Miscellaneous
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Can we stop using the term ‘Toxic Positivity’?
Hear me out: I’ve recently chosen to take a break from social media on my phone again by deleting the Instagram app. Why? Because the whole world seems so negative. Whether it’s reactions to global events or political elections or even benign everyday stuff, it seems like everyone prefers to have a good moan rather than be positive. What’s worse, if you call that kind of behaviour out, it’s often referred to as ‘toxic positivity’ in this modern day and age. So what exactly is toxic positivity? Chat GPT says: “Toxic positivity is the excessive or insincere promotion of a positive mindset, often dismissing or invalidating real emotions. It pressures…
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Yoto player for little book lovers
I know I said I’d do this soon and, surprise, I’ve actually caught up with my to-do list just once, so here I am. We’ve only had our Yoto for about a week, but I’m already in love with it. I don’t say that because I want you to buy one either – I do, and here’s a wee affiliate link for the player we have – but I’m telling you, you’ll want to regardless. So I refused to buy a Yoto (or a Tonie for that matter) for years, because I figured it’d be ignored. I thought it was a newfangled, expensive cassette player and that my kids would…
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Your own brand of bravery and my ‘secret’ book project
I’ll share more about my project in a minute, but I’ve been wanting to write about the topic of bravery for a good while. You see for years I’ve considered myself to be really quite wimpy. I’ve done a few things in my life that others would label as ‘brave’, for example moving country six times, moving house innumerable times more, and taking chances on people and things with very little planning. But there are things that completely terrify me. Pregnancy comes to mind. As some of you will know by now, I’m currently pregnant with twins. At time of writing I’m sitting around 12/13 weeks. We’re super excited for…
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Ramblings on a rainy day
Today has started off as a slow day. My husband’s working from home, meaning I didn’t have to do either school or nursery run, and I got to avoid the rain. It began its noisy splattering on our windows when the July baby* and I were upstairs, playing. Now I’m sat under a cosy blanket catching up on my work. I have a little design project to do today, and I’m waiting for a client to send on the next pieces she wants written for her literary blog. In the meantime, I’m admin-ing and, it would seem, blogging. I’ve not yet worked out 100% how I want to share my…
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From near(ish) the Highlands to the World
I wanted to share a bit about what I like to call a ‘literary lifestyle.’ Not ‘how to fit more time into my schedule to read books’ (books find YOU, not the other way around.) Let me start by saying that this isn’t my first shindig. It may not be the most exciting way to introduce a new website, but trust me – it’s an exciting way to introduce your last website. Why last? Because I’ve been writing for well over 20 years now (sometimes people even pay me), and at the tender age of 37 I’m finally quite happy with my style, use of language, and generally what I…
