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#AggressiveJoy

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Notes on stubborn pleasure in difficult times

A Tactic, Not a Philosophy

At the beginning of 2025, I started using the phrase aggressive joy like a life raft.

It wasn’t aspirational. It wasn’t curated. It definitely wasn’t gentle. It was something I grabbed onto at the start of the year as a way to get through it.

A tactic.
A refusal.
A clenched fist around small good things when everything else felt heavy, uncertain, or out of my control.

Aggressive joy wasn’t about being happy.
It was demanding joy in my life the way I demand caffeine. Death before decaf applies to more than coffee, it turns out.

If the world was going to keep throwing its weight around, then I was going to meet it with stubborn pleasure. Good coffee even when I was tired. Laughing too loud. Wearing the nice thing on a Tuesday. Taking joy personally, almost defensively, like: no actually, this is mine, I am allowed it.

Fake It ’Til You Make It (And Then You Do)

At first, it felt temporary. A coping mechanism. Something to get me through the year. Fake it ’till you make it.

But the problem with tactics that work is that they tend to stick.
The problem is that sometimes you actually make it.

It served me because it wasn’t just one thing.

The Different Kinds of Aggression

Some days I had to be aggressive in seeking joy. Hunting it down on purpose, insisting on it when it didn’t present itself politely. Looking for the joyful thing like it owed me money.

For more days than I care to admit, I had to be aggressive in experiencing it. Fierce and strict with myself. This is today’s joy. Do not tarnish it with melancholy. Do not pre-empt its ending.

Other days I had to be aggressive in enjoying it. Letting myself actually have the moment without shrinking it, downplaying it, or bracing for it to be taken away. Staying with the joy instead of flinching away from it.

And some days, I had to be aggressive in sharing it. Saying the nice thing out loud. Sending the message. Letting other people see me enjoying myself even when the world felt so relentlessly, grindingly… shit.

Especially then.

Because when everything feels heavy, joy can start to feel like something you should keep quiet about. Like it’s indulgent, or naïve, or somehow out of step with reality. Aggressive joy refused that. It said: no, actually, this is part of how I survive.

The Risk of Wanting More

And sometimes it was aggressive because I was afraid of it.

Joy can feel risky when you’ve learned that good things don’t always last. When enjoyment comes with a quiet calculation about how much it might cost you later. There were days when choosing joy felt like tempting fate, like daring the universe to notice I was having a good time.

But I simply couldn’t continue without joy anymore.

I wanted this joy even if tomorrow it hurt me. Even if it made the fall sharper. Even if it meant I’d have something to miss later. I didn’t want to live as though the possibility of loss was a reason to refuse the present.

Choosing It Anyway

So I took it with my eyes open. Not naïvely, not gently, but deliberately. Knowing it might bruise me later and choosing it anyway.

That’s another kind of aggression, I think.
Not denial. Not optimism.
But courage that knows the cost and pays it upfront.

Letting It Become a Habit

Somewhere along the way, aggressive joy stopped being something I only deployed on bad days. It started showing up uninvited on ordinary ones. I’d notice myself choosing delight without first justifying it. Letting myself enjoy something without waiting for permission or better circumstances.

And that surprised me.

Because I don’t think I ever planned for joy to become a habit.

I was raised, emotionally speaking, to treat joy as conditional. Earned. Delayed until everything else was sorted. You rest after the work. You celebrate after the danger has passed. You enjoy yourself once you’re sure nothing bad is about to happen.

Aggressive joy ignores that order entirely.

It says: have the coffee now.
It says: laugh anyway.
It says: take the pleasure even if the future is unclear, even if the work isn’t finished, even if your brain insists you should be more sensible.

There’s something almost feral about that.

I think that’s why I liked it in the first place.

A Quiet Christmas

And here I am now, choosing a quiet Christmas that brings me joy.

No spectacle. No chaos. No performance of cheer. Just rest, small rituals, space and… joy. I’m still faintly confused at how this is allowed, as if someone might tap me on the shoulder and explain I’ve misunderstood the rules.

This is still aggressive joy. Choosing softness in a world that keeps demanding noise. Choosing enough. Choosing what actually fits, even when part of me expects a catch.

I don’t know what next year will need from me. I don’t know whether joy will have to be hunted, defended, shared, or risked again.

But I do know I’m not ready to retire the hashtag.

Not yet.

The Amygdala Is Not a Reliable Narrator

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Or: how my brain keeps shouting “YOU’RE GOING TO DIE ALONE” during perfectly normal interactions.


