#1: I get it
An introduction.
Hey, how’s it going? You’re fine, thanks? How am I? I’m all good too. Totally fine. Except, you’re not. And neither am I. But this is just a little bit we do, a kind of denial ritual dressed up as small talk. A conversational decoy. We say we’re fine to our colleagues, our friends, even ourselves. Not because it’s true, but because it’s tidy. It buys us space. It keeps things light. Over time, this routine calcifies into something automatic, so ingrained we barely notice we’re doing it.
This Substack is for the moments when that routine slips, when the performance of being fine starts to feel a bit hollow. It’s for people who are functioning, just about, but still feel slightly off, a bit stuck, unfinished. You’re holding it together on the outside (job, rent, electric toothbrush), but inside you’re wondering if the instruction manual for adulthood somehow missed your inbox.
That’s not what this is, by the way. I’m not here to tell you what to do. I don’t have all the answers in bold neon lights. But I do have some questions, some stories and a few things I’ve learned — about work, friendship, family, burnout, bodies, booze and what happens when your timeline doesn’t look like you thought it would.
Because it’s not just you. And it’s not just me. There’s something deeper humming underneath everything. You still go to work, pay bills, show up to birthday drinks. You still laugh at memes. Yet there’s a restlessness under the surface, like you’ve missed a step going down the stairs. You scroll for comfort but only find more versions of the life you’re not quite living. You’re busy but not fulfilled, wired but not awake.
And you’re not imagining it, either. We’ve come out of one global crisis and landed in the middle of a dozen more. Headlines flit between apocalyptic and absurd. The pace of change — in technology, in work, in what even counts as normal — feels impossible to keep up with. Each day seems to ask more of people while offering less in return. Institutions are wobbling. Stability feels increasingly theoretical.
It’s no wonder that nearly 60 per cent of working adults now say they feel chronically overwhelmed — a figure that’s only risen since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Gallup, a market research firm. The much-hyped promise of “flexible work” has often meant obscured boundaries, longer hours and digital exhaustion.
These shifts shape our days. They fuel professional precarity, inflate student debt, and push the cost of living far beyond what most wages can cover. This isn’t a personal failure. It’s a collective unravelling in how we live, work, and define adulthood itself. Nobody’s quite sure what grown-up life is supposed to look like anymore, only that it probably isn’t this. You were promised purpose and freedom. What you got was £8 pints and 100 tabs open on your phone.
I get it. I bought in. I did the things I was told to do, what I thought I was meant to do. I worked hard, got good grades and went to university. I entered a career in a field related to something I enjoy — writing — because I thought if I did what I love, I’d never work a day in my life. Haha. But somewhere along the way, the cause-and-effect broke down.
I don’t think my mum lied to me. I don’t think my school did, either. I do think the system aged badly. The world changed faster than the script we were given. The old advice — work hard, be good — doesn’t quite register in a world where your bills gobble up 80 per cent of your income.
We’re living through a crazy time. A man shouts “BOSH” and flies first-class. Another pretends misogyny is a self-help philosophy. You scroll past strangers who are suddenly millionaires for eating food without chewing or for dancing in their living rooms. Slang evolves so quickly it feels like watching language dissolve in real time. IKR. You blink and realise you don’t know what a “moot” is; or why everyone’s saying “delulu” with a straight face. It’s sometimes funny. Skibidi. It’s often frightening. Shook. It’s mostly just tiring.
This Subtack won’t fix everything. But it might offer some reassurance: just because you’ve never felt a certain way before doesn’t mean nobody has. Think of it as a soft place to land — somewhere to take stock and to help figure out your next move.
The idea for this project started brewing after a brutal redundancy from a now-defunct start-up technology magazine, which I shan’t name but you wouldn’t need to do much sleuthing if you wanted to find out.
In hindsight, it was the best thing that could’ve happened. A forced reroute. The start of something else. The freelancing that’s followed hasn’t always been easy — some months have been brilliant, others have been nerve-wracking — but it’s been mine.
And in the middle of that chaos, other things have started to fall into place. I learned to drive. I got engaged and married to my wife, who should be credited as this Substack’s real editor. My football team, Newcastle United, finally won a trophy.
My redundancy taught me something I needed to learn: life doesn’t pause just because you’re in flux. Joy doesn’t always wait for certainty. If you hold out for perfect timing, you risk missing the moments that matter. Getting engaged and married without a salary wasn’t how I pictured it, but it was perfect.
Around a year after I left the start-up, I wrote a few essays for TIME magazine, circling some of the same subjects this Substack — and the anthology it will hopefully one day morph into — will explore in more detail.
To my pleasant surprise, people started writing back. Readers from both sides of the Atlantic sent messages saying they saw themselves in the pieces. Some just said thanks. A few asked if I’d ever thought about writing a book.
I had, vaguely. Over the years, I’d started a couple of novels and quietly abandoned them when life got busy or the doubt got too loud. I once tried to write a book about football, but that effort got flattened by Covid, along with a lot of other plans.
But this time, it feels different. This is less like work and more a release. A slow unspooling. A way to make sense of things.
My wife had been telling me to write something like this for years. So when I finally started taking the idea seriously, nudged by a few kind strangers on the internet, I wondered if she’d be annoyed it took them to make me start. I was right. She was furious.
Look, this Substack won’t tie your loose ends into neat little bows. Life doesn’t work like that. But it will sit with you in the mess for a while. It will name some of the things we don’t always have the language for. And it will remind you, gently, truthfully, that if you’re feeling a bit lost, you’re not the only one. You just need to keep going. You’re going to be fine.