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I quit smoking cigarettes about 4 years ago. I felt a relief that I no longer had that stale smokers smell, I wouldn’t be potentially destroying my asthmatic lungs further, and I could start to be healthy again. There was however, one big problem that tainted the joy of no longer touching cigarettes.

In order to stop cigarettes, I had taken on vaping.

Now, I know there are still lots of unknowns with vaping and there is an ongoing debate on if it is actually as bad or worse than cigarettes, but in a nut shell, vaping is not great for your body. Period. But when it comes to addiction, all vaping has done, is make things ten times worse than smoking.

People have taken on vaping who have never smoked a cigarette in their life. Everyone who was a smoker and took on vaping to ‘quit smoking’ is probably still vaping years later. The habit hasn’t broken and if anything, I’ve found that the luxury of the nice smells and tastes with vaping, makes the habit a lot harder to quit.

I have had years of on and off vaping. There have been periods where I did not vape for weeks and then jumped back on it. But, I realised that the reason it never stuck before was for a very clear reason: I had never quit for me.

I always quit in the past because it would be a situation where I was dating someone who was anti-smoking or vaping (I followed the same pattern when I was a smoker to be fair, I never learn). So I would stop so that they wouldn’t see me differently or go off me (hey, anxious attachment) so then inevitably, when we fell apart for other reasons, there I was in the shop again “Triple Mango please”.

In the last few months, I have been doing a lot of work on myself. It has been hard, trying to find effective ways to love myself more, achieve my goals and try and overcome my anxieties and insecurities. Vaping is something that I’ll be honest, hasn’t served a good purpose in a long time. It makes my anxiety worse sometimes, It can give me weird coughing moments and also.. it is costly AF.

There’s been months where I have spent £150 on vapes. The pattern and the addiction needed to stop, and I was finally in a position where I could do that, for myself.

It’s now been 2 weeks, and I have learned that your body and stress levels can be messed up a LOT when you suddenly lose an addictive habit that you’ve been with for 20+ years! My hormones and fatigue have been a bit all over the place, which I have learned through research can be normal when your body is overcoming nicotine withdrawals.

The issue is, it is an addiction. It doesn’t dissolve easily. At the moment, I am doing well and have had no nicotine in my system for just over 2 weeks. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have massive struggle moments.

I’ve brought a HUM stick, which is a new device where there’s no nicotines or toxins in it, but it’s basically just a spice stick you put in and you use it as a vape replacement to inhale.. flavoured air. It’s not ideal but it’s one way for me to try and slowly rid the desperate habit of my hands needing something to hold and something to inhale to calm me down.

It’s occurred to me that vaping never actually calmed me down or made me feel better, I just programmed my brain to believe that it did.

My days are very up and down at the moment, some days I can happily go a whole day distracting myself with no cravings, others the temptation is super strong. I’m mainly documenting this because I want to hopefully look back a year from now at some of the things I’ve written and see how much has changed or progressed. How cool would it be if I could acknowledge a year from now that I’ve had no nicotine for a year?

Watch this space I guess.

As a very big bookish girlie, I read all sorts of genres. Mood dependent as to which genre I dive into, but we could argue that the romance genre is probably the easiest genre to jump in on (if the writers done it right).

Romance is cute, chilled, most of the time it isn’t toooo overdramatised or twisted, that obviously depends on the sub-genre. There’s nothing I love more than a little escapism to a world of fictional romantic men.

Men written by women has taken the world by storm a little bit. There’s a lot of interesting opinions and videos about it if you doom scroll long enough, but why is it such a big craze and has it ruined any single man’s chance in the future of winning over a book girlie?

I think the reason that fictional men are so much more appealing to me, is nothing to do with the narrative of ‘single straight men in this generation are rubbish’ (although in some cases, this is true), it’s because when women write men, they are doing all the things that we wish the men we want would do, but we never tell them.

One thing I’ve learned growing up is women are naturally very overanalysing, overthinking, empathetic beings… it doesn’t mean that men aren’t by the way, stick with me here, women think a little too much about how they’re coming across, we’ve spent decades being told ‘don’t chase him’, ‘play hard to get’, ‘tell him what you want’, ‘don’t be too obvious’, that it gets to the point that we are too scared to be completely blunt with a man.