There’s a part of my brain that is deeply committed to my survival.
Unfortunately, it is also extremely dramatic, wildly overconfident, and deeply uninterested in nuance.

This is the amygdala. Its job is to notice danger and react fast. It does not care whether the threat is actually happening now. It cares about patterns. Similarities. Vibes. A tone shift that vaguely reminds it of something that happened years ago and which it has never emotionally recovered from.

It is not subtle.
It is also not open to feedback.

Everything Is Fine, Except Apparently It Isn’t

In relationships, this manifests as volume.

A delayed reply becomes abandonment.
A change in tone becomes rejection.
A quiet evening becomes proof that something is wrong and I should emotionally prepare for exile.

Logically, I know this is nonsense.
Physically, my body does not give a shit what I know.

Because the amygdala doesn’t speak in sentences. It speaks in sensations. Tight chest. Clenched jaw. A sudden urge to either explain everything or disappear completely. Fight, flight, freeze, sometimes all three before lunch.

(Yes, a lunch I’ve probably forgotten to eat.)

This is the part of me that fears loss before it happens. The part that learned, early on, that connection could vanish without warning. It doesn’t wait for evidence. It doesn’t ask follow-up questions. It just hits the alarm and leaves me to deal with the emotional admin.

The truly irritating thing is that fear feels exactly like intuition when it shows up in the body.

For years, I mistook anxiety for insight. I thought I was being perceptive. Careful. Emotionally intelligent. In reality, I was just catastrophising with confidence and calling it foresight.


In Which I Am Actually Being Reasonable

What really adds insult to injury is that my behaviour is usually… fine.

I’m communicating.
I’m asking for clarity.
I’m noticing patterns without accusing anyone of crimes.

If someone else described doing exactly what I’m doing, I’d nod along and say, yes, that sounds healthy and proportionate.

My amygdala, however, loses her entire mind.

To her, this is not calm communication. This is escalation. This is exposure. This is the exact moment before everything goes catastrophically wrong. The same actions, viewed internally, are suddenly accompanied by sirens, flashing lights, and a voice shouting “DANGER, WILL ROBINSON.”

Abort mission.
Retreat immediately.
Or overshare wildly.
Possibly both.

She is not fair. She does not scale her response to the situation. She takes perfectly sensible actions and adds a dramatic soundtrack and spends the whole budget on fireworks, just in case.

The Double Standard, Featuring Spoons


Then there’s the double standard, which I find particularly offensive.

When I cancel plans because I’m out of spoons, it’s reasonable. When I realise that past me had wildly different ideas about what was achievable in a single day, that’s also reasonable. Annoying, yes, but reasonable. And in truth I should get a gold star for not pushing through and people pleasing. (But that’s a post for another day.)

I cancel plans. I apologise. I reschedule if I can. And crucially, I know that none of this means I don’t care. I still love these people. I still want to spend time with them. The desire didn’t evaporate just because my capacity did.

That part feels obvious to me.

When someone else does the exact same thing?

Obviously they’re pulling away.
Obviously they’ve bored.
Obviously they’ve realised something and are quietly planning their exit.

Never mind that I understand this perfectly well when it’s me. Never mind that I know, from the inside, how much love can exist alongside a last-minute cancellation. Context collapses. Compassion evaporates.

The rule book changes depending on who’s holding it.

Logically, I know this is absurd.

That this is not a threat.

Emotionally, my body is already packing a bag and rehearsing a sad little monologue about being abandoned and the smallest violin is playing just for me.

Again: not fair. Not evidence-based. Not even especially imaginative. Just a threat-detection system applying wildly inconsistent standards and insisting “this is vigilance, actually.”

Past Me Is a Terrible Project Manager


I think part of this is finally accepting that past me is not a reliable project manager. She is optimistic. She is ambitious. She looks at a day and says, yes, we can absolutely fit all of that in, and then disappears, leaving present me to deal with the consequences.

When I cancel plans, I’m often not choosing between people and rest. I’m correcting an earlier miscalculation. I’m adjusting reality to something my body, my brain can actually sustain. And that doesn’t undo the wanting. It doesn’t touch the affection. It just acknowledges that enthusiasm is not the same thing as energy.

I understand this when I’m the one making the call. I’m learning, slowly, to offer other people the same generosity. To trust that their present selves are also cleaning up after an overcommitted past version.

This, too, is not a threat.

Other People Exist, Inconveniently

I’m also learning, and this one really tests my patience, that other people have whole areas of their lives that exist without me in it. Friendships I’m not part of. Conversations I’ll never hear. Days that do not orbit my presence or absence.

