And Another Thing!
Life gave me the most monumental of gear changes and naturally, I had to write about it. Here we have no timeframe and we can digress as many times as we damn well please.
This feels awfully 2010 of me.
Launching a newsletter in a time where the internet is literally popping off with reels. I have lost too many hours to the endless abyss of shortform video - and not just because that also happens to be a large part of my 9-5. Short, snackable (and god, I love snacks more than the next person) videos which give you life advice/inspo in about 10 seconds and then you can go about your merry way. Sure, it’s great for saving time, in theory. But there is zero depth. Zero nuance. And absolutely no bloody context. Which happen to be three things I really like in life and now more than ever, seem really important.
So I am bucking the trend and doing the type of content that I like to consume. I love to consume articles which gives me nuanced insight from people I like. Articles that tell me more than a short video ever could. Articles that help me understand more about the topic or perspective, and also, perhaps most essentially, don’t make me feel like I am massively failing at life (hiya Instagram comparison trap). I also think I am funnier with more words. Please don’t feel the need to reply and disagree.
This feels like the right time to reintroduce myself, as it’s been a while. You have probably found your way here because you follow me on Instagram, where I spent a lot of my twenties raising awareness of life with Crohns Disease, a pesky disease which has fluttered about in my life since I was four years old. Living with a chronic illness was a huge part of my identity, for a long period of time, and talking about it publicly was not only a hugely important thing to do for my own healing journey, but essential for advocacy and awareness around the illness too.
But then something happened. At the end of 2021, at the age of 29, I came off my medication and nothing happened. I stayed well. It took me a few months to even realize what was happening - I was medication free, and I was symptom free. Around the same time I found myself in this previously unfathomable situation of good health, I was also single for the first time in eight years and left my job at the BBC, where I had been for seven years, to join LADBible. It appeared in the space of about four months, all the key ingredients that made up the cake of my twenties had all simultaneously reached their sell by date and I was required to make a brand new cake just in time to hit 30. And let me tell you, there isn’t a recipe Mary Berry has to hand for that.
It turns out this cake, the cake of my thirties, is delicious. It definitely doesn’t taste the same, but it’s a vibe. A vibey, delicious cake but my god - does it have layers. And I guess the layers are what I am here to explore, and share with you…
Aren’t you glad you subscribed to a newsletter about how my life is one giant layer cake? My friends told me this was a bad name for the newsletter so please be grateful you haven’t just signed up to ‘Bryony’s layer cake of life’.
Jokes aside, getting rid of the old cake and its many ingredients did not happen overnight. I was carving out a role for myself in a new workplace, I was on dating apps for the first time in my life and suddenly and inexplicably, I WAS WELL? It took my brain a hot minute to process what the hell was going on (okay okay, it was more than a minute).
As I tackled day by day where I was finding the next ingredient for my new cake (I’ve overdone this analogy now haven’t I?), social media fell further and further down my list of priorities. Partly because my platforms have been built on using my voice for advocacy and awareness, with my own story woven in, and I had absolutely nothing of note to say on that. And partly because I wasn’t sure how to talk about my *new girl era*. The era where I’m dating. The era where I live with my best friend. The era where I got a job I could only have dreamt about getting three years ago and now I am considered a *girl boss*?!. The era I am medication free, and in remission. The era where ‘and another thing’ is a regular part of my vocabulary.
This is the era I’m in right now. And it’s the era I want to share with you. I’m ready, it’s time. I know what you’re thinking - another newsletter from a female in their thirties having some kind of menty b? GROUNDBREAKING. Yet I hope you will stick with me, as I drop into your inbox on a weekly basis with stories, reflections, opinion pieces and things I am reading/watching/listening to. Living with a chronic illness was, and is (albeit in different ways now), a huge part of my life - but there are other dimensions too. And it’s those dimensions I want to share with you. The other things.
This is the newsletter for nuance. And all the times we are mid flow, and think ‘and another thing!’ The newsletter where we are not cut short, we don’t have a timeframe and we can digress as many times as we damn well please.
Thank you for subscribing to read and joining me on this new wild ride.