliance awareness training so that I would know what to do if someone like me needed to talk about it. Please talk about it. I know that this whole post was incredibly vulnerable, but vulnerability breeds vulnerability, and we have to talk about this so that the percentage does not continue increasing.

The training is short, and free, so please join me in taking it if you feel compelled to!

okay that's it, please take care of yourselves and I'm sure I'll have more to catch you up on soon!

The 3rd May was just another day, started out like any other, just another day that I had the worst day of my life.

Okay, that's dramatic, even for a Jesse McCartney rendition, but truly, it was supposed to be such a normal day, and it ended up devolving into total chaos. Before I start going into all of this, I have to tell you how grateful I am, because that's the kind of girl that I am. I so often travel alone, so I'm grateful that my husband was right there with me, in the moments where I found myself flat on the floor in the middle of a bike lane, bruised and bloodied, feeling air between my teeth where nobody should ever feel air between their teeth, completely in shock, and shaking, at least I wasn't alone. I'm grateful that I then walked into a home surrounded by family, who did everything right - comforted me, let me cry, called 111 for me, left me alone when I wanted it, and cuddled me when I needed it. I am grateful that it wasn't a lot worse, I could've had a concussion, I could've broken (other) bones, it could've cost the earth to fix, the list goes on and on forever as to how bad this could've been, and I am so grateful that it wasn't, but now that we've said all of that.

what. the. fuck.

On the day that I'm starting to write this, it's been three days since the accident happened, and I'm just now starting to feel like my normal self again. I am somewhat of a clumsy person, and I have tripped in the street before, but the most I have ever come away with is a grazed palm and a scuffed knee, how could this time be so different? I will never understand, and I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, (not that I have those, what am I, a cartoon cat?), but I mean it, I truly wouldn't wish this on anyone, because this is the most confusing thing to ever happen to me in all of my 31 years of life.

Your teeth feel so indestructible until the day that they prove to you that they are not, I too felt so indestructible until May 3rd proved to me that I am not.

For the past two days prior to me waking up today and feeling okay enough to write and process this, I have been in such a daze. I, very thankfully, have not experienced a break up for 10+ years now, but I still remember the mornings which follow where for the first few seconds before reality kicks in, it all feels like it was a bad dream. That's how I've felt for the past few days, except that instead of seeing a romantically lit, hazy daydream featuring special memories of past lovers, I have been seeing myself carelessly sinking my front teeth into burgers, scattering crushed tortilla chips on to pasta bakes before serving them, drinking iced drinks without the straw, and hot drinks without the fear of staining, all of the times I took my two front teeth for granted, like I'd always have them, and they'd always be there. For the first two mornings post accident, I genuinely forgot that this had happened, until my memory kicked back in, and I saw the vivid image of my view from the floor, and it was all real again.

On the first night after the procedure, I was so incredibly afraid of eating that all I could manage was a handful of cucumber cut up into very tiny pieces, my lip was still swollen from the fall which made my mouth feel much smaller than it is, and I was so afraid of accidentally eating with my front teeth, while the composite bonding had not yet fully set, and was still incredibly painful. The next morning, I managed to eat some pasta which had been lovingly cut up into small pieces, and then we went to go see The Sheep Detectives, and I cried five times. If by the time this post goes up, it's still out in cinemas and you get the chance to see it, you should really go, it was absolutely amazing in its own right, but it was also amazing for me to channel my sadness on what had happened to me the day before into a piece of media. It was true catharis.

It was also on that same day that I noticed that I would likely have to retire one of my favourite lipsticks as the formula of it is very slippy, and it often ends up on my teeth when I talk. Don't get me wrong, that was already a little annoying when my teeth were my own, but it's even more annoying now that the lipstick settles into the etchings of my composite bonding, and it is a lot harder to remove. Since you asked, yes the texture is super bothering me, but it's already better than it was on day one. It is crazy the things that I now have to consider, that would have never even crossed my mind less than a week ago.

This post is probably going to be incredibly dramatic to some of you, and I don't care. For the rest of my life, I will be afraid of my bonding breaking, I'll be afraid of doors which open towards me, of elbows flailing around nearby at concerts, of rush hours, of genuinely just falling again, and breaking them. My whole life changed in one moment, and I can't undo it, no matter what I do. I know that I am currently in the liminal space between my old teeth, and adjusting to my new ones, and that in time, my intense fear of everything will simmer down into more of a mild caution, we all do learn to adapt to life’s little things, but for now, I am afraid.

On day two after I fell, I went to work, pretended everything was normal, and then fell asleep for four hours the second that my shift ended, because in the wise words of Noah Kahan, you can only do what pain allows, and all that my pain allowed me to do that day was to rest, and try to heal. It was also on this day that I messaged my therapist, and told her that while I'm ultimately okay, and very grateful, that I was afraid to leave my house and go outside, but that I didn't want to be scared, and I didn't want to lose my independance. I ended the email with ‘I know that I can and will cope, everything will heal, including my emotional wounds, it'll just take some time and I have to stop putting so much pressure on myself to just “be fine” already.’ In case anybody else needed to hear that today, it's true. We all put far too much pressure on ourselves to move on from things, and to save face. My therapist’s response very kindly echoed that sentiment when she reminded me that it certainly will take some time for my body and mind to feel safe again, but that's okay.

I think that this experience has altered my definition of the word ‘brave.’ On the day that all of this happened, everybody around me was so lovingly and continuously reminding me how brave they think I am, while I felt the absolute furthest from it. I was equally so grateful that I could be seen by an emergency dentist same-day, while being absolutely terrified of going into that appointment. I last had dental work done when I was nine, when a dentist gave me a filling without any anaesthetic, and then the tooth that he filled fell out a few weeks later because it was a milk tooth. Absolutely insane behaviour from that guy, which left me with a lasting fear of the dentist, but I knew I had no choice this time.

If you have OCD like I do, you'll relate to how terrifying it is to need an emergency procedure, all of the ‘are you allergic to x?’ questions on the patient form were horrifying to me, because ‘no, I don't think so’, and ‘God, I hope not’, are probably not helpful answers, but how are you supposed to know that? Am I supposed to know if I'm going to have an allergic reaction to anaesthesia that I've never had before, or to composite bonding materials that I didn't even know existed until now? My mouth had to be numbed with gel prior to the numbing injections because I was so intensely afraid of the needles, and I had a complete mental breakdown about whether or not the gel wouldn't work, because I was convinced that I had talked too much and moved the gel around, so it wouldn't sufficiently numb my mouth anymore. The amount of fears I had to face in one day was absolutely unholy - blood, needles, injections, the dentist, the dangers of my own spiralling mind.

This was accidental exposure therapy at its absolute finest. There was not one single element of this entire day that was in my control.

Nothing that we do is, we just like to tell ourselves that.

Stephen keeps telling me that you can only see how brave you were in retrospect, and I think he's right. I didn’t feel brave for even one second of it, and yet, I was brave. I faced all of it. Every morning that I wake up and try to accept this, it’s brave. Every time I eat a meal, and test out my new teeth a little bit more, it’s brave. Accepting my fate and registering with a regular dentist at the ripe age of thirty one because I will now need to have my bonding checked on once every six months, sigh, it's not fun, but it's also, you guessed it, brave.

On day three, my first thought upon waking up was not about my teeth, I was starting to get over the break up. It was well timed because I had to go and get a fringe trim that afternoon, and I was really proud of myself for being able to leave the house. Again, if you think this is overly emotional, you're reading about the wrong girl. When I told my hairdresser what happened, she said that one of her relatives had her composite bonding last a full six years, until one day, she broke it while eating a slice of pizza, the same exact way that Stephen accidentally broke his many years ago.

Please tell me that I don't need to add pizza to my list of fears, I am already holding on by a thread here, friends.

Jokes aside, I am comforted by all of the stories from my close friends and family, all of the people who have had this happen to them, while I had no idea. It proves to me that it won't plague my mind forever, it won't always be something that I have to tell people because it's so new and I'm self concious about it.

On day four, I woke up in my normal sleeping position which meant that I had finally stopped being afraid of sleeping on my face/stomach at some point in the night. Time goes by and it gets easier.

It was on that same day that I finished writing this post, and started packing for the holiday that I'll be on my way home from on the day that this goes up. I didn't want everyone to find out about this while we were away celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary in Santorini, but I cannot explain to you how helpful it was to have a pre-planned trip to jet away on for some sun and relaxation, what's that thing about how it's easier to be sad in a lamborghini?

Anyway, on the day that this goes up, it'll be fourteen days since this happened, and I'll have had an absolutely wonderful anniversary trip, and I'll post a tiktok here with my favourite photos so that you can see that I'm doing better, because it does always gets better. trust me.

take care of yourselves, be good to your teeth, and let's catch up again soon x

The author spends some time discussing the power of a shared passion, and how it can be a portal to a long-lasting friendship, (which I agree with, this is called homophily), but she goes on to say that in order for a friendship to last, there must be a ‘clear and compelling reason’ for meet ups to take place, otherwise plans will be flaked on, and cancelled.

To say that I wholeheartedly disagree with this take would still be an understatement, but it did compel me to write this post and discuss the wide array of facts, figures, and hot takes I've seen in the friendship space online lately, so let's talk about it.

1. Friend dates/meet ups must have a clear and compelling reason behind them

If any one of my close friends called me up right now, as I lay in bed at 19:47 on the 4th April, and asked me to come over tomorrow, I would go. No clear or compelling reason needed. I would just go because they're my friend and I love them. I am an errand day friend, a theatre friend, a cinema friend, a sleepover friend, a tea party friend, a bibimbap friend, a bookstore friend, a ‘please come sit on my couch and beat this poor dead horse with me again’ friend. The one thing that I unfortunately am not is a club friend or a house party friend, but aside from those, I will be there. I would genuinely attend someone's smear test if they needed a moral support friend during that. Goodness knows I would never have made it to my first one if my husband didn't go with me.

Humans are inherently social beings and we need each other, can we admit that?

Can we go back to actually liking our friends and hanging out with them for no reason?

Okay, now that that's out of the way, I can feel the bad taste in my mouth leaving the vicinity, and being replaced with the usual sugar, spice and everything nice. I can now discuss everything else I know about friendship in a much more positive light.

2. Catch-up culture is killing your friendships

This is one that I think we have all heard by now, and it's an interesting one. This take is about how if all we do every time we see our friends is catch them up on our lives, then we aren't making any new memories with them, and the friendship can easily go stale.

This one was certainly true of my relationship with my mum, and something that I had to bring up last year as we saw each other once every three months, in the same restaurant, and caught each other up about the same things. It did help the relationship a bit when she agreed to add some variety into what we did when we met up, (watched movies, made home-cooked meals together, tried a new restaurant, caught up over coffee, added in more frequent but shorter meet ups).