And that this is, still, not a threat.

It’s not a withdrawal.
It’s not a quiet rehearsal of leaving.
It’s just… reality.

Other people having full, textured lives doesn’t diminish my place in theirs. It doesn’t mean I’m replaceable or forgettable or already on my way out. It just means I am not the sole load-bearing structure holding everything up.

Which, when I actually sit with it, is more relieving than frightening.

How wonderful it is that I have relationships with people who have rich, full lives of their own? How treasured it is to be chosen as part of that? Not by default, not by obligation, but intentionally. How rich it is to know that the people I love show up fully present when they’re with me, not tired, not overwhelmed, not running on fumes?

They come rested. They come willingly. They come because they want to be there.

Just like I do with them.

Other people having full, textured lives doesn’t diminish my place in theirs. It doesn’t make me replaceable or forgettable or already on my way out. It just means I’m not the sole load-bearing structure holding everything up.

And that, it turns out, is not a threat…
It’s abundance.

Updating the Operating System

And I think this is the real friction point: the crisis-management style of my amygdala doesn’t fit the life current me actually has.

That approach made sense once. Hypervigilance, over-preparing, scanning constantly for exits. Those were reasonable strategies in a life that felt unstable. But my life now is quieter. Safer. More ordinary, in the best possible way. The emergencies are smaller. The stakes are lower. The threats are mostly imagined.

My amygdala, however, has not updated the brief.

She treats minor emotional discomfort like a five-alarm fire. She responds to scheduling conflicts with the same intensity she once reserved for real danger. She cannot tell the difference between this is uncomfortable and this is unsafe, and she would very much like me to act quickly, while because she can’t see beyond the hill of this crisis.

I don’t need to dismantle the alarm system.
I don’t even need to silence her.

I just need to stop letting her run the day-to-day operations of a life that no longer requires constant emergency response.

Current me gets to choose tools that fit. Tools that assume continuity instead of collapse. Tools that trust that care doesn’t vanish overnight, that people don’t disappear because of one cancelled plan, that love can exist alongside rest.

So when the alarm goes off now, I’m learning to pause. I’m starting to check the facts. I remind myself that past me had a very different job, and did the best she could with what she had.

Then I thank her.
And I turn the volume down.

She hates this.

A Quiet 150 Days

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I’m 150 days sober.

I didn’t mark it on purpose.
I didn’t have a countdown or an app or a plan to announce anything. I only checked because people kept bumping into the edge of it, and it turned out to be one of those milestone numbers humans seem to agree are important. Or at least worth mentioning.

One person commented and asked if I drink anymore.
Another offered me a booze gift and I declined.
Someone else wanted to buy me a beer as a thank you, and I said no again.

After the third time, I thought, huh.
And then I looked.

I should probably say this clearly: I don’t identify as an alcoholic. I’ve been to an AA meeting. I’ve seen what alcoholism looks like when it tears through people and families and lives. I don’t recognise myself there, and I don’t want to borrow someone else’s language for an experience that isn’t mine.

Nothing burned down.
Nothing dramatic happened.

But I also don’t like my brain when it’s drunk.

Alcohol doesn’t soften my thoughts, it sharpens them in all the wrong directions. It makes everything louder, blurrier, meaner. I don’t become relaxed or expansive. I become slightly unmoored from myself, and then I have to live with the emotional hangover the next day.

So I stopped. Quietly. Without ceremony. I just didn’t start again.

What’s interesting is this: if you can remember the last time you drank, and the date, maybe there’s something there worth paying attention to.

I remember the last time I drank.

It was a paid-for party. Drinks included. Free, in the way that makes refusing feel faintly rude. There was no pressure exactly. No one insisting. Just that gentle peer expectation that you partake. That you accept what’s offered. That you don’t be awkward about it.

So I did.

Not because I wanted to.
Not because it sounded good.
But because I thought I should.

That was the moment something clicked.

If the reason I’m drinking is “because I should,” that’s information. If I’m consuming something out of politeness, momentum, or a desire not to disrupt the social script, then it’s probably not doing what I once thought it was doing for me.

That doesn’t mean I had a big problem.
But it probably means I had a small one.
Or at least a small, persistent habit of doing something to myself for reasons that weren’t actually mine.

Here’s the pivot, I guess.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to stay sober.
What’s different this time isn’t willpower or insight or some newly unlocked level of self-control.

It’s that I quietly let a few people drift out of my social circle.

Not dramatically.
Not with speeches or ultimatums.
Just by noticing who I only ever saw with a drink in my hand, and who I felt I had to explain myself to when I didn’t want one.

