Reading time: 1.39 392 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, NEW YEAR NEW — STFU pur-lease! Caution: you are about to be bombarded with a shitnami of messages telling you how absolutely horrifying you are and what you need to do to create a whole new you in 2026. PLEASE IGNORE THEM. You’re already very cool indeed. This January, the new year new me nonsense can get in the bin (actually that’s every Jan for me). Out with January scare-hustling and in with January JOY. January...
1 day ago • 2 min read
Reading time: 2.57 701 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Sometimes I am my own worst fun sponge. I tried for years to turn writing into a habit. It went onto my to-do list along with “clean the toilet” and “answer emails from my accountants.” Just another chore. I’d download content strategies, buy new planners, attend launch workshops, and watch what the uber-successful folks on social media were doing, and try to copy them. It didn’t work, because I’m not them. And I...
3 days ago • 3 min read
Reading time: 2.46 657 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Step off train — light cigarette. That was Joe’s habit. He’d get the train to work, then walk from the station, and on the walk he’d smoke a cigarette. He doesn’t smoke anymore; hasn’t for years. Doesn’t get the train much anymore, either. But when he does get off a train, he still reaches inside his jacket for a packet of ciggies. Cue —> Behaviour —> Reward Step off train —> Light cigarette —> Nicotine hit That’s a...
4 days ago • 3 min read
Reading time: 5.11 1,232 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Every year, Joe and I have an advent calendar, because Christmas whimsy is not just for children. This year, I got marketed at by Task Master and bought their advent calendar and it does not disappoint. All over the box are 24 doors, as you’d expect. But there’s also a door on the back (start there) and a bunch of random little doors on the sides, too. Instead of chocolate, there are tasks — usually puzzles to solve...
7 days ago • 5 min read
Reading time: 2.06 497 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, My stupidest gym injury yet involved me thinking I was Morpheus out of The Matrix. You know when he leaps from one building to another like gravity isn’t real? I had it in my head that I could soar onto a 30-inch box like some kind of gazelle. I could not. Box jumps have been in my workout routine for a while and I’d been making progress, then had a couple of weeks off, and forgot what height I was leaping to. I spied a...
8 days ago • 2 min read
Reading time: 1.35 373 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, You know how when you need the loo and you walk into a bathroom and see a toilet, and you yank your pants down? It’s unconscious, right? (Except when you’re stuck in your clothes and it becomes VERY MUCH CONSCIOUS) That’s a habit. Cue: Your bladder telling you it needs emptying. Or sometimes just the mere sight of a toilet. Routine: Walk into bathroom, see toilet, drop pants. Reward: Sweet, sweet release. Now let me ask...
9 days ago • 2 min read
Reading time: 1.56 450 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Stand up comedy is way less horrifying than socialising. That’s the premise of my five-minute stand-up set, which I’m performing in Bristol on December 14 to around 250 people. EEP. I’ve been writing and rewriting, and watching other comedians, and reading, and doing more tweaking, and being, generally, terrified. What I WASN’T doing was testing it out on anyone, even myself. So on Saturday afternoon during a hike with...
10 days ago • 2 min read
Reading time: 3.01 716 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Traditionally, I would rather walk into the chicken coop and fall over face first into a pile of hen poo than write a landing page. Despite my background as a copywriter, writing landing pages is my least favourite thing to do in marketing. I will always find something more pressing to do, like pluck those weird hairs off my big toe. So when I decided to do a New Thing, I avoided the landing page like it was Nigel...
14 days ago • 3 min read
Reading time: 2.01 478 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, I was still squatted on my rock like Gollum, watching the tide come back. “I’ll see you back at the tent,” he said. I waved and blew a kiss, and turned back to my sunset and my tide. I’d been there for about an hour, just watching. Estuaries are cool. If you stand still for long enough, herons join you. So do sandpipers and oystercatchers. But I was there for the patterns made by the tide meeting the river flow. Which...
15 days ago • 2 min read