With friends, I personally love it when the ‘catch up’ happens mainly over text or voice note, via the sharing and discussion of silly little memes/videos, or even via handwritten letters, (you all know about my love of a handwritten letter by now), and then the meet ups can feel a bit more activity based where we make memories together, and a bit less like we're in a catch up loop. Anything that allows you to experience life alongside your friends instead of just catching them up on everything you did while you were apart is best, although I absolutely do not mind if the gossip is just too good for over text and must be shared in person. There's something beautiful about that, too. At the end of the day, you do still need something to talk about while you're out trying the gorgeous new TikTok viral restaurant.

3. Everything in modern life that keeps things convenient also keeps us alone

Ouch. This one unfortunately might be true, but we can put the work in to rally against it. This is about how modern day conveniences make it incredibly easy for us to sit at home alone.

In 2013, people spent an average of 6 hours a week with their friends, and in 2021, that average went down to 2 hours a week. We no longer ask our friends to help us pack, or move, or for a ride to the airport, but we should, and we should accept if a friend has the kindness to offer these, potentially now outdated, versions of support.

Everything we used to turn to our village for can now be shipped to our door with next day delivery with the tap of a button, but we can fight back. To be a part of a village, you need to be a villager, and that means not only extending our love and support, but graciously accepting and receiving it too. It's a privilege to be ‘inconvenienced’ by friends, and this TikTok perfectly explains how I feel about this, I genuinely could not have said it better myself.

Doing small favours for friends brings us closer, and favours have a 34% higher chance of being accepted if the request comes in face to face as opposed to over text, so if you would like to start asking for small favours to encourage closeness in your village, try to ask in person.

We all ache for our friends to need us, and the one thing we cannot outsource is community. Villages grow when there's an igniter, or someone to take the lead on initiating plans. Invite someone out for coffee. Make consistent and/or reoccuring plans.

Having a new date in the diary before leaving the current meet up is the ideal goal for all of my friend dates going forward, as it's such a good practice to get into.

We do need to be regularly leaving our houses, and we do need to free up time to see our friends.

Statistically, after two months without an in-person gathering, people report a 30% drop in closeness, and an 80% drop after five months without an in-person gathering.

So. Calendars out, everyone.

4. The three C's of navigating changing lifestyles and friendships - Danielle Bayard Jackson

This isn’t a hot take, it's just a framework that I made notes on during one of Danielle Bayard Jackson's episodes of her Friend Forward podcast, which I absolutely adore.

She says that when a friend's lifestyle is changing, we need to be Creative in how we reimagine the friendship, so that both parties remain feeling loved and happy. Maybe they can't stay out all night clubbing anymore now that they have a baby, but they can go out for a coffee once a month, maybe they can't reply to your texts with lightning speed anymore, but you can schedule a weekly voice note session. I love this. I recently saw this reel where someone was willingly sat in a car with her friend's sleeping baby while the mum was running errands, and it was an immediate repost for me. Friendship is a blessing, and not a burden.

The second C is for Communicating your needs, Bayard Jackson very beautifully says that any good friend wants to know the data on how to love and support you well. In her book Fighting for our Friendships, she writes that we will ‘never achieve a level of closeness that transcends communication.’ (!!!)

The final C is about us having the Courage to be vulnerable, and express that we miss our friend and want to figure out how to stay in their life as they navigate their lifestyle change. I also learnt about the ‘beautiful mess effect’ from her, which refers to our inclination to like people more after they've been vulnerable with us - good to know!

5. Supporting friends going through something hard

Again, this isn't a take. I have just collected copious notes from various places on how to show up for a friend going through something hard, and I intend to do better the next time this situation arises. All of them always mention not falling into the trap of being so afraid of showing up incorrectly, to the extent that you don't show up at all. Go over and help them clean their house. Leave a grocery shop on their doorstep. Order a takeaway for them. Sit with them in their pain, and really listen, and then keep showing up six months later, when a lot of the support usually starts to dissipate. Put the anniversary of the date in your calendar and check on them on that day every year, (this is something I have always done, but it's a good reminder).

In You're in Good Company by Ashlee Gadd, she says ‘nourishing people with food is an act of love’, and that ‘from scratch’ really just means ‘from the beginning’, so as long as you thought of someone ‘from the beginning’ of the process of making it, it doesn't matter if it was baked or boxed, just make it and show up with it. Homemade casseroles or pizza deliveries are equivalent gestures of love, and I think that's so beautiful.

6. You don't owe anybody anything

Hmm, I think you do. Next.

Just kidding. I genuinely do hate this take though. I don't know exactly where this came from or why, but if I had to guess, I would imagine that this is the result of the pandemic, and the mass ‘protect your peace’ mindset that everyone seemed to develop then. Guilty. It got me, too. However, it is kind to give your nearest and dearest some reassurance if you've changed your phone usage habits, or if you're going through something. Adult friendships are incredibly nuanced. People taking more time to themselves than usual are not inherently evil, and at the same time, people are not clairvoyant, and will read into silences, if not given a realistic amount of information.

In her book Modern Friendship, Anna Goldfarb explains that our sisters know we're their sisters, and our husbands know they're our husbands, but friendships often don't have that clarity. We don't walk around with labels on our foreheads which tell people when they're our best friend, or when we've ‘demoted’ them down a tier or two in our minds, and that causes confusion and hurt.

Something I learnt in OCD therapy is that our brains hate uncertainty, and they love trying to find patterns and explanations. Adult friendships are so complex because our schedules don't have the same flexibility that they did when we were kids, we can't just walk up to our friends in double Maths, (nightmare), anymore and get the in-person validation that everything's all good, making the ‘all of my friends hate me’ feelings amplified, so removing any shred of ambiguity is the way to go.

To achieve this, Goldfarb suggests being explicit when responding to plans e.g. ‘if I don't hear back from you by x date, I'll assume you would not like to hang out with me’, or ‘if you don't hear back from me by x date, please do feel free to go without me’, which I would have never thought to do prior to reading this book, but it could be a good way to alleviate some uncertainty and eradicate the ‘in limbo’ feeling.

Statistically, people between the ages of 35-44 have the least amount of leisure time, so if you think your social calendar is becoming too populated and you won’t have time for everyone the way you used to, try to get ahead of that and plan for it.

7. While we're on the topic of Modern Friendship, here’s some more from her book that I really enjoyed learning about - The 3 D's of friendship: Desire, Diligence, and Delight.

Goldfarb explains that Desire is simply the wish to be a friend, and this desire is maintained by Diligence and Delight. Diligent behaviours include honouring commitments made to friends like turning up to plans* but if plans need to be postponed, rescheduling right in the moment where possible would be a diligent behaviour. *Goldfarb also mentions that being mindful of a friend's limitations would apply here, as this is nuanced and not always possible.

As long as there's an understanding between friends on why meet ups are being postponed, I don't think this has to be a big deal. However, on her podcast, Emotionally Online, Maddie Dragsbaek, (who I absolutely cannot talk about friendship without mentioning), recently referenced her abhorrence of the ‘bailing epidemic’, and that potentially last minute flakiness is a result of ‘the culture of Partiful, [an online invitation platform], people now sending event invites through Partiful, it feels less personal, so people feel like they can just ghost the invite and not RSVP […] if we have to go back to physical mailers to get people to stop doing that, then I'm all for it.’

I am someone that has recently started creating pretty invitations for all of the events that I host, but unlike Partiful, I download the invites to my phone and send them over WhatsApp so that RSVP's can simply come back in via message, removing the barrier of entry of having to create yet another account on yet another platform. I think I have potentially cracked the code on how to make pretty invites and collect RSVP’s without removing the personal touch.

I try incredibly hard to never cancel plans, I may sometimes show up tired, anxious, or disoriented from a 2 hour rail replacement bus journey, but I will be there (unless I'm unwell!)

On an episode of her podcast, Not for Everyone, Caroline Winkler says ‘I firmly believe that being in relationship with people does include moments where you choose discomfort, or slight discomfort, because of what you gain in the relationship’, and I definitely agree, but as I said, this is not a one size fits all conversation.

Showing up authentically, as well as engaging with the media that your friends recommend would also be diligent behaviours as it shows that you value their opinion and care about the things they're interested in. I am a big reader, and a cinephile, so I love discussing new books and films with friends, it's one of my favourite things to do. If your schedules allow, you can even live watch the TV show/film together remotely, and that's even better!

To keep the fun and Delight in a friendship, Goldfarb says that vulnerability, forgiveness, and compassion must also be present. All of these shared qualities work in tandem to keep a friendship happy and healthy.

8. At the end of the day, it's about having a friend who claps so loud, you never notice who doesn't

This is such a pretty thought, and I do agree. We must not focus so heavily on friendships which have momentarily slipped, that we forget to appreciate the amazing friends who are continously getting it right. In her friendship chapter of Does Anyone Else Feel This Way?, Eli Rallo says ‘all I can hope for is the pain that certain friendships caused you will be erased by the restorative qualities of others’, and as someone who went through a painful friendship break up six years ago, the love of my husband, and my existing friends was the only thing that got me through. Friendship is the only real tonic we have, and the best thing we do.

9. The difference between male and female friendships

Another Fighting for our Friendships gem, Bayard Jackson says that ‘women integrate friends to the degree of a sibling, men [integrate friends] to the degree of a cousin’, which is so interesting. Bayard Jackson's main interest is female friendships, (and so is mine), but let's talk about the men for a second. She mentions this to make the point that because female friendships are deeper and more intimate, this could explain why they are seemingly more fragile. If your cousin started acting incredibly odd towards you suddenly, your reaction would be different to if a sibling did the same thing.

I recently came across this reel which demonstrated this idea perfectly, and honestly, made me a little sad. In it, a man is talking about how the weirdest part about dating is that you can tell your partner things that your friends would not care about. I immediately sent this to one of my best friends with the message ‘wow, men are really missing out’, because what do you mean his friends wouldn't care that he just had an almond croissant for the first time? I would actually be offended to think a friend of mine wouldn't deem that need-to-know information for me! That is very important news, and I have ten follow up questions!

There is such a sense of whimsy and frivolity present in female friendships that men are missing out on. How do we get men to care about their friends? I know that my husband would say the answer is Parallel Man Activities, and perhaps he's right. There is real science behind this lighthearted video which suggests that people find it easier to open up and be more vulnerable when they're doing something where they don't need to make eye contact with the person they're talking to. Try it out and report back please, men.

10. Dunbar's number - this comes up a lot in the online friendship space.

According to Dunbar's number, a person can maintain up 150 meaningful relationships at any one time, where out of these 150, we have the capacity to maintain relationships with 5 close friends, 15 good friends, 50 friends, with 150 being the upper limit for acquaintances, which is usually the number of guests a person might have at their wedding, so this seems to make sense for most people.