And for the first time, I didn’t replace them.
I didn’t scramble to fill the gap.
I didn’t pretend I was fine with things that didn’t actually feel fine.

I also didn’t hide it.

I didn’t make excuses.
I didn’t soften it.
I didn’t say “just for now” or “I’m taking a break” to make it easier for other people to hear.

I just said no, and let that be enough.

That might be the real difference. Not the absence of alcohol, but the absence of the performance around it. The relief of not managing other people’s comfort while trying to take care of myself.

I didn’t stop because I hit a bottom.
I stopped because I noticed a pattern.
And then I changed the conditions around it.

What surprised me wasn’t missing drinking. It was missing the noise it took with it. Evenings got calmer. Mornings got kinder. My thoughts didn’t suddenly behave, but they stopped kicking the furniture on their way past.

There’s grief in that too. Letting go of something that was never catastrophic, just not great. Letting go of people, too, who weren’t bad, just not compatible with the version of me I’m trying to keep alive.

I don’t evangelise sobriety. I don’t think everyone should stop drinking. I don’t think alcohol is evil. I just think it doesn’t agree with me, and I finally listened.

So yes.
150 days.

Not loudly.
Not proudly.
Just quietly enough that people noticed before I did.

And maybe that’s the point.

Learning to Be Relaxed

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Tonight I am, against all odds, relaxed.*

Not “scrolling while pretending to unwind.” Not “strategically multitasking rest.” Just… sitting. Knitting. Listening to music. Existing.

And because my brain can’t leave well enough alone, I went to find a better word for how I’m feeling.** Something more poetic, more dramatic, more me. I opened a thesaurus. It said: relaxed.

No italics, no fanfare. Just the word itself, sitting there like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

The Discovery

If this is what relaxed actually feels like, I’ve been doing it wrong most of my life.

I used to think relaxation was something you earned. A reward you got once the to-do list was vanquished and the inbox quieted down. But rest never arrived that way. I’d tick everything off, sit down, and immediately invent a new list. My brain treats stillness like a threat; if it’s quiet, something must be wrong.

So instead, I chased productive calm. The kind where you’re “resting” but also meal-planning, doom-scrolling, and mentally preparing for the next 72 hours. It looks like downtime. It isn’t.

The Practice

Somewhere in the last six months, between shared kitchens and quiet evenings, I stumbled into this new kind of calm. The small, low-effort, no-explanation kind.

No scented candles. No meditation apps telling me to breathe. Just music, yarn, and enough mental space to stop narrating my every thought like another of my podcasts that no one subscribed to.

I’ve also been sober through all of this. Not in a manifesto way, more in a “let’s see what happens if I actually feel my feelings” way. Turns out, I don’t need wine*** to be introspective. Just wool and Wi-Fi.

And I’ve been med-free too, so really, a totally relaxed person with cPTSD is breaking the million-to-one odds here. Someone call Guinness.****

There’s something deeply strange about feeling your nervous system unclench for what might be the first time in years. It’s not euphoric. It’s not cinematic. It’s just… relaxing. Ordinary. Like slipping into a bath that’s finally the right temperature.

The Joke

I always expect tension to tap me on the shoulder. My brain whispers, Shouldn’t you be doing something?
And I usually answer, probably.

That’s how you know you’re relaxing: by the low-level guilt that you’ve kicked your responsibilities into the long grass.

But not this time. This time, there’s just an unfamiliar feeling of quiet. One I had to slowly, silently move through the long grass to glimpse before it startled and fled.

The Aggressively Peaceful Bit

It’s funny. I’ve spent years chasing chaos, noise, novelty; things that make me feel alive. Turns out, being alive feels a lot like this too. The quiet, unremarkable kind of joy that doesn’t need documenting*****, scheduling, or justifying.

So yeah. I’m relaxed.

Apparently, that’s a whole new skill. And I think I might commit to this hobby for a while.

*Well not right now, sorry to spoil the illusion, but right now I’m on an early train, wishing I’d packed earlier and gotten more sleep. But that’s another story.

**If I’m honest, the only reason I even thought to look it up is because I was trying to document it. That’s what alexithymia does: it makes me name feelings so I can recognise them later. I wanted a word to pin this one down.


***I never liked wine. It just has good alliteration with wool and Wi-Fi.


****I never liked stout either.

*****Ssshhh, I know this is documenting. Leave me to my fun.

Returning to Routine

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Adventures are thrilling, but they’re also loud. For now, I’m choosing the softer kind of noise: kettles boiling, washing machines humming, toast crunching…

The Highs

August was incredible. Big trips, bright moments, the kind of days that deserve capital letters: The Fringe. The Theme Park. The New Head Office.

