The twentysomething life crisis

This post was originally published on Gadgette on July 16, 2015

Last year, I read a truly bizarre survey from the Office for National Statistics. The report, exploring the wellbeing of young people in the UK, showed up glowing rates of happiness. Like, suspiciously radioactive levels. Apparently, 8 out of 10 young people aged 16-24 reported high or very high life satisfaction. Staggeringly, only 1 in 10 young people in that age group were finding their financial situation difficult or very difficult in 2011-12. And there was me thinking that all that graduate debt, eternal internships and zero chance of ever buying a house had got the lot of us down.

The Jar of Nice Things

I hadn’t seen the idea online, or on a beautifully curated Pinterest board. It was a fleeting mention actually, bedded into a small print feature in a supplement that smelt like papier-mâché. So insignificant that I almost missed it as my eyes glazed the page.

The kernel of the advice, gleaned from feel-good mantras and psychological principles, was straightforward. Write down all the nice things that happen in your day – not just moments of materialistic gain, like your fancy new gadget gifted to you for your birthday, or the overpriced London restaurant famous for floral canopies that you finally managed to get a table at. Small things, like a nice email from a colleague complimenting you on a project, or a few pink clouds lacing the city smog as you walk home from work. Perhaps a wander through the lantern-thronged streets of Chinatown, or a particularly good passage in your book that described the smell of morning dew. Write down all those little moments it said, on the backs of receipts or scrap bits of paper; fold them in half and half again, and drop them in the jar.

12 Things To Take Away From Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic

I owe a lot to this book. Over the recent weeks weathering some rocky professional patches, with my creativity running on half empty, the advice in Elizabeth Gilbert's latest work, Big Magic, has been a total draught of happiness; something like that feeling J.K.Rowling describes when Harry Potter drinks Butterbeer for the first time, and the warmth spreads to his fingertips and makes him grin from ear to ear. Alongside some 30 degree Spanish sunshine, this book restored a lot of the confidence and general zest for life that had been eroded in my previous employment.

It's funny how much readers are prone to pouring their souls into narratives laid out before them on the pages of a book, making situations applicable to their lives in the way we consume horoscopes (that, too, I have no shame in admitting). We subconsciously squeeze inbetween the lines of someone else's story, asking characters and the like to shuffle up because we can scarcely believe the author is actually describing our own life. But Big Magic details fears, problems and career commonalities experienced the world over when you're trying to make a go of something; and in that sense, the book truly resonated with me.

Big Magic basically gives strategies for discovering and utilising your creativity to your best advantage; which for a lot of us, means letting go of the fear that we don't have any right to create art, that we aren't very good at it, or we'll end up being relegated to the graveyard of broken dreams if we dare try. And before you say it, the book's not just aimed at writers or would-be novelists. Gilbert explains that we are all makers, because creativity is a hallmark of our species.

My copy of Big Magic is now moth-eared and sticky where it rested on sloppily suncreamed legs on holiday; but I have no doubt that I'll be returning to the two hundred and seventy-six pages of wisdom more times than I can imagine in the future. And Elizabeth, if you're reading, this blog post = done is better than good. 

Here's twelve of my favourite snippets from the book:

On creative living:

"You do not need anybody's permission to live a creative life. Human beings have been creative beings for a really long time - long enough and consistently enough that it appears to be a totally natural impulse. It's your birthright as a human being. If you're alive, you're a creative person. The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong. We are all the chosen few. We are all makers by design ".

On persistence:

-"Frustration is the process. You don't just get to leap from bright moment to bright moment. How you manage yourself between those bright moments, when things aren't so going so great, is a measure of how devoted you are to your vocation, and how equipped you are for the demands of creative living".

On creativity as a natural impulse:

"An abiding stereotype of creativity is that it turns people crazy. I disagree. Not expressing creativity turns people crazy. Bring forth what is within you, then, whether it succeeds or fails. And if greatness should ever accidentally stumble upon you, let it catch you hard at work".

On getting in the zone:

"I always try to remind myself that I am having an affair with my creativity, and I make an effort to present myself to inspiration like somebody you might actually want to have an affair with - not like someone who's been wearing her husband's underwear around the house all week because she's give up. Seduce the Big Magic and it will always come back to you - the same way a raven is captivated by a shiny, spinning thing".