Research also suggests that it takes 50 hours to turn an acquaintance into a friend, and while I think this is quite high as I tend to make friends pretty quickly, deep and long-lasting friendships do take time and effort, and we do have to put the work in. It can be a slow process, but it's always worth it.

Before I go, I want to leave you all with this. In Modern Friendship by Anna Goldfarb, she starts the book by talking about how after her dad sadly passed away, all of the headstones in the cemetery sounded so official to her, saying things like ‘father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, long words. formal sounding.’, but she and her family wanted her dad to be remembered the way he was to all of them, so they added the word ‘friend’ to his. I hope that word is also added to mine when my time comes.

The gift of friendship is something I am so lucky to have. I think about the The Social Slope effect more than I probably should. It states that people standing in front of a hill, in the company of a friend, view the hill as less steep, compared to someone who is standing in front of the hill alone. The power of the mere presence of a friend is undeniable, and I am so, so grateful for all of mine.

In Does Anyone Else Feel This Way?, Eli Rallo writes ‘to be a friend, to have a friend, it is in so many ways the best thing I’ve ever been, the best thing I am, the best thing I will be.’ I wholeheartedly agree. I am constantly researching, and learning more and more about friendship, so if this is something you're interested in, go tell your friends you love them and that you hope to be friends with them forever, and let's catch up again soon, okay?

you all know by now that my gilmore girls, cosy candle, leather-blazer-and-knee-high-boot-combo-loving-ass covets autumn the most, but there’s also something very special about making it through the coldest part of the year, swapping big coats for cardigans worn over gingham dresses, and finally starting to see the colours bloom outside of the window again. there's a lot to romanticise about that, but because of who I am as a person, there has been a lot to crash out about, too. let's get into it.

since you last heard from me, I have:

🌼 ticked off the final tattoo on my tattoo list (this isn't the first time that this has happened, and it won't be the last time, either, I already have four more half-formed ideas. I guess we'll see if any of them actually become anything.

🌼 read nine books in february, bringing me to a total of sixteen books in 2026 so far. proud of this one. my absolute favourites of february were B.K. Borison's And Now, Back To You, and Strange Buildings by Uketsu. These two books could not be more opposite if they tried, but I am made of multitudes and so are you. If you're into romantic comedies, and Nora Ephron movies, read ANBTY. If it's a thriller/mystery with an incredibly interesting format that you want, go for the Uketsu.

🌼 had a bunch of incredibly vivid and upsetting anxiety dreams, not yet sure if I blame Ukestu, or just my general disposition for this.

🌼 watched sooooo many movies and shows in an attempt to clear my list; Wuthering Heights, The Florida Project, Knives Out (rewatch), New Girl (rewatch), Bridgerson S4 Part 2 (twice), Run Away, When Harry Met Sally (rewatch for me, first time for Stephen), a whole bunch of Studio Ghibli, a whole bunch of other stuff that I'm definitely forgetting right now, then crashed out that I was constantly adding things to my list quicker than I could ever get through it. I still don't have a solution for how much I love the experience of watching tv and film, alongside how much I hate having too many things on my list.

🌼 was driven entirely mad by the fact that I absolutely cannot stop counting syllables on my fingers, I've even started doing it at work. I don't know what anyone is saying to me anymore, just make sure you speak in syllables of five when you do, thanks.

🌼 dressed up in a cute, gothic outfit for Wuthering Heights, because that is half the fun.

🌼 listened to the Wuthering Heights soundtrack 134574665 times (except for House, which I can only listen to when I'm not in the house, thanks to the good ol’ OCD)

🌼 started making my own wax seals again! you know how everyone had all of these hobbies we loved in 2020 that we then had to abandon because the grip that capitalism has on us regained its strength, making wax seals was one of mine. I've loved returning to it so much, even though I burnt myself on the spoon the first time. Sending letters and cards to my friends is still going strong, and they just got even cuter with the return of the wax.

🌼 ate a lot of pancakes, because pancakes are for life, not just for february 17th.

🌼 started to practice a healthy amount of detachment. one of my biggest OCD struggles is that I need to feel in control of everything, (and on bad days, of everyone). working on taking a step back to focus on my own decisions, and let everyone else make their own.

🌼 after all of that, you'll be pleased to know this one - started OCD therapy! It's working. It's tough, but it's working and I'm making progress.

🌼 had a Bridgerton watch party with one of my best friends. showed up to her house in a floral chiffon maxi dress, wielding a significant amount of Bird and Blend flavoured teas and matching sweet treats so that we could have a tea and cake flight amongst the Bridgertons. Cutest idea we've ever had.

🌼 filled my home with the sweet sound of Sam Phillips' la la las as my Gilmore Girls vinyl finally arrived. The eight week wait was LONG, but so, incredibly worth it.

🌼 found out that the Rare Beauty lip souffles are being discontinued, I've worn Brave daily for I do not know how long now, but it's been years! Spent days and weeks researching and obsessing on how I'm going to find something similar. Why isn't anyone making good cruelty free orange-y pinks for medium neutral skin tones anymore?

🌼 redecorated the house for spring - absolutely in love with this new print, and listening to the pink pressing of The Secret of Us by Gracie Abrams again and again, dancing around to Close to You on my lunch breaks has been SUCH a mood booster, I really recommend it.

🌼 got absolutely drenched in the rain during a Lidl trip the very next day, and came home to all of the newly arranged Spring decor laughing at me.

🌼 listened to Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally while eating vegetarian avocado sushi on the train with my husband, and it's been on repeat ever since. Harry has absolutely done it again. If you haven't screamed ‘do you love me now, do you? do you? do I let you down?’ at yourself in the bathroom mirror, I really suggest that you go do that as soon as I release you from this post. The perfect mix of dramatic and cathartic.

🌼 accidentally stumbled upon a holi celebration while on the way to visit our friends to have a board game and movie night/sleepover, it was so magical.

🌼 bought a bag of emergency sprinkles for my handbag, because you just never know when you'll need a handful of sprinkles to throw into an otherwise boring hot drink. I think they will become good friends with the bubble wand/bubble maker that I also keep with me, on the daily.

🌼 sat myself down to book in some actual rest time, because I am constantly dancing on the tightrope between enjoying my social life, and having not one single weekend for myself for months on end. I said I would get better at this, and I will, I will, I will.

🌼 have almost finished all 75 puzzles in my book of meowdles, we have six remaining, and seven days left until the 75th day of the year. They have massively helped me wind down before bed , and kept me off of my phone.

okay, I think that's it. The entire idea for this post only came to me about 90 minutes before I pressed ‘send’, so if you don't like it, don't tell me, it's still new and precious to me.

let's catch up again soon though, okay?

I spent 30 (non-consecutive!) days hosting last year, with a total of 21 days where a guest or two stayed overnight, and I have already hosted twice this year. While I have not quite reached Amanda Litman status, who hosted a dinner party on every single Saturday of 2025, I absolutely adore it, (and if you haven't read her post on how that went, you should! I loved it)

the ideas that follow have come to me from an array of places, including but not limited to, things I have picked up myself from enjoying hosting for over a year now, Clara Peirce's ultimate guest room welcome basket that she put together for Mary Skinner, ideas from Chelsea Fagan's book, Having People Over, (although upon reading it, I was incredibly pleasantly surprised to find out that I was already doing a lot of the tips in this book), Priya Parker's The Art of Gathering, and Creating Annalise's TikTok account, which is all about hosting and how to make it work in smaller spaces, which I absolutely love. The comment section on this video in particular, has taught me so much.

💌 this one actually happens after I host so I know it's a little strange to mention it first but I think this one is truly unique to me, and I love doing it. I send out handwritten letters after I see friends in any capacity, but I especially send out post-host letters to thank my friends for visiting, and to let them know how much I enjoyed our sleepover, and all of the activities that we got up to! A recent trip to The Works has also caused an increase in the amount of stickers I decorate the envelopes with, which is an extra adorable little detail. I also got a tattoo from Jade Haze's Valentine's Day flash earlier today, which is an adorable little scalloped envelope, which looks just like the scalloped Papier envelopes I use, I love it so much.

okay, let's get started:

💌 listing available drinks when offering guests a drink, as opposed to vaguely asking them if they want one! I haven't yet implemented this, but this one is so good, especially as someone with anxiety myself, I always struggle to answer this question if I don't know what the host has in at the time. We always have a variety of drinks in when we host, including hot and cold drinks, caffeinated and decaf options, which can be enjoyed with either oat milk or cows milk, which I love because it means that there's always something for everyone.

💌 add some whimsy! I add my star shaped ice cubes to drinks, and I always choose the cutest glass/mug available when giving drinks to guests, even better if we have something in common and they notice they were given a mug from Waitress the musical if they're a theatre kid, or the one which says Stars Hollow Books on it, if they're a Gilmore Girly like me. It's such an easy thing to do to make a guest feel special. Priya Parker’s book focused quite heavily on corporate gatherings, but something she said that I really loved was about creating awe, (‘who’s coming over?’ ‘you are!!’), and I think this plays into that really well.

💌 if you read my posts regularly, you already know about this one, but the guest room snack box! I love putting these together and curating them to the friend/couple who is staying over. I recently added a floral sticky note with the WiFi password on it too, so that friends aren't having to ask me for it, or use up all of their data while they're visiting.

We don't yet have a big enough bookshelf for all of our books so they live in our guest room, and I will sometimes also include a book for guests that I think they will like. I should warn you though, the kind of book recommendations I give out are what Ella Risbridger would describe as books where woman have ‘a quirky little job, in a charming little location […] a florist.. in the mountains.. in Spring’, so maybe don't borrow the books I leave out unless that's also your vibe!

💌 leaving out fresh guest towels and hand-tying ribbons to them, in a co-ordinating colour. I tend to do this the night before guests arrive, and it's just such a lovely moment of calm for me, and I know that guests also appreciate it!

💌 we all know about this one, but I am yet to make one. The emergency box. A box where guests can easily access essentials that they may have forgotten to bring like toothbrushes, slippers, socks, pads, phone chargers etc. I may have focused too heavily on the snack box and not enough on the essentials box!

💌 having a guest room carafe. so that guests can have water overnight, without having to wander through the house. However, I have recently found myself so deep in conversation with friends right before we all get sleepy and retire to our quarters, that I have been slacking and forgetting to fill this up for them! I am aiming to get better at this!

💌 I learnt about using shot glasses to hold candy in for guests to snack on in between courses at dinner parties from this TikTok and I think it’s so cute. I did this for Christmas Day last year, and it went down a treat. For Christmas, I also love playing jazz music, and setting out cute place names, and napkins.