For me, there is nothing scarier than me actually asking a man how he feels about me. Or if he’s happy with what we are doing or who I am. So, instead, I do what a lot of my other girlfriends do and make little comments and hints about the answer I want.

In my mind, I have been pretty obvious about what I was trying to get as an answer. Do I get the answer or response I hoped for? Never. Because we make the assumption that men are psychic or overanalyse as much as we do, but it’s not even a man/woman thing.. this is a human thing. We make assumptions that whoever we are speaking to is tuned into our thoughts and will do or say the exact thing we want. We’re all just too afraid to be open and real.

I went on a bit of a side tangent there. I’m not even sure what my point was supposed to be anymore. That happens sometimes.

I think the long and short of it for me is, men written by women is a great escapism into what we want from a guy we’re interested in. But we also need to be mindful that although 100% yes, we all deserve to have a romantic partner who makes us feel amazing, fights for us, gets jealous in a minor cute way when someone else shows an interest, we also need to remember that as with anything in the dating world, we need to be clear and open about what we want someone to do for us or how to make us feel at certain points.

But, if you’re still not quite finding a man to give you that chance to be in that happy romantic space, then by all means dive into every fictional hot romantic male realm possible 🙂

I don’t know about you, but I am pretty confident that I am severely allergic to heatwaves. I’ll be honest, lately I have had a really tough time handling the excessive heat and lack of rain.

It’s no secret that the UK is not prepared for over 30 degree heat, public transport struggles, we live in heavy brick homes with no decent air source and the climate crisis is becoming super real.

People are always talking about seasonal depression, particularly in winter, where their mood drops massively and they feel depressed and low. I on the other hand, thrive on Autumn/Winter stages.. but Summer and heat have always massively influenced my mood. In a rather negative way.

It doesn’t help that I’ve recently had my thyroxine medication increased so my hormones are adjusting a lot lately, and I have recently found out through an NHS health check that my blood pressure is super low (guess that explains the consistent dizziness and light headedness), but over the last few weeks I have found myself struggling massively to even function like a normal human.

I had various days where all I could do is lay down with USB fans on me. I barely ate most days because my appetite was non existent, and I have spent many evenings crying my eyes out over everything and nothing. The problem was, the heat doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon, and this past weekend I decided that I need to pull my finger out and push myself a tiny bit.

Obviously, being in a dark place mentally makes you overthink and rethink a lot of things, I have been spiralling hard over various things. So in order to not push myself to a point of a breakdown, I have made a few little adjustments to how I try and survive this heatwave and my mini breakdowns that go with it;

Firstly – Pushing myself to eat more. It’s not helping me at all just eating a bit of toast or some ice cream (duh) so I’m pushing myself to keep my body functioning with light meals throughout the day instead.

Second, I’m trying this whole affirmations and manifestations routine again. I always suck at sticking to things (thank you ADHD), so I’m trying to push myself to do some youtube affirmations every evening before I sleep to try and trigger my subconscious into more positive thinking, they say you have to stick to it for 21 days to really see a change.. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Third, I am putting less pressure on myself. I’ve been very expressive about what I’m going through lately, including writing pressures. I keep beating myself up over how little I am getting done. So I have made a decision that as the things I really want to focus on are working on my novels and blogging, I am taking a little break from poetry writing. As much as I love poetry and expressing my feelings into words, I think I have to be clear with myself on what my priorities are and let certain things take a back seat for now.

I am also limiting my time on my phone as much as I can. I’ve always been open about working on my anxieties and how I feel about trying to keep up with messages etc. so I’ve implemented limited screen time on my phone for the next couple of weeks while I get my head into a more comfortable space.

I have always stressed about not being ‘involved’ or not hearing from people etc but I have also learned that a lot of the time everyone else around me always has periods where they don’t reply to me or are busy, and any genuine people in my life will understand my decision to just slow down a bit and not be as ‘active’ with conversations. My brain just needs a little break!