There were late nights and loud mornings, too many people crammed into too little space, gig timetables that felt like puzzles and the dizzying joy of being somewhere that wasn’t my own room. Chaos at its finest.

But here’s the truth: they’ve also wrung me out. Amazing, yes. Exhausting, absolutely.

The Craving

Now, all I want is routine. The boring kind. The quiet kind. The kind where I know what Monday looks like, where Tuesday isn’t a surprise party, and where the biggest decision of the week is whether I eat pasta or rice for dinner.

Give me predictable mornings. Coffee in the same mug, at the same table, at the same time and not having to remember what loyalty app I should be using. Give me getting all my chores done by Thursdays, so that knitting on the sofa comes stress-free on Fridays, and all without having to calculate train times and Uber journeys.

Routine is knowing when the bins go out. It’s having a go-to mug for Monday mornings and that the only Friday night outfit I’ll need is a sports bra and gym leggings. It’s deciding how many episodes of Alien: Earth I can rewatch before bed without sabotaging the next day. It’s the hum of the washing machine. The kettle clicking off, steady as a metronome. The too-bright supermarket lights that feel oddly comforting, in the same way that everything in the rest of the supermarket is just where you expect it to be.

The Balance

Chaos is brilliant. It’s also loud. It demands too much, too often. Adventure is a drum solo: dazzling, thrilling, impossible to ignore. Routine is the rhythm section underneath, steady and grounding. The part that makes the music work.

I sat at my desk the other day and realised what I wanted wasn’t another adventure. It was a week where the most dramatic moment was the Google reminder for me to get my laundry out of the dryer.

The Rest

So yes, I’ve had some amazing weekends.

But right now? I want a week where nothing happens. Where the highlight is an empty laundry basket or a perfectly buttered piece of toast. Where the biggest problem is I’ve run out of almond milk or the butter being too cold to spread.

Maybe that’s the secret: adventure isn’t special without the contrast. The parties, the trips, the chaos, they need routine to bounce against.

I’ll take boredom while it lasts. Fireworks always find their way back in, whether I ask for them or not.

When I Think About Myself, I Laugh Too

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Author’s Note:
This post was inspired by Maya Angelou’s poem “When I Think About Myself.” Her words come from a history and an experience that aren’t mine, but what resonated with me was her use of laughter as both armor and confession. What follows is my own reflection, a much smaller, messier version of that rhythm. About the ways I hide grief behind jokes. I hope you find something of yourself here too, whether it’s in the laughter, the grief, or the space in between.

The Spark

I read Maya Angelou’s poem “When I Think About Myself” and feel my chest tighten with recognition. I read it again, and it still catches in my throat. I read it today and it still fucking stings. Her laughter isn’t my laughter. Her history isn’t mine, but I know what it is to laugh so the crying doesn’t swallow you whole. My version is smaller, messier, less tethered to survival and more to shame. Still, the rhythm is familiar: joke first, grief hiding underneath.

My Version of the Laughter

I tell my therapist things that sound like jokes.
Like: “My sleep schedule isn’t broken, it’s just… creatively curated.”
Or: “My morning routine lasted three days, which is actually a personal best.”
She smiles, makes a note, and I try to move on, hopeful that I’ve kept it light.

But here’s the thing: I’m not really joking. (And my therapist knows that.) The jokes are just camouflage. They’re how I confess without admitting it.

It’s easier to laugh about my abandoned planners than to say I grieved the person I thought those planners could make me. It’s easier to make a crack about my Fitbit than to say I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever feel “normal.”

The laughter buys me just enough air to speak the truth, but only sideways… like I’m trying not to look it in the eye.

The Weight Underneath

The truth is, the laughter only stretches so far. Underneath it, there’s the ache of all the things I thought I’d outgrow by now: the scattered thoughts, the empty lists, the absolute fury at existing in the world, in general everything just being so fucking complicated.

I open an old planner and find week one filled with neat handwriting, hopeful doodles in the margins. Week two is patchy. Week three doesn’t exist. The book itself is heavier than it should be, not because of the paper, but because of the failure I’ve stapled to it.

It’s funny, in a bleak way, how much stationery can resemble a gravestone. Every notebook is a headstone for another version of me who didn’t make it. Another try at order, another attempt at “normal,” buried under tabs and trackers.

