Ironically, the independence I worked so hard to build is sometimes the very thing that makes romance look appealing.

Over the past few years, there’s been a strong cultural emphasis on “decentring men” and building lives that don’t solely revolve around romance. I agreed with that sentiment long before I fully understood what it would require of me.

As I’ve grown older, I crave my independence. I hold onto my goals more firmly. I keep my routines (or rather, try to). I make decisions that prioritise my long-term direction rather than short-term validation. I didn’t stop wanting love, but I started trying to build a life where it wasn’t the structure around which everything else was organised.

What I didn’t anticipate was the weight of what would replace it.

When you remove one centre of gravity from your life, something else inevitably moves in. For me, that something was the determination to build something intentional. I began looking more closely at my habits, my discipline, my thinking, and the way I spend my time. I wanted depth rather than distraction, even if I’m still learning what that actually requires.

Online, reinvention is often presented as quick and aesthetic. Become a new you with a magic routine. A new hobby. In reality, building a life that reflects who you actually want to become is slow and repetitive. Dare I say, sometimes boring? It demands self-trust, continued action and a tolerance for delayed reward. It requires you to show up when no one’s watching, and even more so when there’s no immediate proof that it’s working.

There’s a thrill to that independence, and a sharp type of clarity, but there’s also weight. When you stop outsourcing your stability, you inherit full responsibility for the pace and direction of your own growth. There’s no shared narrative to lean on, no built-in momentum. If things stall, they stall under your watch. That’s usually where the discomfort begins.

It doesn’t always take much to trigger it. Sometimes it’s as small as comparing myself to someone who appears further along, even if they’re moving in a direction I don’t actually want to go in. The mind doesn’t carefully assess whether the comparison is rational; it simply whispers “behind.”

From there, the doubts gather quickly. I start wondering whether I’m moving fast enough, whether I even know what I want, whether I will ever arrive at the place I’m working towards. Ambition stretches time; it forces you to live in the space between effort and outcome, and that space can feel uncomfortably wide.

When we perceive ourselves as behind, the brain tends to treat it as a threat, and threats demand relief.

It’s usually at that point that my mind drifts towards romance. Not towards the effort of dating — that feels exhausting — but towards the idea of an already-formed stability. A relationship that exists in its entirety, solid and supportive, absorbing some of the uncertainty I’m carrying alone.

There’s something undeniably easier about waiting for a message than waiting for your own growth to materialise. One offers immediate proof of your importance. The other requires faith. Romance, in those moments, becomes less about love and more about reassurance. It promises a distributed responsibility, a narrative that moves even if your personal ambitions feel stalled.

It’s a reflex that appears whenever the pressure of self-direction feels substantial. Faced with the slow and often ambiguous nature of building something meaningful, my brain reaches for the most satisfying form of immediate comfort it knows.

And I suspect this isn’t unique to me.

Whenever we feel behind — even in directions we don’t truly want — the mind looks for the fastest available story that restores a sense of momentum. It might be romance. It might be a sudden conviction that moving cities will solve everything, or that starting something entirely new will erase the discomfort. The form varies, but the impulse is similar: replace uncertainty with immediacy.

What I’ve started to understand is that this isn’t really about romance at all. It’s about the difficulty of tolerating responsibility without relief. When you’re building your own life, there’s no one else to blame for the pace of it. There’s no external structure to absorb your doubt. The whole weight rests with you.

Romance becomes the easiest imagined solution because it offers the illusion of ready-made stability. 

There’s nothing wrong with wanting partnership. But wanting it specifically when self-direction feels heavy is information. It reveals how tempting it is to trade long-term growth for short-term reassurance.

It’s worth asking, when the desire for immediate reassurance surfaces, whether it’s truly connection we’re looking for, or relief from the weight of directing our own lives.

Building something for yourself is heavier than it looks from the outside. It’s slower, and far less immediately rewarding than the narratives we’re used to consuming. Comparison makes it feel urgent, and doubt makes it feel unstable. But neither necessarily means you’re on the wrong path.