I’m hoping at some point over the coming weeks I find a way to focus a bit better and not be worried about how heavy my emotions get. But for the time being, I’m resting when my body tells me to, and trying to stay positive about overcoming this sodding heatwave!

Back in March this year, on my personal/private Insta, I decided when things were a little rough for me that I would start a personal challenge of ‘100 Happy Days’.

This was something that was a trend many years back, where you’d post 100 days in a row a picture of something that made you happy each day. Why did I decide to bring that back? Truthfully, 2026 didn’t have the best start for me. I was in an extremely low rut and pretty much everything in my life was going wrong and overwhelming me. I figured that maybe if I tried hard to look for a positive in each day, this would help change my mindset.

You’ll be pleased to know, I did complete 100 Happy Days in a row (a few images will be splattered across this post from what I shared) on 27th June. But there was a few interesting things I learned about other people and myself throughout this process…

I initially was not seeking happiness in the right way… what I mean by this, is I spent quite a lot of time in the first few weeks, thinking about what I would post as a happy point in advance. Completely missing the point of what I was trying to achieve. The idea was, I would find a positive thing throughout the day that made me happy. But instead I spent a lot of time going into panic mode about what would I post today? Would it be considered ridiculous or boring? Which brings me to the next learning curve.

I wasn’t entirely doing it for myself. One thing I really need to try and activate more when using social media, is doing it for myself. I was still struggling a lot with other peoples perceptions and views of me and what I was posting. Rather than just taking the day as my own and being happy and content myself in what I was posting.

Other people didn’t like what I was doing – but that shouldn’t bother me. I had a lot of banter and abuse from people over the time that I was doing this process. Although I don’t think it was ill intended, it can be quite hurtful when people make jokes about you doing a 100 happy days, particularly when it is something that you’re doing for your own mental health and wellbeing. It bothered me more than it should have, and I then kept trying to be more productive and post less boring things as a result. Again, not doing it for myself.

The final point I came to learn from this challenge, is this:

It’s not about every single day being happy throughout. There are always going to be struggles and obstacles that we face each day. There were some days I ended posting some cute positive happy days post where I’d actually spent 3 hours of that day crying my eyes out over something. But the important part of this process that I started using (after around day 6/7 when I realised not every day would be this perfect happy Disney-themed kind of say) was remembering that I can be raw and honest about my progress, and not every day was going to be amazing.

The point was I was finding at least one small thing out of every day, that made me happy.

It’s not about making all day everyday the happiest best day (although, that would be nice). It’s about acknowledging that your days might not be perfect. But you’re still finding the positives from each day, even the harder ones.

My 100 happy days might be over, yet one thing I am aiming to do going forward is, try and use the same mentality in everyday and look for the good parts, and hopefully making this a regular routine will change my outlook on life for the better.

Despite the tough moments (and probably some cringey pics and captions) I am very glad I did and completed 100 Happy Days. It’s definitely made me feel better mentally, and that’s all that matters.

They’re always making comments, asking me with that pitiful voice if I found somebody yet. Feeling sorry for me for never finding someone. Truth be told, I found many people, all with the same shameful narrative.

I grew tired of the same chapters of the story. Every man I meet bringing my guard down and taking my trust like a toy. Letting me feel a certain way until they shut me down and disappear. Every one happily losing me and enjoying the new artistic picture that I don’t exist.

Eventually, I grew tired of the ache I feel every time they happily move on from knowing me. Like I was a temporary disease they were cured from. So just know this, I’m not alone because I can’t find somebody. I choose to be alone because at least I can grow to love and trust myself completely.

I’m alone because I choose peace over the heartache that comes with every man I’ve met.

So I have been experiencing a major slump lately. Which to be honest, is quite typical considering I started up my blog and writing page a couple of months ago with the intent of being super productive and having poems, novel drafts, blog posts overflowing.

As you can probably tell from my not-so-regular blog posts, this has not gone as I planned.

I have spent a lot of time recently beating myself up over it. Imposter syndrome has been mega heavy, and the novel that I had been planning in my head for months has got no further than chapter 2, because I keep deleting and rewriting… and of course, beating myself up because who do I think I am that my novel or poetry is going to be good enough for anyone to read?!