And that’s the part that stings most: I thought I was chasing productivity. What I was really chasing was proof I wasn’t broken.

Why It Resonates

That’s why Angelou’s poem lingers with me. She writes about laughter with a weight I can’t claim. Her survival isn’t mine to borrow. But the cadence of it … that rhythm of laughing to cover the pain, that part I know in my fucking bones.

Because every time I make a joke out of my mess, what I’m really saying is: “This hurts. This scares me. I don’t know how else to tell you.”

I can’t carry the weight she carried, but I can recognize the shape of my own.

Laughter, Still

So yes, I laugh,

The confession half-told,

Some truth wrapped in wit,

A joke that betrays more than I’d admit,

When I talk about myself.

RIP to the Perfect Notebook

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There’s a pile of them on my shelves: passion planners, diaries, bullet journals, colour-coded agendas, Italian leather ones, Japanese ones from before they changed the paper. A graveyard of productivity promises.

I used to believe that if I just found the right one, the perfect notebook, I’d finally unlock my life. I’d become the kind of person who shows up on time, never loses track of deadlines, and doesn’t panic when someone casually asks, “So what’s your five-year plan?”

Crisp pages. Neat lines. Tabs for goals and dreams. The stationery version of a miracle cure.

I bought them all. Dotted notebooks. Lined notebooks. Planners that could probably manage a small government. Each one promised that this time, no really this time,  I’d get my shit together.

The Imaginary Me

The perfect notebook was never just about pages and ink. It was about the imaginary neurotypical me I thought I was buying. The version of me who thrives on structure. Who remembers birthdays. Who completes her Self Assessment on time.

Capitalism sold me the fantasy. Pinterest boards sold me the aesthetic. Productivity blogs sold me the idea that my messy brain was just waiting for the right planner. 1990s mental health services backed them up.

She was supposed to be in there, hidden under the chaos, ready to be summoned by a 12-week goal tracker.

Spoiler: she never showed up.

What I Got Instead

What I actually got was:

Half-filled pages.

Colour-coded calendars abandoned after week two.

Expensive washi tape dots that stick to everything except the page you meant.

A cupboard that looks less like a productivity system and more like the stationery aisle of WH Smith exploded.


I wasn’t building a better version of me. I was building a stationery mausoleum.

Quantified Self

It wasn’t just notebooks either. I flirted with the whole Quantified Self movement. Habit trackers and bujos whispering that if I just paid attention to myself for more than 24 seconds, I’d finally see that commitment could make me a real person.

Pair it with a Fitbit.

Team up with a Nike+ FuelBand.

Add a Garmin to my wrist.

An app buzzing on my phone at hourly intervals. All of them promising that if I could log enough data points … steps, calories, sleep, water, moods, what colour my hair was…  I’d be unstoppable.

Spoiler: I remained very stoppable.

What I actually ended up with was a drawer full of obsolete gadgets because I’d lost the proprietary charger, three abandoned apps that I’d only remember when the recurring subscription charges left my bank account, and the growing suspicion that the only thing I was really tracking was my ability to fail in new formats.

The Grief

And here’s the part I didn’t expect: I still grieve her. That imaginary version of me. The tidy, consistent person I was told I could become with enough grit, discipline, and neon highlighters.

It’s something that’s come up a lot in counselling lately. Grief and Anger.

The Grief of realising I’ve spent decades chasing someone I could never be. The Anger at how long I believed it, how easily the promise was sold to me.

Capitalised because they’re like the characters from an animated movie, driving me onwards to be handed off to the next stage in the relay race of emotions. These are just the first two in a seven character montage. Available soon in a limited edition Funko Pop set.

It hits in small, sharp ways. The sting of old photos where I still looked optimistic, still thought I’d find my way into “normal.” The ache of more recent ones where the exhaustion is written across my face. That me is suffering under the quiet heaviness of all those empty planners, each one insisting I list my “Top 3 tasks for the day” while my brain shrugged and said “Not today Satan.” Too many empty lists wearing heavy on the soul.

Letting that mythical version of me go feels like admitting defeat. Like giving up on the life that was supposed to be waiting just around the corner, if only I tried harder. If only I could use the perfect planner for four whole weeks.

It’s absurd, grieving someone who never existed.

But it’s real. I spent decades chasing her. Longer than my marathon career ever lasted.

What’s Left

So here I am. Surrounded by half-used notebooks, still inconsistent, still messy, still me. I don’t have the imaginary life I was promised, and I’m still figuring out how to stop mourning it.

But maybe the first step is admitting it: that version of me… She isn’t dead. She was never real.