💌 always having a record playing in the background, or an atmospheric YouTube video on the TV are both lovely little things I do. It's all about making your home feel warm, cosy, and inviting. I have recently been leaving three records out of our record box, to remind me to have guests choose what they would like to have on while we chat, play board games, do a puzzle etc. Stephen and I have an incredibly varied music taste, so we can usually do a pretty good job at curating the three options to our friends!

💌 right off the back of that one, a house which smells good is also super important and cosy, I aim to always have candles lit when guests arrive, and I think having a candle in the bathroom is particularly chic. We used to keep candles on our windowsill, but since I saw The Mind Flayer himself outside of our bathroom window last Autumn, we had to get bathroom curtains, so our window sill is no longer available. I need to find another place for a candle to go in there as I do think it's lovely to have a sweet smelling bathroom with cute lighting.

💌 guests also pick up on host energy, so staying as calm and relaxed as possible is key - having all of the warmth factors above keep my nervous system regulated, as well as my friends’, so it's a win, win.

💌 making sure that you're hosting events that you would want to attend yourself is also key! hosting will give you energy instead of draining you of it, if you're hosting in a way that brings you joy. I loved this quote by Priya Parker and Amanda Litman during their discussion on her weekly dinner parties in 2025.

“If dinner feels like too much, make it a board game night. Make it coffee. Make it a walk. The form doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it fits your life and your energy and is sustainable”

💌 I have written about this before, but I love hosting board game days, especially when guests bring all of their games they never get to play as they're for more players than they have in their home. I also recently read about leaving a jigsaw puzzle out on the table so that guests can have a go at it now and then while chatting, and I haven't done it yet, but I love this idea. Another one of my favourite interests is friendship and communication, including the concept of how people tend to have deeper conversations in cars because they don't have to look at each other, and I wonder if this would be true about puzzles too as your hands and eyes are busy while you're chatting. Let me know if this is true for you because I am curious about it!

as I mentioned above, Priya Parker's The Art of Gathering did focus more on corporate gatherings, but there were some key points that I really enjoyed, and the following three points were found in her book.

💌 the gathering begins from the ‘moment of discovery’, i.e when the invitation is received, and not when guests arrive on the day of the event. I currently only send cute little Greetings Island invitations for my birthday gatherings, but I really want to start making them for less annual hang outs too, like dinner parties and games nights. She wrote about the importance of priming, i.e. the invitation/pre event messaging giving the guests exactly what they need to know long before the event starts, framing the event, letting them know what the event will ask of them, and giving enough details on who will be there.

“I could have started before the gathering even began. In my reminder email to the group the day before, I could have easily included a little fun background on each person, which they could read on their own time to get a sense of who would be there. As they walked in, I could have connected them, making a point of bringing each person around, even though it was a
small group, and introducing them warmly to one another, saying a few nice things about each”

💌 I also loved the idea of having guests do something, instead of bring something, e.g. in the case of Michael Laprise, who asked his guests to send him two photos of their favourite memories from the past year ahead of time, and they then walked into his dinner party to find all of their photos printed out, and on the Christmas tree when they arrived, a very sweet gesture which ended up starting incredibly joyous conversations amongst the guests, as they looked at the photos and got to know each other.

💌 finally, I loved her idea of walking guests to the door, and giving them a ‘goodbye chocolate’ to end the night. I encourage our friends to empty the guest room box into their bags so that they have snacks for the journey home the next day, but this is also such a cute idea for me to add to my repertoire.

as we have now come to the end of this post, here is your metaphorical goodbye chocolate! <3

come over to catch up again soon, okay?

esha x

let's find out if I've spent the first three weeks of the year setting myself up to successfully pick up my phone less, and delve into the magical realm of my analogue hobbies more.

in no particular order, here's everything that I have done so far this month:

❄ re-filled the guest room snack box twice, two weekends in a row! They say to start as you mean to go on, so I am very happy about the fact that I have already hosted for three of my wonderful friends this year. I thoroughly enjoyed the forest walks, the board games, (especially the improv games which let my inner theatre kid thrive), the puzzles, the thrift shopping, the car boot sales, the delicious food, the curling up and watching the entire five hours of Heated Rivalry in one sitting, all of it was so special.

❄ started a commonplace book. My absolutely adorable team at work raised the funds for a Choosing Keeping gift card for me for my birthday last year, and I wouldn't be me if I let this crafty cat journal sit there on the site without checking out with it. The trouble was that I didn't really have the need for another notebook, (has that ever stopped me though? no.), and then I realised that it would be lovely to have somewhere to put all of my thoughts which don't fit into my manifestation journal, or my gratitude diary, and then I remembered the concept of a commonplace book. I have thoroughly enjoyed adding to this. So far, it includes; a double page spread of all of my 36 tattoos and whether I got them to celebrate art that I love, the people that I love, or the way that I love; a list of my favourite perfumes; gut-wrenching lyrics that I wish I wrote; the best new years’ resolution that I have ever seen; two handwritten letters from my friends, stuck down with floral washi tape, and six pages of notes on Danielle Bayard Jackson's book fighting for our friendships, as well as her podcast friend forward. Friendship, particularly female friendship is such a core topic of interest for me, and now I have somewhere to store all of my learnings.

Some of my favourite notes so far include ‘if I were shadowed for two weeks, would my friendships reflect the friendship values I say I have?’, ‘everything in modern life that keeps things convenient keeps us alone’, ‘we'll never achieve a level of closeness which transcends communication’ (!!!!!), ‘women integrate friends to the degree of a sibling, men to the degree of a cousin’, and the statistic that shows people spent an average of 6 hours a week with their friends in 2013, and that number dropped to an average of 2 hours a week by 2021. That last one is very sad, but I am learning so much, and having an immense amount of fun!

❄ discovered that it's okay to feel everything and wrote a very vulnerable post expressing this. whimsical? probably not. healing? very much, yes.

❄ told myself that I would spend January hibernating and only commit to the one weekend plan that I came into the year with, to then realise that I would hate nothing more, and actually fall into a much deeper depression if I had done that. Instead, I ended up making plans on four out of the five weekends, and I have absolutely loved every single one so far. The budget may be suffering, but I would've been suffering much more if I didn't go ahead with those plans. Remember that I'm allowed to say things like that, now. January is hard, get through however you get through.

“In times of darkness, we seek the light… In times of darkness, we find joy where we can” - Ella Risbridger

❄ did a meowdle most nights before bed instead of having my phone be the last thing I see before my eyes close. I've also started waiting fifteen minutes before I'm allowed to pick up my phone in the morning, and I'm working on extending this.

❄ raced home to watch Traitors whenever we couldn't watch it live at 8pm. Monoculture is wonderful.

❄ spent fifteen frivolous pounds on snacks for the Traitors finale, it was worth it

❄ gave myself a pastel skittles mani because January is dull and depressing, and it has successfully made me happier, at least I think so, although it does certainly help when I'm eating a white chocolate cookie when I'm taking the nails photo.

❄ listened to so many records! and remembered to allow guests to choose what they would like to put on! everything is better and cosier with background music!

❄ felt the intense joy that occurs when a birthday gift for a friend arrives and you know she will absolutely LOVE it. I tried to learn a new ribbon tying technique for it when I was wrapping it, and ultimately failed, but trying to learn something new was still fun.

❄ rediscovered my love for Animal Crossing thanks to the latest update, it's so cute!

❄ went to the cinema twice!

❄ went on five dates with my husband, even though we have a fortnightly date night schedule. Like I said, hibernating would've actually been the worst thing for me, you do what you have to do to experience joy in this current world! Eating delicious dumplings, and colouring in pictures to look like Harry Styles during Wembley night 1 of hslot, and a birthday cake respectively, is how I find mine.

❄ honoured the five year anniversary of the time I made an entire cookies and cream cake because it was early 2021, and what else were you supposed to do? I was too lazy to make a full cake this time, but still wanted a sweet treat so we ate cookies and cream cupcakes, instead.

❄ sat by the window in awe and appreciated the inherant beauty and magic of snow like I'm Lorelai Gilmore.

❄ made a list of some of my favourite outfit formulas for witchy and ethereal outfits and thought about what I'd need to add to my wardrobe this year to achieve them. I am very much a fashion girly and love experimenting with my style.

❄ have done my absolute best to avoid multitasking, and rushing, and becoming slower and more present in everything I do instead, my nervous system does feel like it's healing

❄ made this creamy broccoli (and mushroom, because I add mushrooms to everything), orzo bake. It has quickly become my new favourite because it is so easy, it's especially good for guests because it doesn't take you away from them for very long as it does most of the hard work in the oven itself.

❄ got a tattoo!

❄ rediscovered my love for cheese and onion hula hoops.

❄ watched many movies, six seasons of Younger, and the whole first season of Sabrina the Teenage Witch on our portable DVD player.

❄ received eight cat photos from one of my best friends, along with some incredibly important messages.

❄ sent two handwritten letters, intricately adorned with stickers, washi tape, and cute wax seals from the new range at The Works. I'm also hoping to revisit making my own wax seals again like I used to in 2020, wish me luck.

❄ sent twenty five voice notes (sorry, holly!)

❄ started putting star shaped ice cubes into my chocolate oat milk.

❄ read three books, and I'm currently reading three others, which I'll finish before the end of the month!

❄ continued learning new words to expand my vocabulary.

In Paige Pritchard's latest video, she says that by January 8th, 23% of people have given up on their resolutions, and by the end of the month, that statistic rises to between 43% - 64%, depending on the study you're looking at it. I'm still trying my absolute hardest with mine, and I won't be giving up, but I will also be acknowledging that not every situation in life can be whimsical, nor should it be, so maybe I'm doing better than I thought.

In her book, In Love with Love, Ella Risbridger says that ‘when you read a lot of romance, the world starts to feel romantic', so maybe things will feel more whimsical to me the more I continue to engage in whimsical behaviours, or maybe we'll finally be done with the 874 days of January soon, and things will naturally feel better.

Budget? shot.

Whimsy? I don't know, getting there? I'll let you decide on that one.

let's catch up again soon!

esha x

If you had told me seven years ago when I first started writing that I would ever put out a post like this, I would have said that you're insane, that I would never do that, and perhaps I could benefit from a trip to the Papier website to buy myself a cute journal instead of doing this. That's probably true, but what I'm about to write might be relatable to some, and while I don't think you have to find art relatable in order to enjoy it, if even one person feels seen by this post, then I'll be glad I wrote it. ‘At least it helped someone’, I will think.

I'm afraid to let you know that the happiest girl you know, sunshine maker, whimsy creator, your resident light-up-a-room-er has spent the entire first (real) week of January completely miserable. That feels good to admit, actually, I didn't know how good that would feel.