A lot of this is medical also, I have hypothyroidism, and sadly it’s at the stage where my dose is being reviewed again because my thyroid doesn’t wanna thyroid. So this has made my hormones, fatigue and low mood at it’s peak level, which is slowly being fixed, but it’ll take a little bit of time.

To give some context on what my vision or dream as it were is, I write a lot of poetry and I’m also full of novel ideas I want to get out there – so my initial plan was by the end of the year to potentially have at minimum a draft of my first poetry book ready to release to the world, and also have at minimum my first drafts ready for 2 novels underway. But we’re now in June and I feel like I’m going backwards.

But it isn’t all doom and gloom in this post. Since I started my blog and a new Insta page for all my writing and bookish related stuff, engaging with other writers etc. I have come to learn a few things:

I’m comparing myself to people who have a completely different lifestyle or routine to my own – it’s easy to feel envious when a lot of people out there that I engage with, have published pieces of work, double the followings that I have and a lot more attention. But some of these people I compare myself to, have either been playing this game a lot longer than I have, or they’re people who are fortunately at a stage in their life where they can write full-time or have a lot more time/capacity to do it all.

I work 40+ hours a week and live alone, so I have to plan out things super well in order to really focus my time on writing. Not everybody has the same routines and lifestyles, as with most things in life, everyone’s journey is different to yours. So I have to stop comparing.

I am not alone in my struggles – one benefit I have found from the people I’ve met through blogging/my Insta/TikTok, is that there are so many people who are having the same ideas and dreams and struggling to overcome them. I actually had a writer tell me recently, that it took them four years to finally complete their first draft of their novel. Now, I’m hoping I will get mine done faster than that (I’m not getting any younger after all), but it just goes to show that I keep living in this mindset where everything fixes itself or comes together immediately or overnight, and that is just not how the world works. Be it in writing or anything else.

Lastly, You can’t rush perfection. I’m not implying that what I write or publish in the future is going to be perfect, I’m a raw unfiltered human, so my writing will probably reflect that in some ways, but it’s actually a good thing that I’m not rushing the process, I’m taking my time to rewrite or draft things out, it is a slow and painful process, but I am trying to imagine how amazing the end result will be when I do finally get there.

So… I am starting a few things now to try and help battle the blockages in the meantime.

1 – Setting myself 30 minutes to write every evening a bit of my novel, no rewrites or deletes, just keep going and write whatever I can to add to the story. I can edit later when I have completed it, but even just that small amount of time focusing will help me reach my goal without pressurising too much. Of course, some evenings I may write longer, some I might not manage – but that is the goal.

2 – Engage in as many writing related events that I can. I find writing workshops extremely helpful for writers block, even if it doesn’t help me complete what I’m currently working on, just having that fresh opportunity for new ideas, whether it be a novel idea or poems, can really make a difference.

3 – Schedule some posts on social media so that I don’t spend too much time doomscrolling when I should be being creative in my free time.

4 – Have a short period each day where I write whatever is in my head, whether it be in my journal or for a blog post, or random poems. Even if it’s a complete mess, just keeping myself productive with regularly writing.

5 – Spend more time engaging with other people who are on the same journey. I love that there’s platforms out there for writers to make friends and talk/vent about whatever they’re going through. It can sometimes be quite humbling to know we’re all facing the same dilemmas and it doesn’t have to be a competition.

6 – Last one, if I slip or fail at the above points, don’t beat myself up over it or let the inner voices take over. Remind myself that the fact that I have even got to this stage is still progression over all the previous years when I just daydreamed and did nothing!

Apologies for the long essay on this, but I really wanted to reflect on this. And also, if anyone is reading this who is on the same page, you’re not alone. Remember you have got this. We will get there 🙂

I am turning 40 years old – eek! 

It’s true what they say, when you hit certain ages or milestones, you have a lot of time to look back and reflect on various areas of your life, whether you’re proud of your past, or still trying to achieve all the things you thought you would. One night, I sat down and decided to write down 40 things I learned before I turned 40. And I am going to post these lessons here. Some will have a written backstory or comment to it, some will just be stuck there as a statement.