And maybe the second step is laughing about it. Because if I don’t, I’ll just end up buying another notebook for the mausoleum.

So I ask you to please respect my privacy at this difficult time. The funeral will be a small private service for family and accountability buddies only. Afterwards, we’ll lay her to rest among the others in the mausoleum, the planners, the apps, the gadgets … a whole graveyard of good intentions. And maybe that’s okay.

Maybe it’s time to stop haunting the cemetery and just start living in the mess.

13 years ago an attempt was made…

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I didn’t realise at the time, but I was starting my last marathon attempt. It was not my first long run. It was not my first marathon. But it was the last time I purposefully went running.

My previous marathon had been through my birth town. There were crowds, familiar scenery, and reasonable weather despite being on the coast. At the end I cried, some enthusiastic folks gave me my medal and a banana, and they ushered me towards a spot where someone took my photo. (The photo turned out to be very expensive, and I looked terrible in it.) But photography aside, I liked it enough to sign up for another marathon 3 years later.

And now we’re up to date for this story.

Thirteen years ago I started a marathon in my home town. I was excited, and I had trained reasonably well. I was never going to be a fast marathon runner, or in the top percentiles for any age bracket. I wasn’t chasing bling, it was always just a personal thing. Less than 1% of the population complete a marathon. It’s the only 1% I’ll ever qualify for.

But on the day, the weather was horrible. It shouldn’t have been surprising really. The location was once known as “the wettest city in England.” The drizzle was despicable, cold and unending. In stark contrast to my previous marathon, through a city, filled with people, this one fairly quickly went out of town and into the countryside.

The Lancashire countryside is vast and beautiful, but the sheep did not care for the 1650 folks who were foolish enough to want to run long distances on a wet day. The cows were not interested if this was a difficult run or not.

There are, I think, different types of folk who run marathons. There are those who are there to compete, either against people around them, or themselves. The time, the pace is important. It is a race after all.

And then there are those who are there for the experience. They have trained, just like the other folks, but there is less concern about time, and more about completion. I am one of these people. The overall experience for me was misery.

I think it was somewhere around mile twenty one where the first aiders pulled up beside me. I must have looked terrible. Worse even than the expensive finishers photo from my last marathon. I must have sounded terrible too, because I couldn’t even remember my date of birth, or my age.

So that was it. My last marathon. My heroic finale: shuffled off the course by first aiders, wrapped in tin foil like leftovers, and chauffeured across the finish line in a van. Not quite the epic tale of endurance I’d imagined.

And honestly? I let that day kill running and writing in one go. I failed at one hobby, so obviously my brain decided I wasn’t allowed to enjoy the other. Very rational. Top-tier coping strategies.

Thirteen years later, I haven’t run a single marathon. No half marathons, 10k or parkruns. No running anywhere unless it was across a convention center with XLR leads. But here I am, writing again. Because apparently I needed over a decade to recover from typing about exercise. Olympic-level procrastination.

So no, this isn’t some grand running comeback. There’s no training plan. No redemption arc, or even an inspiring 80s montage. It’s just me, finally admitting that one bad day doesn’t have to be the last word.

And if it took me thirteen years to figure that out… well, at least I’m consistent.

Bank Holiday for the Quiet

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Seven photos side by side. 6 of them show some kind of coffee on a table or in a hand, with a cake or sandwich. The 6th show a coffee in a takeaway cup and a view of Edinburgh Castle. The 7th is a shot of a cake with pink icing and raspberries on top in a take away container.

I started this blog as I was starting to run marathons. It was, at the time, a blissful way to leave things behind and get some quite. Making myself a plodding metronome of forward motion, like a physical kind of meditation, coupled with leaving technology behind. Running for the quiet. The last marathon I ran was a wet miserable affair 13 years ago. I pretty much never ran again after that weekend.

This month has been a different kind of marathon.

It started with a week off, which, to be clear, was not “restful.” It recharged my will to live, but was not restful. When I was at my lowest mental health point, I used to test myself. I’d travel to a place I liked, and see how long I would stay there before I headed back to “real life.” A weird kind of “chicken” with myself and my reality. I know it doesn’t make sense, I’ve explained it in therapy and it still doesn’t make sense.

On my week off I went back to these places, I think to use it as a way to calibrate my current mental health status. But also to remind myself that at some point I loved going to other cities or towns, looking at art, visiting yarn shops and drinking coffee in nice places. These were things I enjoyed at one time, and became stained grey with depression. Some trips were better than others. I found that, once I’d given myself permission to arrive and leave on my own schedule, there was enjoyment in these excursions. It felt like a restoration of my soul, but not a rest for my body.