Does anyone else have that thing where they find it completely unbearable to be miserable - constantly trying to get themselves back to ‘normal’, to happy, or at least to baseline. I end all of my rants with ‘I'll go take a nap, and then I'll be fine, sorry!’, or not sorry because you're supposed to say thank you instead of sorry because it's better for your nervous system, so instead I'll say ‘thank you for listening! I'll go back to my regular sunshiney self tomorrow, I promise’. I cannot for one second bear the thought that someone could leave an interaction with me thinking that I was in any way different to my usual, joyous self. I live in constant fear that I am making all of my friendships weird as hell because I simply cannot keep my miserable mouth shut. If I'm not making the other person feel good then what am I doing? What is my purpose if people don't think I'm lovely, and kind, and full of life? What if someone caught a glimpse of the real me behind the curtain, the one that has more to her than an innate and everlasting sense of happiness?

But life isn’t about feeling happy, it's about feeling everything.

And this week, oh boy, have I felt everything.

Rage, guilt, ennui, debilitating anxiety, of both the health, and generalised variety, not to mention that my OCD tendancies have returned to me full throttle. I can't even get through an episode of Younger without counting all of the syllables of the dialogue on my fingers, and being annoyed when a line does not end in a syllable of five, landing me safely on my pinky finger. I don't know if that's something that even affects anyone else, but if you ever sit and watch TV next to me after this post, you'll notice that I do that, now. I used to think it was just a quirky little thing I did that doesn’t do me any harm, but seeing that it has gotten worse recently means that there was once a time where it wasn't a hindrance to my life, but now it is. To those of you already typing away in the comment section, don't recommend medication to me, I'm too anxious to take it.

By the way, if you're not watching Younger, you should be, Sutton Foster and Hilary Duff are a complete dream team together, but I digress.

I have some questions for my therapist, but since she's currently on extended leave, I'll ask them here instead. It has been eleven weeks without therapy so far, and I maybe, kind of, potentially need it back immediately. Not sure why I think that, though.

Why do I have to feel guilty because I'm having a bad week, or because I'm in a mood, or because my mum and I got into yet another argument over absolutely nothing? Why are some of us born with this complete inability to get our melancholic feelings out without feeling like we have to apologise for them, lest someone finds out that we have them?

About five minutes before I started writing this post, I had a revelation that the reason I struggle with rage journalling is because I am so afraid that someone could read it, (likely because my parents read my diary when I was a child), and then what would they think of me? ‘But I thought she was so nice!’, is what they would think. An ex friend once tweeted something similar to that about me after I had stood up for myself for the first time in my natural born life, and I have seemingly never gotten over it. If you're her, Happy New Year, please don't call.

And yes, I do also recognise the irony that I can't seem to rage journal in a private, floral notebook that lives on my desk, but I can log in to Substack to bare it all, knowing that anyone could read this, if they wanted to. Writing for an audience is therapeutic for me, so sue me. In any case, this is so much tamer than anything I would write if it was not for an audience, and maybe that's my problem. I'm afraid of the darkness that resides within my own soul, what if the evil that ran through my father's bloodstream also lives in me? How do I purge it? Perhaps it can co-exist with all of the goodness that lives there too, potentially rear its ugly head sometimes, and still be accepted. Maybe I can show up exactly as I am, and still be loved.

So, there you have it, the honest truth. I contain multitudes, I'm an emotional person, I overthink, I overanalyse, I overspend, I say I'm just gonna ‘make some notes', and thirty minutes later at 1.40am, I press the ‘publish’ button. Maybe 2019 me would still be shocked to read this but do you know what, she needed to, and hey, you know me better, now.

let's catch up again soon, okay? maybe I'll be feeling better by then, and maybe I won't.

maybe in 2026, we can feel everything.

Happy New Year's Eve! As I start to write this post, it's a few days before Christmas, my spirits are high, and I have just spent the past 35 minutes laying in bed and creating the absolutely stunning moodboard that you can see above, while listening to the Gilmore Girls original soundtrack, (the one with all the la la las), so you could say that I am in an incredible mood, and you would be right.

I'm so excited to write this post, but before I start, I want to say that I don't personally buy into the whole new year, new me thing. I especially don't believe that we should be aiming to uproot our entire lives in January. You mean you want me to do something during the coldest, most sinister, 84-day-long, month of the year? Um. Pass. I am in the habit of creating my moodboards in December as I have done it for many years, and so I enjoy that my goals are gift wrapped and ready or me to work on once we have come out on the other side of this dreary month, but I can promise you that I will not be adding any unnecessary pressure to change everything in my life from tomorrow. I am still very much enjoying some rest and relaxation during the full 12 days of Christmas, and will continue to be in hibernation mode until the Spring. We need to fully embrace each season that we are in. Absolutely nothing in nature blooms year round, so I don't know why we expect ourselves to. While I'm here, you don’t need to make any resolutions this year if you don’t want to. This is fun for me! Only do it if it's fun for you, too!

With all of that being said, let's get into it. I love creating moodboards, and you will notice that many of my goals have stayed the same from last year, not because I didn’t achieve them, but because I want to maintain them. We are building a life here people, slowly and year by year, not getting everything we want in 2025 and then throwing it all out again when the ball drops on Times Square at midnight.

I believe that we can break my 2025 goals down into four categories, although I didn't purposely think of this at the time of making the board last year, so excuse me while I grab my scissors, (they're shaped like a pink flower and sit in a green garden pot when not in use), to cut it up into pieces.

Please hold.

Okay, there.

Whimsical

These were three of the most adorable goals that I had this year, and I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. I wanted to wear bows in my hair, have fresh flowers in the house, and a sweet treat in the fridge, more often. I loved these goals because they were so full of joy and whimsy, and maybe that's not what everyone is looking to do with their resolutions, but for me, that's important! Something I've learnt this year is that what can appear childlike to some people is what makes me free. As Taylor Swift said, growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all, and she wrote that about me. I also think that in a strange way, it makes me a more trustworthy person, you will never catch me doing something that I don't enjoy. You can trust my ‘yes’, because I am only engaging in things that I truly love, so you don’t ever have to worry about if I sincerely wanted to be somewhere or not. I am doing everything I love, and only doing what I love.

Anyways! While I absolutely did achieve all three of these, I have carried the hair bow one over to my 2026 moodboard simply because I want to continue doing it. Bows may have been a passing trend in 2023, (thank you, Gracie Abrams!), but they stayed with me. I was also recently reminded, (by Zooey Deschanel in Merv), that you don't have to wear ribbons solely in half up, half down hairstyles, you can wear them when your hair is in a high ponytail too, and it’s adorable. I dressed up as her character the next day for work, and one of my best friends told me that it was top tier whimsy. Mission accomplished.

Activities

Yay, four more that I achieved! Well, three, as two of them represent hosting. I guess I was just that excited about becoming a better host this year, and I really think I did. In total, I spent 30 wonderful days hosting for friends and family this year, and 21 out of those 30 days involved a guest or two staying overnight, which is such an incredible honour. Thank you to everyone who stayed, and sat with me the next morning while we drank hot chocolates, and talked about everything and nothing, while my continuous rewatch of Gilmore Girls played faintly in the background.

Hosting has truly become one of my favourite hobbies, (hence why it has found its way on to my 2026 moodboard, too!), and I love it so much. I was so happy to see Annalise refer to it as a hobby, because it is one, and such a fun one! I adore her page and love finding new affordable and adorable ways to make hosting even more special, like this idea that her mum passed down to her where she uses shot glasses as candy dishes so that guests can snack in between courses/meals. How adorable is that? Hosting is an art! I adopted this one on Christmas Day this year, and it was such a hit. Setting a table is truly one of the joys of my life, I love setting out the adorable bow-shaped Christmas tree napkins, the crackers, the place cards, the shot glasses with Smarties in them, it's all so much fun to me.

Next up, I wanted to go to the theatre more, and I did! I went to see Wicked, Clueless, and Hadestown, and throughly enjoyed all three so much. Live performance is so special to me, and I will never tire of it. I am just a theatre kid, after all. I just checked my Receiptify and all that featured this month was 8 songs from Wicked, Epic III from Hadestown, and Chains of Love by Charli xcx from the Wuthering Heights soundtrack, so, point proven.

Last one in this category was for my husband and I to celebrate our ten year anniversary, and we had such a beautiful time visiting a cat cafe, taking cute photobooth photos, and having a gorgeous meal at Copper Chimney. I highly recommend!

Me Time/Leisure (wasn't sure what to call this one)

Ah, yes. Cosying up with a book, and a hot chocolate. This is me in my most natural habitat. I read 60 books this year, with two more in my current reads pile which I am aiming to finish by the time you're reading this. I have always been, and will always be a bookworm. I absolutely love books, and fully believe that in order to be a good writer, you have to read, and read widely.

I have the Vocabulary app so that I can learn and practice new words daily, and I'm so excited about improving my lexicon, that's a huge goal of mine for next year.

Household

Okay so, little bit stereotypical here, but I wanted to become more financially intelligent this year, and specifically, I wanted to save up enough so that we could adopt a cutie little cat.

Unfortunately, we aren’t quite there yet, so you will notice that Salem the cat has made his way on to next year's moodboard as a reminder to be a queen, honey! save up to adopt my familiar, and give them the best life and cosiest home ever, like they deserve. I have also learnt that the universe prefers specific manifestations so generally wishing for more money is not something I would do anymore, so the piggy bank image has been removed from next year's moodboard, and instead been replaced with what I am manifesting the money for.

So, what am I manifesting for 2026? We already know about the hair bows, the hosting, reading books, and the cat, so what have we not spoken about? Let's bring this beautiful collage down here and have a look.

First of all, you'll notice that the design style is very different this year, a little witchier, a little more scrapbook style, something about that was really speaking to me this time around. As a lifelong journaller and memory box keeper, it's not all that surprising that I like the chaos and nostalgia of a collage. I am also a Dark Winter so the colour palette that suits me best is richer and more jewel toned, which I have really leant into in 2025, especially in the latter half of the year. I've also massively leant into my tarot and spirituality this year so I think that's reflected here, too. I love the colours and the written reminders, (‘consume less, create more’, ‘cosy’, ‘whimsical’, ‘relaxed’, and ‘analogue’) of how I want my 2026 to feel, around the edges of the moodboard.

I am not the first person to say this, and I will not be the last, but 2026 is the year that I would like to go back to being a bit more analogue and offline. I want hobbies that don't involve my phone. I don’t want to start every day staring at this brick that none of us can seem to put down. My daily average screen time is currently around 2 hours and 45 minutes* so it's already a lot better than it was when I started aiming to reduce it in 2020, and implementing unplugged evenings and my weekly calligraphy practice on Sunday nights has definitely helped, but there is still work to be done. It's still the first thing I look at in the morning, and the last before bed, and I think my sleep schedule would vastly improve if that could change! Maybe we should all go back to vintage alarm clocks so that our phones don't start our days for us, (but maybe we don't get Lorelai Gilmore's fuzzy clock which doesn't purr on time!)