1. Your childhood is over before you know it – Pretty self explanatory one to start with, it goes in a flash. It’s scary.
2. School bullies are a temporary burden, it will shape a lot of who you become, but it will not define you.
3. The beliefs you grew up with, are not always accurate – In life, we are going to experience many different phases, but part of growing as a person is understanding that not everything you’re brought up with turns out to be true. It’s all part of life’s little lessons.
4. It’s okay to not want the same things your friends, family or society think you should want. It’s okay to have different beliefs. It’s okay to not force yourself into things you don’t want, be it marriage, kids, religion etc just because other people are doing it. You’re here to please yourself. Not anyone else.
5. Appreciate the lesson in every story. It’s sometimes not always obvious, but there’s always a lesson somewhere.
6. Social media likes are not a validation of your worth. I cannot stress this enough!
7. Be careful with your money (I wish I learned this one 20 years ago, help! I’m broke!)
8. A late diagnosis might be more hurtful than you realise, but accept it and adjust to how you tackle it. – I finally got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 25, (I also, according to everyone I’m close to, have all the Autism symptoms, but we won’t dive into that now). When I got the diagnosis, instead of feeling relief that there were genuine answers to all of my behaviours and personality, I spent a lot of time grieving over all the things that could have been different if I somehow had been diagnosed at a much younger age. But in any grieving situation, I adjusted to the fact I cannot change what did or didn’t happen, but I can control/monitor how I manage it for the rest of my life.
9. You can overcome everything you’ve been through, and you have. It just takes time.
10. You don’t have to win at everything. Sometimes it is better to lose.
11. Nature is a blessing that is taken for granted way too much.
12. It is never too late to have it all figured out, in fact, you will never have everything figured out. Life would be boring if you did!
13. Appreciate the older family members, they will not be in your life for as long as you assume they will.
14. You are going to be disliked by a lot of people, and that’s life. – I am still struggling a lot with this one!
15. Insults will scar you for a long time, but make more of an effort to hold on to the compliments just as much. – I’m still trying to adjust to this one, and it’s hard but it is also something that we need to address more in life.
16. Beware of lovebombing. It’s not as romantic and real as you think it is. – I wish 25-37 year old me had learned this sooner.
17. Acknowledge when you’re engaging with a toxic person, and more importantly, when you might be the toxic person. – sometimes you need to be a bit more aware of your surroundings and who you’re becoming.
18. Look after your body more, you will regret it when you don’t.
19. You might not ever get rid of anxiety, but you can have control on how much it controls you.
20. Your thoughts and feelings are not always facts. – I think as an anxiety sufferer this one is hard. It is so important that we acknowledge that feelings are not factual, it’s not easy, but we really have to acknowledge the evidence before us sometimes and take everything else as unknown. I am still very much working on this lesson. But it was an important one to address.
21. You’ll encounter many narcissists in your life, learn the patterns and walk away from what doesn’t serve you – This one is a very important lesson that I think I know a lot of you will relate to. We all have found ourselves in toxic relationships or friendships throughout our lives, and sometimes it can be really hard to see the patterns and walk away. The main pattern I will say to you, is if someone is failing to ever acknowledge bad behaviour or something has upset you, and turn it on to you in a way that makes you question your own feelings and self…. Anyone who makes you feel that way should not be in your life, you are well within your right to walk away from what does not serve you.
22.  It is NOT selfish to put yourself first.
23. Bitterness might make you feel good, but it achieves nothing. – Oh boy, do I relate heavily to this one. I am ashamed to admit that until recently, I spent a majority of my life being a very bitter and jealous person. I hated the fact that I felt I was always unlucky and never getting what I wanted, people around me were being successful and achieving their goals and instead of experiencing happiness for them and knowing my time would come eventually, I got really negative and jealous. Honestly, it did nothing for me. Being bitter or jealous is NOT going to change anything about what’s happening. Now, instead of being bitter and jealous, I address when I’m feeling that way and think to myself what is making me feel like this and what can I change about my own life and patterns to overcome this feeling?
24. Don’t burn yourself out for people who don’t appreciate it.
25. There is an art in being grateful for even the small things.
