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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.