Speaking of purring, I recently received an adorable little pocket calendar with a kitten on the front, and I am genuinely so excited to whip that out of my bag the next time someone asks me when I'm free instead of getting my phone out. Genuinely, it's so much cuter. Thank you to all of my friends and family who have already leant into my analogue year with their cosy gifts this year! To be loved is to be known!

*note that this daily average excludes all of my reading and writing on Substack, and swapping gorgeously elaborate 10 minute long voice notes back and forth with my best friends on Whatsapp, because it's not about having less connection and fun, it's about being intentional about what we're doing on our phones.

It sounds difficult to unplug until you actually do it. I deactivated my Twitter account, (I'm never calling it X), in January, the one I had for 13 whole years, and I haven't missed it once! I have timers on TikTok and Instagram, so you will still see me over there, but it's about not letting the infinite scroll consume you and take away hours of your life. One of my best friends and I have a shared feed on TikTok and I love watching that and seeing the 15 daily videos about our shared interests. Two of my favourite Instagram accounts are Shelley-Marie's and Loni's, their content makes me feel happy, warm, and cosy, so I will be staying for them. It's about engaging with what you love, and not mindlessly losing hours of your life to what you don't.

I want to write letters, go to the cinema, read books, do jigsaws, do puzzle books, drink tea, watch DVDs, listen to records, consume less and create more. I want the art that I engage with to inspire me, educate me, expand my world view.

Have you ever had such a gorgeous day out with a friend that you barely remember that you own a phone at all? That's the feeling we all need to cultivate for ourselves in order to disconnect. If you're joining in on this resolution, create a list of offline activities that you would enjoy, like my list above, put it somewhere where you'll see it often, and then you can pick and choose from it every time you get the urge to pick up your phone.

I want life to feel slower, and quieter, with more room for boredom instead of constant and unrelenting dopamine hits. I'm convinced that I could start to heal my anxiety-ridden nervous system if I just slowed down long enough for my body to realise I am safe. I want to be where my feet are more often, instead of flitting from thing to thing and rushing through life. My entire Substack account was born out of me sitting quietly in a bath one evening, letting my muscles relax, and allowing my brain to go quiet enough for me to hear my own voice again. Getting back to writing has been the most healing thing I have done this year.

I want to engage in art and not be afraid that what I'm looking at is actually AI. I'm so bored of AI slop.

We need to get the internet back to a place that we sometimes visit, and not something that we are permanently attached to at all times. I read someone say that we don't say ‘brb’ anymore like we used to on MSN, because we don't leave anymore. We're just always here. That has haunted me ever since the day I read it.

It's really rare that I include one of my own images in my moodboards, but I absolutely love this photo of my writing set, my favourite pen, my scalloped envelopes, and my wax seals. It's the scalloped version of the tied with love notecard set from Papier, (there I go with my love for bows again), and I have loved sending little post-hangout love letters to my friends and family all Autumn/Winter. I have sent eleven handwritten letters, and nine Christmas cards, plus the four that were delivered in person, and it has been so much fun to put pen to paper again, and also to choose a wax seal that I think the recipient will like, as an extra little touch of personalisation and whimsy. Everyone who has received one of my letters has said that they loved them and I'm so happy that they're bringing them as much joy as it's bringing me! I will be booking in for a little 💌 tattoo in the new year, as it's so perfectly me!

To kickstart my year of prioritising going to the cinema and watching DVDs, (even more than I already do!), let's talk about some films and shows I'm so excited to watch in 2026.

In the cinema, I am looking forward to: Wuthering Heights, The Magic Faraway Tree, and The Devil Wears Prada 2. On DVD, I am so excited to watch One Tree Hill for the first time, and I also asked for the Sabrina the Teenage Witch boxset for Christmas. I refuse to buy it on Prime because it's not really owning something if you have to pay a monthly subscription to access it. I have had enough of that! Physical media would never. I am looking forward to many nights cosied up in my oversized Sabrina the Teenage Witch tee, watching DVDs, and drinking hot chocolates, and staying off of my damn phone.

I saw this video and it has delighted me so much, imagine curling up in bed and watching Friday Night's Alright for Fighting on a whimsically decorated portable DVD player, as the universe intended. We watched A Muppet's Christmas Carol on DVD on Christmas Day and it was perfect! There's something so much more nostalgic and cosy about watching a classic film on DVD.

We have also absolutely adored growing our record collection this year, and we already have our eye on three more for the new year, OK Computer by Radiohead, Riot! by Paramore, and The Secret of Us by Gracie Abrams.

I love having to get up to switch to a new DVD disc! I love getting up to turn over a vinyl! All of this is so fun and normal, and whimsical to me, and we need to return to a much slower way of living again!

Oh and one more thing, yes that is a little photo of Greece in the bottom right corner, because Stephen and I would really like to go back for our five year wedding anniversary next year, which has come around so fast!!! Absolutely insane, but I had to throw at least one romantic goal in there, you know what I'm like.

have a wonderful and safe new year, and let's catch up again soon, okay?

esha x

1. I went to the doctor for two separate health issues while I was thirty. I am exceedingly grateful that I was cleared and entirely okay in both instances, but there was a time in my life where I would have let my health anxiety and medical OCD take the wheel, where they would have turned the car around and driven me right back home, out of fear. I am proud of myself for overcoming that this year! Get your health checks. Check your heart. Check your thyroid. Check your breasts. I am so glad that I did.

2. Go to therapy. And then go again. I am currently in therapy for the second time since leaving in 2023, and it's okay that I'm back. In fact, it's great to be back. There is no shame in getting help for your mental health, regardless of what the Emily-Gilmore-esque familes of the 90s/2000s have to say about it.

3. Slow down. I started writing this blog post on November 7th, wrote about twenty of these list items, and then slowly edited, and added to it every now and then when an idea came to me for the next two weeks, instead of posting it on the same day I wrote it, like I usually do. It's okay for things to take up your time. Inspiration will always return, and you don't have to force it. As Lania the Artist says, your creativity is waiting for you. Even when you stop believing in it, it doesn't stop believing in you.

4. Analogue Autumn, (now Whimsical Winter), which is what I called a little set of rules I made for myself to help me learn to relax during my health scare, genuinely saved my life this year. Sending my friends and family cute little love letters; rewatching my favourite nostalgic films on DVD, getting off of my phone, listening to records, discovering the joys of baths, being really present in conversations, essentially living like it's the 90s again, has changed and fulfilled me so much, at a time where I really needed it. I think a big part of living your best life is slowing down enough to notice how incredible it already is, and finding joy in the mundane.

   How we spend our days, is, of course, how we spend our lives.” - Annie Dillard

5. Trust the timing of your life. I have written weekly entries into my gratitude diary for eight years now, every single Sunday. The things that I am grateful for now are things that 2017 Esha could not have even dreamed of. I may still wish for more, and maybe I don't have everything I thought I would have at thirty one, (namely, a kitten), but I absolutely have everything that she wanted back then. P.S. I still really want that kitten, and would love to be a cat owner by this time next year. If you own cats, expect a message from me soon asking about how much I would realistically need to save up!

   

6. I will say this one over and over again until you are sick of it, but romanticise your life. Have something to look forward to every day, even if it's just your morning coffee. Find out which syrup your favourite coffee shop uses, and add that into your hot drink routine at home. Take photos of everything. Have sleepovers like we're all teenagers again, especially if you're like me and missed out on the joy of sleepovers as a child! I keep a bubble wand or two in my handbag at all times, just in case the mood strikes. I wear lilac glitter highlighter so that I feel like a little fairy while doing the groceries. I drink my caffeine-free cola out of wine glasses, and I look forward to my oat milk hot chocolate with vanilla at the end of the night, every night. Life will give you more than enough reasons to be serious, but you have to believe that your life is fun and exciting, and then it will be.

   

7. Use the things that you save for special occasions, your life is the special occasion!

8. Make your peace of mind a priority. Remove yourself from situations where you no longer feel welcome, or respected, or you don't align with anymore. Yes, even you, fellow recovering people pleaser at the back of the room. You're allowed to! You can remain kind and still be boundaried! It's okay!

9. Stop using AI. I've been against it from the start, maybe you've been against it as of thirty minutes ago. It's not too late.

10. Female friendship has saved my life over and over again, and it will continue to, for the rest of my life. May everyone know the sacred and special bond that I have with my best friends. I absolutely adore my village, and I adore being a villager. I also loved this episode of Maddie Dragsbaek’s podcast, (who I ADORE by the way, she’s younger than me but I want to be her when I grow up), where she talks about the three kinds of best friends that everyone needs; The Historian, the friend who has been in your life for 10+ years who has seen you through all of your eras and knows you incredibly well, The Cheerleader, who supports your hopes and dreams and roots for you endlessly, and The Truth Teller, the friend who keeps it real with you, and can compassionately call you in when you need it. I think I lean towards being The Historian, and The Cheerleader in other people’s lives, but I have all three in my life. There's overlap between the archetypes amongst my friends too, and I am so grateful that I am not lacking in any of them. I am who I am today because of them.

“Nearly everything I know about love, I've learnt from my long-term friendships with women.” - Dolly Alderton

11. I spent some time learning about the 3 S's of female friendship this year, and absolutely agreed, and loved learning about it. It explains so well why some friendships fall away, usually because one of the three key pillars, (support, symmetry, and secrecy), has crumbled. You need to feel supported by your friends, aligned with them and their actions, and be able to trust that you can share your life with them, and have them share back with you, knowing that all secrets and deepest, darkest thoughts are safe. It's so interesting! This concept is everywhere by now, but weird as it is, I first heard about it on this episode of Paige Pritchard's Overcoming Overspending podcast, which I also highly recommend, both this episode, and in general, I have learnt so much from her.

12. I will very likely be well into my forties still ordering every new gourmand, sweet as hell, cupcake adjacent perfume sample from Small Aromas. I like to smell like a French vanilla madeleine dipped into a boozy latte, and that is my right! Trying out new perfumes is one of my favourite hobbies, and, I recently found out from this Tiktok that using our sense of smell protects our memory, and can even prevent dementia! So. It's about more than the thrill I get when I'm in public and someone says ‘it smells like cake in here’, and it's me.

    

13. I am so strong in my sense of personal style now that I no longer send the “what are we wearing?” text, and it has upped my confidence level so much. Trusting yourself with small decisions like that really helps with building confidence with much larger decisions in the long run!

14. Italian Wedding Soup is one of my favourite things that I know how to make. I'm vegetarian so I use Beyond Meat burgers, and shape them into meatballs, but I'm not joking. Best thing ever. It has become such a staple in our house, and it's always such a hit with guests, too.