Sometimes the urge for reassurance is simply a sign that you’re stretching beyond old structures of comfort. Recognising that reflex, and pausing before responding to it, may be one of the ways we learn to carry our own direction.

You know that feeling when you meet someone, and you instantly click. That almost cinematic, ‘where have you been all my life?’ feeling. You feel understood in a way that feels expansive. Like you can stretch out fully and nothing about you needs to be translated or reduced. I’ve had that with friends, that sense that every nuance, every thought, every contradiction is allowed to exist.

And then there’s the opposite.

The immediate awareness that someone won’t understand you. Whether that’s at work, romantically, or socially. You can almost feel it within the first few minutes, instant alarm bells in your mind. In those moments, I don’t fight it. I adjust, almost. Shrink into the character they think I am. I let myself become ‘the calm one,’ or ‘the shy one.’ Sometimes even traits that feel less flattering. I accept the role because resisting it feels exhausting.

That’s the first tension: expansion versus contraction.

It’s not even that people actively mischaracterise you every time. Sometimes you pre-empt it. A way of social survival. We all do it. The sociologist Erving Goffman described life as performance: front stage and backstage. Different audiences, different presentations. Something functional, even necessary.

But there’s a difference between adjusting and being flattened.

Being mischaracterised hits differently. There’s always that split second of doubt – ‘have I been coming across differently this whole time?’ It’s initially destabilising. I’ve been called many things that didn’t fit with who I think I am: impatient, immature, childish, materialistic. ‘Too much.’ It’s always ‘too much.’ Sometimes too independent. Sometimes emotional and clingy. Sometimes less intelligent. The contradictions alone should be a giveaway.

It used to hit me harder; I internalised it. Now, more often than not, it makes me angry. It’s easier to see how quickly people reduce you to something they can manage. A compressed version that fits neatly into their expectations. It’s efficient, and it’s cognitively easier.

And that’s where this gets uncomfortable. Because the same compression that hurts personally is what makes branding work.

We live in an era of personal brands. You find your niche, you distil yourself, you give yourself a tagline. A tight archetype travels faster than nuance, complexity doesn’t scale easily. Humans prefer information that’s easy to process, the brain trusts what it can categorise quickly. A clear identity glides in, but a layered one requires effort.

So, when I see creators with sharp positioning, there’s a small part of me that envies the clarity and the discipline. The speed at which that kind of identity moves through the world.

But I also fear the loss. If I tried to define myself in one line, what would I be leaving out? Would I be shrinking myself? Or focusing myself? That’s the part I’m still untangling.

There’s also power in not being fully known by everyone. Intimacy doesn’t scale. Even biologically, we aren’t built for mass vulnerability. We can maintain only a small circle of true emotional closeness. Depth is resource intensive. Maybe it isn’t a loss if the full architecture of who you are is only visible to a few.

I always pride myself on my authenticity, maybe that’s why it hurts so much when I’m seen as otherwise. But I’m learning that authenticity doesn’t necessarily mean radical transparency. It means alignment. You can choose what themes you’re willing to be known for without amputating the rest of yourself. Maybe not necessarily deception, but boundaries.

Carl Jung wrote about the persona, the social mask we develop to function in society. I guess the danger isn’t wearing one, but actually forgetting you’re wearing it. Maybe the issue isn’t having a distilled public identity. Maybe it’s losing awareness of where it ends, and you begin.

Refusing to simplify yourself has a cost. People won’t always try to understand you if they can’t place you quickly. Opportunities might move slower, and growth might feel less explosive. It takes longer for people to give you chances.

But simplifying yourself also has a cost. A fear that you’ll end up trapped in the box you built. That repetition will blur the lines until the persona and the person become indistinguishable.

I started this piece angry at the thought of being misunderstood. Now I’m less certain it’s that simple. Maybe being mischaracterised only becomes a loss when it’s imposed. Maybe self-distillation, done consciously, is something different. Selection, rather than reduction.

