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Hey Reader,

Relatability is everything.

I once had a client who wrote a fantastic book called Eat Drink Think. Her book is about addiction, about ending the battle with food and body image and living a life of authenticity and joy.

Renae Saager’s book contains multitudes, as does she, but one line gut-punched me:

She was incredible at seeing through the glossy, aspirational, unreachable, beautifully packaged, slickly sold glitter of the “body positivity movement” which is really just more shame wrapped up in a catchy slogan.

Renae understood something crucial: if we can’t meet people where they are, we’ll never meet them at all.

The people who most need to hear your message will miss out.

It’s no good saying to someone who hates themselves that they need to love themselves. It’s too far away. Too alien.

Like the billionaires who write books telling us we’re just one framework away from six-figure months, we simply don’t believe them.

When someone is barely scraping together four figures a month, six-figure months are a fairytale. Like being told to “manifest a superyacht” when you’re trying to keep the lights on.

Renae doesn’t have everything figured out. She’s not on the cover of Vogue baring her oh-so-shiny teeth at you. That’s not the point. She wrote a book for the people who needed to hear that it’s okay actually to NOT love your body. How about we start with “I have a body” and go from there.

When a business coach tells us it’s okay to aim differently, that eight-figure businesses aren’t for everyone, that actually it’s more important to think about what WE want and need, it’s refreshing. A relief, in fact.

There’s a reason billionaires only have billionaire friends: nobody else can relate to them.

Your book isn’t for everyone. It’s for the people who need to hear your message.

You don’t have to be an outlier to write it.

The media is skewed towards the glitz, towards Marvel-style explosions and Big Drama.

But our lives are about the quiet moments. The small dramas and actions and responsibilities and mini-adventures that create the bigger picture.

It’s more than okay for you to tell your story. In fact, it’s crucial.

Because the Big Drama books might get more eyeballs, but do they make more connections?

I don’t know.

But I do know this: if you tell your quiet, real, human story and share your message, it will reach the people who need it most. So tell it.

And now for the Friday Goodie Bag! Here’s what I’ve scooped for you:

The Really Terrible Orchestra

Thank you Sarah for bringing this to my attention: an orchestra for adults to play together no matter how bad they are. This warms the cockles of my heart because there is so much pressure everywhere to perform competence, and we lose all the joy along the way.

Of course when we go to a concert we want to see people being amazing at what they do… but where’s the space for us to have a go and actually enjoy it without having to worry about pleasing everyone else?

​Here! At the Really Terrible Orchestra! Where adults can choose an instrument, join a crew, and just play for the fun of it.

Lucille Ball being a fucking legend

In a time when men felt ownership over women’s bodies (oh haha not much has changed lol) Lucille Ball said “absolutely not on my watch” and spent a whole section of a show calling out the creepy predator co-host who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. She got laughs but she was also deadly serious. I bloody love that woman. She was one of the funniest women on the planet then and she still is now, even from beyond the grave.

The truth about Florence Nightingale

You might have heard about “the lady with the lamp” because that kind of patronising BS is how men shrink great women. Florence Nightingale was SO much more than an “angel of the sick.” She was a social reformer, statistician, and the founder of modern nursing.

She defied her wealthy family to become a nurse (a lowly profession at the time) and went to the Crimea to tend the injured soldiers. While she was there, she innovated statistical methods including the polar area diagram, still used in data visualisation. She improved sanitation and that, together with general improvements in sewers and water quality, saved a lot of lives. And she was a prodigious writer, using her skills to publish and disseminate medical knowledge using simple English so those with poor literacy could understand and learn.

These silly new sayings to start using

Ever been despondent about the fact that clichés are clichés? Ever wanted some fresh new aphorisms to spread around the place? Welp: giddy up, sparklefarts, there’s chaos to spread!

Lucy who I know from LinkedIn is a funny person (haha not side-eye) and she shared a list of new sayings that made me snort-laugh. Although I’ve been using “got the morbs” for a while because it’s actually a very old Victorian way of saying “I feel depressed” that we should definitely bring back. The others, though, are silly and I’m here for them.

Munya Chawawa’s Red Pill Men

I’m sure you’ve heard about, if not seen, the Louis Theroux documentary on Netflix. I have things to say about it at some point. I’ve seen a lot of women say that women’s voices are missing from that docu, but I think that misses the point. Louis did what Louis does very well: let people show us all who they are. Manbabies who are pitiable.

And mockable, as Munya has done with his new musical. There is space for serious discourse about the rise of misogyny and we absolutely should be taking it seriously. There is space for documentaries that get a LOT of media and do a different job of shining a spotlight. And there is space for these kinds of shenanigans because comedy is MAGIC.

Plus I’m a Munya Chawawa fangirl.

What I’m reading

Currently halfway through The Creative Curve by Allen Gannett. So far there’s nothing new to me in terms of what creativity IS but there’s a lot of really interesting research about what makes projects famous and successful. Plus a lot of cool anecdotes about famous people and their less famous counterparts, which is fascinating.

What I’m writing

Honestly not that much at the moment because I’m deep in a client project that’s super exciting, and finishing up my time at Solihull College. Next week I have a little space because it’s my birthday (woooooooo) so I’ll be using some of that space to write the things I want to write. To work on my book!

Word of the week

Agathism

The belief in the ultimate triumph of good over evil.

I am an agathist, despite the current state of everything.

Quote of the week

Stay classy, crew!

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

p.s. I’m opening the doors to MicroBook Magic Season 8 in a few days. If you think you might be interested, get on the waiting list here because if you are on the waiting list, I’ve got a brilliant bonus for those who sign up early.

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