15. Marriage is not hard. Life is hard, and being in a constant sleepover with your best friend makes it easier. My husband is the love of my life, why would that be hard!!

16. I love hosting! I love collecting snacks and sweets that I tailor to the guest, and filling up the guest room snack box for them, in case they get hungry in the night. I love choosing bedding that I think they will like. I love hand tying colour co-ordinated ribbons around the guest towel bales, I love cooking for them, and filling up the guest room water carafe before everyone goes to bed, and making them hot drinks and crossaints for breakfast in the morning. It's become my favourite thing to do. and I can't wait to do it more in 2026.

17. Off the back of that last one, we also hosted Christmas for the first time last year because we finally moved out of our studio basement apartment, and it was so much fun hosting Christmas too! I love setting up the table all cute with festive bow napkins, and place names, and developing our own little traditions, we play Jazz music instead of Christmas music because by that time, everyone is so burnt out from it anyway, and I make a mac and cheese as one of the sides, everyone finds that weird for about three seconds but then they do end up taking some and loving it! You can judge, but you have to try it first. We're hosting it again this year too, and I can't wait!

18. I absolutely adore gift giving. I get nervous a couple seconds before I give anyone a gift because I overthink about whether or not it's the gift, but I have a ‘gifts’ bookmark folder on my phone that I add things to so constantly throughout the year whenever I see anything at all that I think my friends or family members will love, and then I get to buy it for them and gift it to them, and it's soooo exciting to me. As someone who finished my Christmas shopping weeks ago, the hard part is keeping everything a secret! While we're here, start your Christmas shopping early. This year, I started mine on November 4th, and the majority of it was at my door, wrapped, gift labelled, and ribboned a week later. Bliss!

19. Okay, one last one which is to do with the festive season, seeing as you are reading this in December. Please shop small, as much as possible, if you can. There are so many absolutely incredible small businesses, and a whole world of talented artists who deserve your money instead of the chains and distribution centres who are not paying anyone fairly, and if I'm being honest, unfortunately, probably using A.I. “art”. Now more than ever, we need to be supporting real people, and real art. If you're not sure where to start, I wrote a blog post about five years ago where I recommended some of my favourite small businesses. I called it ‘Shop Small (But Fierce) This Christmas', which I still think is so clever lol. 75% of this year's Christmas shopping was bought from small businesses, so I definitely put my money where my mouth is on this, even five years later. I have SO many new favourites too but won't reveal them here as it may give away the gifts that I bought for my friends this year, but message me if you want a small business rec, I'm your girl!

20. I have had my full fringe for over 3 years now, and I literally would miss it so much if I ever grew it out. I think it’s perfect, and I think I look hot with it. It’s a ready-made accessory that elevates all of my outfits, and I feel like Jessica Day with it! What's not to love?

21. If you're like me, and having up to eight super busy weekends in a row is normal behaviour for you, take some weekdays off if you can, even if you're just giving yourself Fridays off for a few weeks, so that you can have a day to do nothing. I am incredibly social, (in the right scenario, and if I can still be in bed by 10pm), and I love filling my weekends with joyful plans, but we need to rest sometimes too! I have finally learnt the art of taking a day off of work because I want to sit in bed, and not because I have plans, and it is bliss. I also write the word ‘free’ on all of the satudays/sundays that I don't have plans, so that I can easily search it in my phone calendar before I say yes to plans, to make sure I still have time for myself before and/or after a busy period. It really helps!

22. I don't know what on Earth happened in the summer of 2025 where all the girlypops started deeming their tattoos ‘unchic’, and removing them, but I love mine. I have 35, and I feel way more myself with them.

23. If you would like to host more in the new year but you don’t know what to do with guests, I highly recommend a games day. Have everyone bring over the board/card games that they can’t play because they’re for 2 or more players and they don’t have enough people in their house to play them, we all have a stash of those! We are both massively into board games so we acquire a lot, but there's always a small handful that we can only play when we have friends over. A games day means that everyone involved gets to play the games that they usually can't, and it is so much fun!

24. I have no desire to learn how to drive. I tried it. I hated it. I wasted a lot of money. I've made peace with it. I will continue to sit peacefully on trains and read entire books, or listen to music while getting from A to B, without the pressure that I am the one in charge of the vehicle. Phew.

25. The good news is, sometimes there is a cat, or a leaf on the ground which is the perfect shade of orange, and the perfect level of crunchiness when you step on it. Small things can change an entire week. Today is a fresh start.

    

26. Life is supposed to be fun.

27. Every now and then, me and Stephen make playlists which have our favourite songs from our childhood on them, and show them to each other, and explain what the songs meant to us back then. It is so much fun! We both existed for twenty years before we met, there is so much to catch up on! I get to be thirty one showing my husband why I LOVED Mayday Parade when I was fifteen, how fun is that?! Dancing in the kitchen to the same stuff you danced in the kitchen to at fifteen, but this time you're with the love of your life, is so healing.

    

28. You can wear a tiara whenever you want. I dressed up as Glinda for this year's at home Halloween, and I got to wear the tiara that I wore on our wedding day again for the first time since that day. I felt so cute in it! I want to wear it to Lidl! And I just might!

    

29. I have been to the theatre twice this year to see Wicked, and Clueless, and Stephen has incredibly kindly bought Hadestown tickets for us for around my birthday. I'm so excited! He took me to see Mean Girls for my 30th, so it's become a bit of a birthday tradition which I'm super happy about, because I absolutely love live performance, it's so special.

30. You should have fun New Year's Resolutions! Everyone thinks they have to be so serious, but they can be cute and whimsical. A couple years ago, one of mine was to try as many different pasta shapes as I could, and it was so much fun. This year, some of mine included wearing bows in my hair more often, and having fresh flowers, and cake in the house as much as possible. Sweet and affordable and fun! My 2025 moodboard:

    

31. I'm trying to be better with the idea that someone could be annoyed at me. It's human to be annoyed at people. I get annoyed at people sometimes too, and it's very human. To spend days on end living in such a heightened state of anxiety, suffering, and overthinking if someone is mad at me, when 99% of the time, they are not, is only detrimental to me. The world doesn't end if someone is a little mad at me. This was a huge discovery for me when I read it in one of Mary Skinner's posts, but it's true.

and that's 31!

let's catch up again soon, okay?

esha x

Anyway, so there I am on the undergroud, on my way to a book event to listen to one of my favourite authors, B.K. Borison, be interviewed by another of my favourite authors, Lucy Jane Wood, and I suddenly had the thought that little Esha would think I am the coolest person to ever exist. To be on the underground in a cute autumnal polka dot dress, a large red bow in my hair, (like Harriet, the main character of Borison's latest book), and my Taylor Swift Folklore cardigan, on my way to have a cosy, witchy, bookish evening. She would be over the moon about this!!! (to be clear, adult me was also pretty psyched, but you get my point)

Not to mention that two days prior to this event, I was in a floral white ball gown on my way to meet Stephanie Garber, (hey, she said to dress up!), who I have absolutely adored the work of for almost ten years now.

It is no longer my dream to live in London, work in an office building during the day, and step on to the underground in my stiletto heels to take me to my fancy evening plans after work, but it was hers, and here I was, achieving a version of her dream. I don't think enough of us ever sit down long enough to muse over how far we have come, and how cool the teenage versions of ourselves would think we are.

My therapist recently asked me to write a letter to my younger self, a task that most of us have probably been given, and probably dreaded, but I really wanted to do it. After all, dear reader, what am I if not a writer? So I wrote my letter, and I found myself telling her about all of the things I know now, that she didn't know then, and how things would get better for her, for us. I told her her all the cliche things about how I love her, and how she's so beautiful just as she is, how she has now healed from the many things that she was really suffering through at that time, and everything else of that sort. I ended the letter with the words ‘you will find your joy and laughter again, and I'm so excited for you to.’

That day, on the underground, the idea came to me that I would like to tell her all the ways that we did find that joy and laughter again, so this post is mainly for her, but it's also for you. I hope you enjoy it.

Maybe you can implement some of these joyful things into your life, or maybe you already have, and it's time for you to take a moment to show your inner child the beautiful life that you have made for them.

I pulled this card during my weekly oracle card pull a couple of days after I had the idea for this post.

The universe is listening!

Without further ado, here are all the ways I have rediscovered my joy.

First off, we'll start with the serious business, and then we can get silly.

I have had capital A Anxiety for my entire life, before I even knew the word ‘anxiety’, I just knew that I walked through the world intensely afraid of everything, overthinking and ruminating over my every move, way more than the people around me were. Thank you to Zoe Sugg, who I knew as zoella280390, for teaching me that there was a name for what I was feeling, and there were things that I could do about it.

I’m in therapy for it now, for the second time in 3 years, and I will probably always struggle with it but at least I know how to get help now. I still watch every single one of Zoe's videos, and they have remained a huge source of comfort and joy for me.

This one sounds simple, but it's a lot easier to write than it is to actually do, but I say no when I want to say no, or I at least try my absolute hardest to. I am really working on my chronic self abandonment (also known as people pleasing - yeah. Sounds worse when you put it like that, doesn't it! May we all break free of this curse!)

I spend my adult money on tattoos, and trinkets, and tickets which allow me to be in the same room, (and the same photo!), as my favourite authors and artists. Meeting the people that I love, who create the art that I love, is something new to me in the past year or so, but it is something I will continue to do, it's so special.

20 year old me would scream if she found out that she met Stephanie Garber last week, and she'd probably also scream knowing I got a Caraval tattoo last year too.

I have left two religions over the past ten years, one in 2014, to then join a new one in 2018, until I left that in 2023, because we don't settle in this house! We're all in, or we're all out.

I do a weekly oracle card pull, and wear a necklace of ‘The Sun’ tarot card around my neck for happiness and positivity, and I genuinely do feel that way when I wear it, so sue me!!!

I have never witnessed an 11:11, or a fallen eyelash, that I didn't make a wish on. I am weird and witchy and whimsical and I’m so proud of it, I'm so proud of me.

I wear glitter as often as possible, on my face, collarbones, outfit, nails, all of the above. I wear perfume to bed so that I can drift off to sleep in a cloud of marshmallow scented dreams.

You will never catch me leave a cat on the street unmeowed at, or unpet.

I try to get home by 10pm latest as often as possible and I don't care who knows it. I have a home that I love, that always smells like vanilla and cookies, and I love to host, and have friends and family sleep over so that we can spend time drinking tea and gossiping in our adorable matching pyjama sets the next morning.

My husband and best friends are the family I chose for myself, the one I have always needed.