The real question might not be whether I can be placed. It might be whether I need everyone to stay.

I used to (and still do) get really in my head about success. Especially with the way society is today; a big fear these days for a lot of people is the idea of ‘settling.’ Settling in relationships, careers, friendships. Settling into old versions of ourselves.

No one really wants to ‘settle.’ But what does that word actually mean? Whoever you ask, there’s a different definition. We usually hear it in motivational speeches, in videos, thrown around online to boost engagement and secure success for someone else. Maybe we hear it in conversations with our friends. “You can have it all – the dream life, the dream body, the career, the relationship. Don’t allow anything less than perfection. Don’t lower your standards for anything.”

It sounds good. It’s a lie.

The lie is that perfection exists. That once you work hard enough, raise your standards high enough, and reach that final point, the hard work stops. That you’re finally where you need to be. That from there everything comes easily and there are no more worries. It’s a glorified end destination that never really arrives.

I used to overthink the idea of ‘success’ and ‘making it’ all the time. I would FaceTime my friend and spiral for three hours, convinced that I’d never be who I want to be, and that the fear of that insignificance was too much to bear. That the world was so big, and I had no idea what my place was in it.

The strangest part is, I would think this to the point of collapse, yet not even have a defined idea of who the person I wanted to become was. It was made up of things I thought were expected of me, things I saw other people have, and I assumed that if I didn’t have those things, then I hadn’t achieved anything.

A feared ‘small’ life for me was one that was ordinary. That I could be just anyone, living a life that everyone else lives. That I could be forgotten. Leave with no impact.

Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between settling and just living in one portion of the world. One narrow slice. Is it settling if I don’t want everything? Don’t get me wrong, I want a lot of things. But my biggest tension is wanting so much that I’m never happy with anything. This idea of constantly going for more, needing more, projected everywhere under the guise of self-improvement and achievement, exhausts me. How many of these lives are actually fulfilled and aligned? What do you really gain when the goal becomes to purely want, to keep chasing and chasing?

I see this dilemma in my own life. I want a large life, of course I do. But when it comes to happiness and fulfilment, how does that fit in? When does enough become enough? And how do you move intentionally when the subconscious goal is to constantly acquire?

I think sometimes we imagine ‘not settling’ as living in a frictionless world. A world of ‘peace’ where everything goes purely our way, and we have everything we could ever need. But ‘not settling’ still means living with discomfort. It still means being unsure. It still means not always making the right decision.

I’ve delayed choosing in case something ‘better’ might exist. Especially being young – you never know what the future has in store. I’ve disguised it as alignment before, but constantly scanning for better, instead of building better, hurts.

Sometimes ‘high standards’ are just fear dressed up as self-respect.

It’s exhausting. It’s relentless. Nothing ever compares to how things are in your head. The more options there are, the harsher the feeling that I could be choosing wrong. That I’ll be trapped in a life I don’t want. That I’ll be hurting myself in some way. Lose time I could have spent doing something else. Lose who I am and not being able to get back to it. Lose opportunities and miss out. I hear the avoidance creeping out, don’t worry.

It stops me from fully inhabiting what I already have. I’m constantly searching for lack, therefore all I find is lack. In myself. In the world around me. Other people always have it better. They find things I don’t, take steps that I don’t. Live freely.

An ex-boyfriend once told me I’ll never be happy with the small things, because I’m constantly looking for things to be perfect. It resonated with me deep down, so I didn’t break up with him that day. Ironically, the one time I thought I was making the right decision – sticking with something that wasn’t ‘perfect’ in an effort to build – allowed me to tolerate less than bare minimum behaviour for another six months.

I don’t hold on to that. But it made me question what ‘settling’ actually is.

I would now define ‘settling’ as not trying. Looking for better rather than being better. Externalising your fears onto the world rather than looking inwards. Betraying yourself by opting out, or chasing for more rather than choosing what is aligned.