26. Life is short. – Goes without saying, I have lost a lot of people in this lifetime, some have been taken away way too soon. It really makes you think about the concept that we just don’t know when our time is, so make the most of every day as much as you can.
27. Writing is not an overnight success, it’ll be hard as hell. – Honestly- why can’t I just wake up in the morning and have a successful fully written best-selling poetry book or novel ready to go? Damn this is hard work!
28. Communication is the key, never take it for granted.
29. The only person who is ever going to be permanently in your life all the way, is you.
30. Sometimes you’re the bad guy. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. – This is one of the most important lessons that I have learned. I’ve always been a very self-aware person, which I think is important. That doesn’t always mean that I’ve been a good person in a lot of people’s stories. We make a lot of mistakes in life, sometimes we can hurt people intentionally or not. Sometimes people may have been around me at a time when I was very negative about my life and therefore reacted personally in bad ways. It’s naive for anyone to think that they are always in the right, or always the victim. We all do bad things sometimes, we will be the villain in some stories. But the important thing is, not to let it get you down. Remind yourself that there were things you learned from those experiences, and grow as a person. 
31. People-pleasing is a quality you need to reduce.
32. “The minute you stop trying to find it, it’ll find you.” – This was actually a quote I heard recently when watching the film ‘Cloud Atlas’. It stuck with me. It’s also one of the truest quotes I’ve ever heard. Sometimes we spend too much time chasing things or looking for things but don’t understand that sometimes the universe has a reason for not letting us find it there and then. Things will always find you, when the time is right.
33. ‘Co-existing socials’ are an underrated positive way to spend time. – I only started doing this recently, a friend suggested it actually, and it is a really good suggestion to give to those of you who feel like you don’t see your friends enough but also have so much to do, whether it be completing a crafty project, writing something or reading a book. Meet up with a friend but take your project with you. Spend a couple of regular intervals chatting but then take some time to sit together in silence while you both work on whatever project you’re doing. It’s so good for the soul, honestly! 
34. Sometimes a person’s behaviour towards you is not about you. – This was a hard lesson for me to learn as we naturally always take things personally. We think that a person ignoring us or mistreating us is because we’re in the wrong, but most of the time, it’s nothing to do with us. It’s how that person is feeling about themselves (I mean, look at my lesson 23 as an example).
35. There is always a reason and story behind everyone you meet, you will never know the full extent of it.
36. Cleaning and organising your surroundings does wonders for your mental health. – I used to get so sick of reading this in every self-help book and roll my eyes, but it’s actually true. Even little things like rearranging your room in a tidier way, or finally getting around to doing that deep clean is a massive weight lift mentally. Your surroundings really DO affect your mental health.
37. Take the time to check in on people when you can, you never know what it might mean to someone. …sometimes we never reach out or say what we want to say out of fear, but life is too short to fear everything. Reach out to people. Check in. Say what you want to say. You never know how much it can change someone’s life. Or yours even.
38. Be aware of those who are only happy when they are slating someone else. – As the saying goes, ‘be careful of those who are talking negatively at the table, you’ll be the topic when you leave’ or something like that. There’s nothing wrong with a good vent or moan to close friends about a particular situation, but be mindful if a person you are spending your time with does nothing but speak negatively of others.
39. Spend more time with real life and less time letting technology overwhelm you. – I will consistently preach about this for as long as I can! We are sadly now in a generation where we feel we cannot live without technology. Our phones are tied to us at all times, children rarely play outside anymore, it’s a tech world we live in, it has it’s positives, but one of my favourite things to do now is have regular intervals where I leave my phone at home, or on airplane mode, and go out in nature, or have a rule to not get my phone out at all while I’m with friends. Appreciate the world around you and its real contents, you never know how long you’re in it for.
40.  It is never too late to keep growing. – I may be turning 40, but I know I still have a lot to learn and a lot of growing to do. I’m okay with not having it all figured out yet, I’m also excited for what comes next, and how much more I can grow into who I want to be.

I hope you enjoyed my 40 lessons post. Maybe some of it was relatable for you (or nonsense) but I feel really good about writing this, so even if this post sits and gets nothing but air, I’m content with myself for doing this.

Thanks for reading, until next time!