Speaking of my husband, we have our ten year anniversary next week (!!!) and the following day, I have a health check up to finally close the loop on the health issue I mentioned in my previous post. I say this to let you know that while I am over here romanticising my life, and appreciating everything I have now that little Esha didn't, I do also recognise that while there will always be things to celebrate, there will also always be reasons to be afraid.

There is so much sadness and pain and hurt in this world, but there is so much joy, too.

I hope this post helps you to reflect on your own life and remember that you, like me, have also come so far, and maybe there's some things you'd like to show your inner child too. hold their hand, and give them the tour of your new life, I think they would like to see it.

look at us, we made it out.

let's catch up again soon, okay?

esha x

Every time I thought about bringing 100+ posts, including all 35 of my tattoo-tour-esque explanations, over to Substack, I felt all of the words in the world tumble out of my brain, and fall down a 10 storey elevator shaft.

Put simply, I didn't want to do it, and I think I want my Substack musings to go a little deeper than why I have Luke and Lorelai tattooed on to my thigh.

Well, about as deep as someone with the rocks-a-lot-of-polka-dot tendancies of Jessica Day can go, but if you would like to read more of my more lighthearted posts, please do! My Wix is, and always will, remain linked here on my profile as I'm not ashamed of it. It's how I started writing, and it served me so well.

So, as you can tell by that incredibly long winded intro, I am not someone who is naturally able to relax, about anything ever, really.

I am the kind of person who gets stressed if I so much as have too many things on my to-watch-list, you know, the thing that people usually reach for during their free time, to actually enjoy. A friend recommending something for me to watch would accelerate my heartbeat to that of an animal being hunted for sport. To me, everything was a to-do list, and everything was a race. This Autumn, it was time for me to change that.

Not to be what Emily Gilmore would refer to as “one of those people” who wants to express their every thought after experiencing a health issue, (yes, I may not be explaining my Gilmore Girls tattoos to you here, but you will still experience my love for the show!), when you have a small health scare like the one I recently did, it can be a bit of a wake up call. The whole world comes to a standstill when you think something is disastrously wrong, and it puts a lot into perspective. I am, very gratefully, completely fine, but a scare is a scare nevertheless, and it was the push I needed to finally get myself to stop sweating all the small things, and to figure out how to add some pockets of peace into my life.

The tarot card that started it all.

During the two weeks while I was waiting for my follow up appointment to decipher what exactly was going on with me, I pulled the Solitude card during one of my weekly oracle card pulls.

Alone time. Find comfort in your own energy again - a process that requires emotional isolation. Do not mistake your alone time for loneliness - Spirit is creating distance from your desires, expectations, and ideas of others so you can identify your own. Get into hermit mode.

And it worked. Into hermit mode, I went. Here is everything I am doing while I am learning to relax. If you are someone who is already accustomed to relaxing, first of all, hi I'm jealous, and secondly, I am going to sound entirely insane to you, but hopefully, I can be you one day!

1. Baths. Has anyone else come across this entirely underground concept that I have just discovered? Something about sitting in a cauldron of hot water that smells like Baked Cinnamon Swirl by Treaclemoon for 20-30 minutes, with no phone, nothing to do, and nowhere else to be can really work magic. The very idea of this blog post appeared in my brain like a cloud of pixie dust while I was sitting in one of the three baths that I took last week. It turns out that if you actually give your brain some time where you aren't constantly filling it with quick dopamine hits, it rewards you with peace of mind and original thought. I have been changed, and Sleep Token are right, I will now be indulging in infinite baths.

2. Taking time off just to take time off. This one should absolutely not be new to me, or to anyone, but up until October 3rd, I had never done it before. If I wasn't at work, it's because I was doing something else with my day instead. Often times, that would involve waking up earlier than I would be if I were working, so that I could go and have my day of planned weekday fun. On October 3rd, I lay in bed until I decided it was time to listen to the new Taylor Swift album. It was the first release day in my 15+ years of being a fan that I have ever not been immediately obsessed with a new TS album, but that isn't the point. The point is, I took a day off to lay in bed, and listen to music, and I now know that I can do that whenever I want, which was especially good to learn right now as my next free weekend is in 2026, so I do need to book in some week days off so that I can have a middle-of-the-week ‘weekend’ all to myself instead. What a time to be alive.

3. Having phone free time. This one is not new to me, as I already have ‘unplugged evening’ scheduled into my calendar for every Sunday night, but it is something I am trying to do far more often than that. This one works really well with baths, because I physically do not trust me and my clumsy nature with taking my phone into the bathroom. At the very most, I will set up my husband's tablet on the entire other side of the bathroom so that I can maybe listen to an audiobook, or watch an episode of Gilmore Girls, but sitting there entirely distraction free is a different kind of luxury. I must treat myself to cognitive silence more.

4. Not feeling like everything I do has to be completed immediately. So, this is where I may start to sound insane, but if I start watching a show, I have to finish it as soon as possible. I hate it when there is one more episode in a season, but I am too tired to watch it. I hate the feeling of things left unfinished. It's bizarre. I usually, (because I broke out of this with the last two books that I read!), carve out enough time to finish an entire book, before I even sit down to start it. It would be very annoying to me if I couldn't finish a book in the same sitting that I started it in, because then I couldn't tick ‘finish book’ off of my to do list for that day, which is nonsensical. I now have more of a ‘read book whenever, and for as long as I have time for/want to’ approach, so that my hobbies remain enjoyable to me, and not just something I have to get done on the day that I planned to get it done on. Life is so much more joyful now that I don't use up all of my audiobook hours/credits on the same day that I get them. I no longer spend the rest of the month pining for them to reset, because I used them all on the first day of my subscription. TLDR for this one is: bring back savouring!

5. Trying to have a 90s/analogue autumn. I love this one. I have been watching dvds, collecting physical boxsets of my favourite shows, revisiting nostalgic classics, just all together trying to get off my damn phone, and stop giving more money to these streaming services that are continously trying to get us to pay for them to fix the thing that they broke in the first place. I am very bored of ‘buying’ tv shows and films, that I don't even really own, because if I cancel my subscription to the streaming service, I lose access to the thing that I ‘bought’. Let's actually own things again.

6. Slowing down; walking to my favourite bakery even though I have moved away from it now; mooching around tk maxx, the range, and car boot sales with my friends; listening to vinyls; writing letters; sending voice notes; playing board games; doing puzzles; sitting in coffee shops with my husband before we go do the grocery shop, generally removing the ‘go go go’ energy from my life. This has been my favourite way to live so far.

7. Prioritising cosiness and rest, lighting sweetly scented coffee with marshmallow candles, turning on all of the fairy lights, using small lamps which produce soft ambient lighting only, no big light allowed!! None of this is new, but it's of course the perfect time of year to remind you that we should all be bundling up under a blanket with a hot chocolate, and finding joy in all things cosy. Sometimes we could all do with the reminder.

look after yourselves, and let's catch up again soon, okay?

esha x

I discovered that I love to write. (and also that I hated my job and our apartment, but that's another story - I have since amended both of those elements of my life, and I absolutely love both now!)

I no longer upload every single Monday at 3pm for months and months on end, but there was once a time.

Anyway, my first ever blog post was titled ‘the obligatory “about me” blog post’ and so I thought, while I likely will be slowly moving all of my posts across to Substack in due time, it would be fun for my first post on here to mirror that one. So, here is me reacting to that post that I wrote when I was approaching 25 (as it was actually written in the final few months of 2019), now, as I am approaching 31.

Okay, here goes. Take it away, past Esha.

1. Why "small but fierce"? - I'm an English Teacher, with a huge love for Shakespeare and classic literature. I'm also 5ft nothing, so "though she be but little, she is fierce" feels like a direct quote about me, but everyone in my life calls me "small" rather than little, so there we have it.

This is still mostly true, except that I am no longer a teacher. Remember me speaking about people realising that they absolutely hated their careers in 2020? Yeah, that included me! Everything else is still accurate though!

2. Organisation, and stationary are two of my favourite things. I love writing lists, and keeping a copious amount of cute notebooks and pens. I'm basically Amy Santiago. Mm new binder smell.

You said it, past Esha. We even had a balloon arch at our wedding (the year after I wrote this) because of our shared love of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Vindication.

3. I grew up listening to Country music, so it will always have a very special place in my heart. I'm obsessed with modern Country artists like Thomas Rhett, Lucy Hale, John Mayer, Maren Morris, Kelsea Ballerini and Morgan Evans.

Correct. I even have 5 Country and Western themed tattoos now! Oh and by the way, past Esha, who swore you were a ‘one and done’, you have 35 tattoos now. Yeah. More on that later maybe!

4. Mashed potato is my comfort food. I will eat it with anything, at anytime.

Yes. And also, soup. I'm a real soup girly now too.

5. Dogs are my favourite animal. I've never had a pet in my entire life but at some point, I would like to have a home that is overrun with puppies.

Oh. Oh no. I am a cat person through and through! I actually can't believe I ever wrote this. Does anyone have a contact number for the body snatchers? (actually, could you make that an email address…) Just kidding, I love all animals, I have been cruelty free for bordering on a decade now, and a vegetarian for almost half of that time so of course I love all animals, but if you asked me to show you which household pet fills up every single one of my social media algorithms, it is cats. This might be the biggest thing that has changed about me over the five years. Huh. The gift of time.

6. I spent so many of my family summer holidays in the Caribbean, which has spoilt me. I can be incredibly grumpy and upset when I'm too cold, until I can make it somewhere warm to defrost.

The first half is still true! I do prefer to be cold rather than hot now though. I don't love to be cold per se, but I enjoy bundling up in a cosy Rory Gilmore esque outfit with a hot drink in hand. A hot chocolate can fix everything.

7. For me, the two best things about going to the cinema are Tango Ice Blasts and Oreo Milkshakes. (I've never ordered both in one trip though..)

Yes.

8. The first gig I ever went to was to see my favourite band, Against The Current.

Yes, true! 2020 Esha would be so excited to find out that she attended ten gigs last year. Music is everything.

9. I'm absolutely obsessed with rose gold. I have been for so many years now, and will probably continue to be for the next 50 years.

This is absolutely correct, both my engagement ring, (which 2020 Esha had), and my wedding ring, (which 2020 Esha did not yet have, congratulations girl!) are both rose gold. I feel like stores don't make enough rose gold jewellery anymore, and that's a shame, but I will never give it up.

10. My favourite quote is "Just keep me where the light is" from the song 'Gravity' by John Mayer.

Absolutely still true, ask anyone (or the light box on my desk in my bedroom, which has said this on it for absolute years, and I've lost all of the letters for it now so it will actually never change). My first tattoo was a lightning bolt to represent this quote, and also to represent being a massive fan of Kathleen Lights. I still am.

That was so much fun! Turns out that I do still absolutely love to write. Who knew?

let's catch up again soon, okay?

esha x