Choosing a corner of the world is making your scope smaller. Not your dreams, but your approach. Not avoiding the work. Not holding onto a fake version of what a dream life looks like. Staying aligned with the things you actually value.

I used to imagine having it all meant a peaceful life I no longer have to work for. I believed negative feelings would disappear, that I wouldn’t experience the friction of being human in the same way. Even my imagined bad days weren’t ‘real’ bad days. They were days where I overcame things, but with minimal struggle and emotion.

I think of how many connections, opportunities, passions we’ve walked away from because they weren’t ‘peaceful,’ and we took discomfort to mean ‘not for me.’ We used the blanket term ‘settling’ because we actually had to still work for something. Still show up. Still grow. It’s much easier to pretend you didn’t want it in the first place.

What I suspect is true about success is that it’s what you make of it. It’s what fulfils you. It’s not something you arrive at one day, but something you choose every day, through your actions and your outlook.

Life does not become permanently easy if you’re constantly growing. It becomes easy when you’re comfortable. Truly settling. Not wanting to be better than you are, but chasing distractions. Busy-ness for the sake of being busy. Achievements for the sake of achieving.

I’m a big believer that we should have it all. And we should. But that doesn’t come with ease or perfection. I can aim for the stars in my own way and still choose my small corner of the world.

This fear of not settling can make you not choose anything. Because nothing will ever be good enough.

I don’t need to conquer the whole world.

I just need to choose a part of it, and build something meaningful there.

I wish I was joking with the title. I do. As a writer, I take pride in my way with words and my ability to paint a pretty picture (metaphorically, of course. My artistry isn’t quite there yet), but it’s gotten to the point where I’m just out of options. I’m looking back at all the advice I’ve ever heard, thinking, “Damnit! They have a point.”

Throughout my life, I’ve run into this ‘perfectionist’ thing a few times. Really irritating, wouldn’t recommend. Apparently, a few writers actually encounter it. Ever heard of it? Eh. I’m sure I’m just special and unique.

The point is, I’m finally at my wits’ end with it. Eventually, issues stop being so doom and gloomy and really just start being a pain in the ass. I open up a notebook, try to write, the voice in my head starts doing its thing. Previously, I would quake in fear and resolve to never touch a pen or keyboard again, to spare the world from my dreadful words. Now, it’s just kind of like, “Really? Is this the best you can do? I’m kind of busy here.”

But I digress. A goal of mine for years and years and years has been to write a book. Again, very special and very unique, I know. Venturing where no man has gone before. Yet after all these years of the same goal, I’m still yet to see a finished book. I probably get about two thousand words in before I curse myself for ever daring to try – as obviously the idea is completely horrendous, and who would ever want to read anything of the sort? I pre-reject my own writing and ideas before people even get to make up their own minds about me.

But then I think back to my Wattpad days, where I would sit and read on the very safe and great-for-your-eyes layout from a tiny phone. Reading a story that a thirteen-year-old wrote every day, only half of which made sense. I hate to say that at the time I would think, “Gosh, I can write better than this.” Almost scoffing at the audacity while I read. I don’t know what type of superiority complex I had going on back then. Did I read it anyway? Yes. The whole way through? Yes. Props to them – they got further than I ever did. I underestimated just how difficult it is to even be consistent with something, let alone consistent and good at something.

As I’ve gotten older, I understand the depth and bravery it takes to actually put yourself out there like that, whereas I shoot myself down before I even really try. My sister used to love hearing about the things I was writing and working on – it’s now gotten to the stage where I rush to her with this amazing new idea, and she just looks at me sideways, and the first thing she says is, “Yes, but will you actually do it?” 

I then get offended, of course, as how could she even ask that when this is my sole passion and new reason for living, and she should just forget about the other 300 ideas I got her excited about and never delivered on. I also have a friend from uni who made me promise to put his name in the acknowledgements of my book when I get it published. That was in 2019. This book is still imaginary. I hope he’s not still holding on to that promise.

Thus, bringing us back to the title of today’s piece: my new goal is to write the worst book you’ve ever read.