Then came the Fringe. Four days of crowds, shows, and the peculiar energy of Edinburgh in August. It’s part inspiration, part overstimulation, and all of it while walking up cobblestone hills. It was brilliant, chaotic and exhausting. There’s a special guilt I enjoy here, I went to Fringe, for work, and I’m complaining about it. It was amazing. It was exhausting. Both of these things can be true at the same time.

And just when I thought I might catch my breath, I was off again, this time for a head office trip. A different kind of busy, where my day was full of talking and planning, building furniture to upgrade our office space, discussing stats and comparing years of data, and I get back to my hotel room wondering if I remembered to drink any water at all.

So now it’s Bank Holiday weekend, and for once, I’m not going anywhere. No train tickets. No suitcase. No itinerary. Just my personal space, a pile of laundry, and the rare opportunity to actually be quiet.

The thing is, quiet isn’t always easy. Busy feels natural. Busy looks productive. Busy means I don’t have to stop and check in with myself. Sitting still, on the other hand, feels suspicious. I must be doing it wrong? Wasting time? Or missing out on something?

But I think that’s exactly why I need it. This weekend isn’t about catching up, or being productive, or even “recovering.” It’s about stopping. About remembering that sitting still has value, even if it doesn’t look impressive on a calendar or in a photo.

Maybe I’ll knit, because at least then my restless hands have something to do. Maybe I’ll stretch my hips and pretend that counts as yoga. Maybe I’ll finally read something that isn’t on a screen. Or maybe I’ll just stare into space and call it meditation. Whatever shape it takes, I want this weekend to feel unapologetically small.

Because if this month has been about movement, then this weekend is about stillness. And honestly, stillness feels like the harder thing to choose.

So here’s to a Bank Holiday spent doing less, aggressively. I might have stopped running marathons, but I’m still chasing the Quiet.

All this has happened before.

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A blister pack of pills rests in a wooden pen stand, next to a black skull desk tidy on a black desk

Let me clarify, I didn’t mean to stop, it was just one of those weeks where everything was a little too busy, and I never got to the Doctors appointment, and then I never got around to re booking it (because I was embarrassed about missing the 1st one) , and so one week became two, and then three and the next thing you know I’m crying for some silly pointless reason (again.)

Me – this blog – 2013.

I moved a lot of blog posts in to archives before thinking about posting anything again. The above quote is from one of those now archived posts, it ends with another trip to the doctors, and a return to SSRIs. The whole post just reeks of shame. It wasn’t first time I’d forgotten or the last.

It happened so often it’s probably recorded in the Book of Pythia.

Since 2013 I’ve done a bunch of counseling. It helped spot some of these patterns, it’s just frustrating that they were out in the open. But there’s that shame again.

The problem wasn’t remembering the pills. The problem is fearing I’ll need them forever, and the exhaustion in seeing that part of me planned out for eternity. It’s soul destroying, and to me, more crushing than the actual help they might offer. Add in that sting of guilt and shame when I forget meds or skip supplements. It’s draining.

The shame is that it shouldn’t be this hard to take care of myself. The shame is that I’m 44 years old and I still use what is essentially a reward chart to remember to brush my teeth, and it’s inevitable that I’m going to fail.

All this will happen again.

If I keep failing to take my meds and supplements, then that means I keep returning to taking supplements and meds.

Had you forgotten that I’ve had counselling? It’s been more valuable than the meds. Understanding how my brain works*, and hearing that it’s not just a me thing has been a revelation. It’s not so shameful when you realise it’s not just you. It’s hard to feel shame when someone challenges WHY you’re ashamed.

I spent all of 2024 and most of this 2025 trying to stay away from taking anything. But I’ve had such a run of poor sleep I’ve started taking some pills again. It’s been a week of taking something twice a day.

Before starting I found something that could be taken with water, so I didn’t panic when I’d forgotten to eat** and give up. The packet sits on my desk where I can see them, not in a cupboard or draw where they’re forgotten***. Using the patterns of the past to help me make better choices for the future.

Before I started I accepted that I’m going to forget to take them, and that’s ok. Managing my health isn’t about perfection, it’s about progress, kindness, and doing what I can when I can. Not with shame that I’ll forget, but with hope I’ll always come back to doing what’s best for me.

So Say We All.

*cPTSD with some possible ADHD.
**Yes, low introspective awareness is an ADHD thing thanks for pointing that out
***Again I’m aware object constancy is an ADHD thing, cheers.