Three Things I Learned This Year, Turning 31, and a Gift for You

Well hello, friend. It’s been a while.

I’m writing to you on the eve of my 31st birthday - yes, that’s right, mere hours before this newsletter hit your inbox. A radical gesture of impulsivity and the sort of self-generosity I’m hoping to cram into this new year, where not everything I do has to be laboured over and questioned to the point of immobilising existential abstraction.

I say this, of course, with about four abandoned drafts judging me from another tab. The judgement is mine, along with a twisted belief you can’t see me wrestle as you’re reading these very words - that my writing is only worthy of publishing when it’s well-documented, precise, and, most importantly, a reflection of others’ ideas. Ugh, it’s ugly, but it’s good to say it out loud. This shadow work has to start somewhere, right? So I hope you can forgive me for ending this month with a more personal newsletter, and not a 3000-word deep-dive into trauma. This year’s been hard enough already.

Instead, I want to share three of the most important things I’ve learned this year, and a gift.