Upon reflection, maybe this is my perfectionism creeping in again. I’m sure I can settle for just a badly written book. It doesn’t have to be the WORST. Gosh. I even have to be the best at being the worst. Maybe the only thing I actually have to give up is the version of me who needs to be impressive.

But yes, shocking news. Therapists and coaches were right. You should just start badly. And writing badly with the aim of writing badly is quite freeing. I mean, it was painful at first. It seemed like every word I wrote was just evidence for why I should never write again.

It hurts to write badly. But it hurts more leaving goals unfinished.

Then, suddenly, the clouds of judgement and annoying subconscious self-protection seemed to be parting from above me.

I wonder if I should apply this to other areas of my life. Maybe this has been the answer all along. 2026: the year of doing things badly. Sounds like a whole lot of fun.

Well. If this is the worst book you ever read, at least it will exist.

Do you know how long I’ve been avoiding writing in this thing? I’ve been dodging it like the plague. That silent guilt has been there, though, sitting quietly in the back of my mind while I do literally anything else. It doesn’t interrupt or demand much attention. It just rests. And then a day goes by, and another day goes by, and suddenly weeks have passed. I begin to wonder if this is even something to go back to, or if I’ve already let too much time slip.

Someone once told me that if I’m not working on the things I want to, then I just don’t want it badly enough. Those words rang true to me in the moment. They felt sincere and motivating, like a challenge I could rise to. But now, as I sit here day after day, thinking about the same thing over and over again, I start to question that idea. Because what is this, if not desire? When something follows you this persistently, when it resurfaces in every moment, when the guilt of pushing it aside gnaws at you constantly, is that not want?

The truth is, it’s much easier to dream about things than to act on them. I love big dreams. I will dream about things all day. Everything goes well in my daydreams. I could sit there and daydream for hours, and I have. It almost takes away the need to actually do anything. The dreaming feels productive enough to stand in for the doing. Sometimes it feels kinder to myself to stay there.

Acting is different. Acting requires you to confront where you really are, not where you might end up. It asks you to start without guarantees and to be seen halfway through. Sometimes I think I almost resent that. I almost hate that I’m here again, doing things, instead of just imagining them. Imagining is so much safer – it doesn’t ask anything of you. And still, I never stop wanting more than that.

But when I do act on things, something shifts. I feel calmer, I think less, I feel at peace. My mind stops circling. My body catches up, finally, and it reminds me that movement, however small, creates its own type of clarity.

My friend is currently recovering from brain surgery.

I know this feels like a pivot. A sharp, heavy pivot. But as it would do, it’s been on my mind. I can’t even imagine the whole experience she has gone through. I know I have my own blocks around things in my life, my own moments of fear and avoidance, but she has just been through something so immediate, so confronting. Something that strips life back to its essentials. She is well, and she is recovering. I continue to pray for her safe and swift recovery. But she has seen one of the scariest parts of life up close, one you don’t really come back from.

She understands more than ever the importance of life, and the fragility of our everyday. She was always like that regardless, constantly looking at the positives, making the most of her life, but now this has added a deeper layer. Most of us understand this in theory. We’re told to be grateful, to appreciate our time. We nod along, because of course we do. Why wouldn’t we be grateful? But then the mundane of the everyday takes over. Frustrations rise over missed trains, emails that need replying to. Deadlines feel urgent until they don’t. It’s all the small, constant irritations that slowly dull our awareness. How often do we actually stop?

Today, after speaking to my friend on the phone, seeing her smile, hearing her laugh, hearing her talk about what she’s been through, something solidified in me. I felt grateful in a way I hadn’t experienced before. I was grateful for her safety. I was thankful to feel her warmth again. And I was, almost selfishly, inspired. Inspired to do better. Inspired to do more. Inspired to stop postponing myself. Inspired to take more time to just be myself. To take all the time I can to appreciate the things I’m so lucky to do without thinking twice. And yet I know how easily I’ll forget this feeling.

