The best advice I've given or received in 2020, thread:

1. Life rewards the decisive choice.
No great thing ever came to the ditherer, the equivocator, the fence-sitter. You can’t open doors to a better future unless you’ve firmly closed doors to the past. Choose, move along. 2. Normalise walking away from a less-than-ideal situation.

3. If you think you deserve better – prove it by not settling for less.

4. No one needs to be convinced of your worth except yourself.

For various reasons -like burnout and bad social media hygiene- in 2019 I found it hard to read a book for longer than 15 mins at a time, a departure from my normal life. V upsetting.

I'm happy to say I've fully recovered and can read for hours again.

Some tips on how to do it: 1. Stop using your phone for at least an hour before you sleep. Physically distance yourself from the phone by placing it out of reach/ in another room. This hour will be your uninterrupted reading time.

I'm not so interested in male takes on the #AuratMarch.

They are largely irrelevant and usually come from a place of fear and insecurity.

However I am interested in examining the quality of writing deemed fit to publish, so a few quick thoughts on @ShahmeerAlbalos blog. @ShahmeerAlbalos 1: the #AuratMarch's wide-ranging manifesto was not quoted anywhere. If it had been, 80% of the article's claims would be invalidated at the outset. This editorial choice renders the entire piece suspect and unreliable.

The dominant narrative on friendship seems to be 'it's so hard to make good friends after 30!'

But that hasn't been the case for me.

If you're interested, here's my tried and tested advice for building and sustaining close friendships in your 30s, thread: 1. Show up

Show up for that gallery opening, the kids birthday, the dinner you scheduled in two weeks ago. Unreliability kills friendships like nothing else, so don't flake, don't ignore texts, don't cancel last minute.