On keeping sane:

"The paradox that you need to comfortably inhabit, if you wish to live a contented life, goes something like this: 'My creative expression must be the most important thing in the world to me, if I am to live artistically, and it must not matter at all, if I am to live sanely". 

On having courage to be creative:

"I happen to believe we are all walking repositories of buried treasure, I believe this is one of the oldest tricks the universe plays on us human beings, both for its amusement and for ours. The universe buries strange jewels with us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels - that's creative living".

On having permission:


I believe that saying you enjoy your work with all your heart is the only truly subversive position left to take as a creative person these days. It's such a gangster move, because hardly anyone dares to speak of creative enjoyment aloud, for fear of not being taken seriously as an artist. Best of all...inspiration will overhear your pleasure, and it will send ideas to your door as a reward for your enthusiasm".

On inspiration:

"Ideas are alive, ideas do seek the most available human collaborator, ideas do have a conscious will, ideas do move from soul to soul, ideas will always try to seek the swiftest and most efficient conduit to the earth (just as lightning does). The most important thing to understand about eudaimonia, though - about that exhilirating encounter between a human being and divine creative inspiration - is that you cannot expect it to be there all the time. It will come and go, and you must let it come and go."

On keeping curious:

"Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living. Passion can seem intimidatingly out of reach at times. But curiosity is a milder, quieter, more welcoming, and more democratic entity. If you can pause and identify even one speck of tiny interest in something....do it. Follow that clue. Trust it. It's just a harmless little scavenger hunt. Following that scavenger hunt of curiosity can lead you to amazing, unexpected places".

On authenticity:

"Most things have already been done - but they have not been done by you. So what if we repeat the same themes? Once you put your own expression and passion behind an idea, that idea becomes yours. Anyhow, the older I get, the less impressed I become with originality. These days, I'm far more moved by authenticity. If it's authentic enough, believe me - it will feel original".

On pitching:

"I decided to play the game of rejection letters as if it were a great cosmic tennis match: Somebody would send me a rejection, and I would knock it right back over the net, sending out another query that same afternoon. My policy was: You hit it to me, I'm going to hit it straight back out into the universe".

On entitlement:

"Defending yourself as a creative person begins with defining yourself. It begins when declare your intent. Stand up tall and say it aloud, whatever it is: "I'm a writer". Hearing this announcement, your soul will mobilise accordingly. (Trust me, your soul has been waiting for you to wake up to your existence for years)". 

It's Cool To Be Kind

This article was first published on The Huffington Post

It's cool to be kind. And before you say it, this isn't the latest fad that washed in with Scandi-chic, hipster beanies or a side-order of quinoa.

Being kind - or an increased awareness of the need to be - is experiencing a resurgence of late. Doing something kind can take as little as seconds, and yet somehow, in environments dominated by do-it-now digital technologies and demanding workloads, our lives are so finely-tuned and full to the brim that they require our undivided attention just to remain operational. The exhaustive pace of modern life means we have to be reminded to leave our desks every hour or take a lunch break, just in case we have to be surgically removed from our monitors. Sleeping? Eating? Once-wonted parts of our daily lives get shaved away in competition to work longer, harder hours.

We Need To Talk About Mirrors

When I was about seven or eight, I became completely enamoured with a Disney Snow White Talk ‘n’ View Magic Mirror. It was gold, with flashing lights and coloured rhinestones, and when you pressed the central button, the characters would take their turn to materialise in the mirror, flitting from the grins of Dopey and Doc one minute to the doe eyes of Snow White and heavily arched brows of the Evil Queen the next. My sister and I used to squabble over taking turns, each one of us eager to overlay the reflection of our childish chubby cheeks with the cartoon-caricature features of the holograms.

On Making Peace With Social Media and Navigating Life Online

Photo: Théo Gosselin

This post was first published on The Huffington Post

Blue-tacked on my bedroom wall are magazine snippets and colour-pop posters, in the midst of which sits a tiny block of text two inches tall, hacked from a Sunday supplement during my college days. It used to disappear from time to time, only to resurface in-between diary pages or stuffed in a scrapbook; until I decided its message was too important to languish in my desk drawer:

In Which I Quit My Job

Is there anything better than quitting your job?

I ask because it’s a little over a month since I handed in my notice; and alongside getting a brace (expensive but necessary) switching sixth forms (painful journey but necessary) and moving to London (necessary for entire existence and sanity) sacking in my day job has got to be one of THE BEST THINGS I’ve ever done in my twenty-three years.