We spend so much time looking backwards, replaying moments we think we wasted. We obsess over the should-haves, the could-haves, the what-ifs. Then the pendulum swings forward, and we start imagining futures with hope or dread, making plans for versions of our lives that haven’t yet come to pass. We forget about the present. We acknowledge it, sure, in an objective way, but how often do we actually feel it, or register that we feel it? It’s harder than it sounds. It doesn’t last very long. It’s literally a blink-and-you-miss-it moment.

And I did miss it. Time is one of those things that feel endless until we think it’s running out. In my mind, I’m always treating time as if there’s an endless supply of moments, of love, of opportunities, so much so that I feel comfortable leaving things until ‘next time.’ I wonder how much we lose in the process. 

Today, as I took out my notepad and pen and started writing, it registered to me quietly and clearly that this was the first time I’d really been here in three months.

But it’s something worth striving for. That clarity of action, that peacefulness of presence. It makes it easy for that overwhelming gratitude of being to start to flow.

They say you never appreciate what you have until it’s gone. I say, why don’t we start?

Sometimes the scale of life hits me in stupidly ordinary moments. I’ll be scrolling through my phone in the morning, half-asleep, wrapped in the warmth of my duvet, and suddenly I’m witnessing three different realities at once. A bombing somewhere, a wedding somewhere else, someone making banana bread in a kitchen I’ll never step foot in. I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet, but I’ve already absorbed more emotional commotion than my ancestors would have encountered in a decade.

It makes me wonder whether humans were ever meant to live like this, with a world so large it’s at our fingertips from the moment we open our eyes.

Our minds evolved in small groups, a hundred people, maybe a hundred and fifty at most. But they were people you actually knew: their voices, their habits, the way they laughed, the way they got on your nerves. We weren’t built to carry the tragedies of millions, or to compare your life to thousands of strangers, or to process multiple global crises at the same time. Our nervous system was designed for the familiar, not the infinite.

I think about this mismatch a lot, the biological scale vs the modern one. Even when life is objectively fine, even when I’m safe, warm, fed, unthreatened, there’s this underlying sense of dread.

Sometimes it shows up as anxiety, sometimes as numbness, sometimes as a strange guilt, like when I’m showering and feeling bad about it, aware that somewhere someone has no clean water, and here I am deciding whether I should condition twice because my hair feels dry. It’s ridiculous and human and heartbreaking all at once.

It’s like my body doesn’t know the difference between danger in front of me and danger happening nine thousand miles away. My heart still races, my stomach still tightens, my thoughts start spiralling. Almost like a constant low-level state of threat with no clear enemy to confront. Just an on-going stream of information and no way to act on most of it.

I imagine in the past there was only scope for small, solvable problems: a broken tool, a sick relative, harsh winters. There was a world with clear edges, and you knew your role within it clearly. But now it’s like the edges of these worlds have started to bleed endlessly, and we keep on absorbing everything.

We meet hundreds of people online, we hear thousands of opinions, we carry emotional stories from strangers we’ll never meet.

But my actual life is tiny compared to the world I think I’m living in. I don’t experience eight billion people, I experience maybe ten deeply, my world is shaped by a handful of relationships. The things that genuinely affect me are the things I can touch, see, hold, change.

You can care about something without being responsible for fixing it. And you can acknowledge pain without trying to personally hold it. You can be informed without letting the weight of the world replace the weight of your own life.

The older I get, the more I think that peace isn’t about simplifying the world, but about simplifying your relationship to it. There’s power in deciding where your attention goes, clarity in choosing what belongs in your emotional world and what doesn’t. There’s freedom in living intentionally in a world that pressures you to be endlessly large.

We weren’t built to carry the whole world in our hands, but we canchoose the size of the world we actually engage with. We can choose what enters our minds, what stays in our hearts, what shapes our days. We can live lives that feel proportionate to our humanity rather than lives stretched to accommodate every crisis, and every expectation.

The world will always be too big, but we don’t have to feel lost within it.

Measuring yourself against everyone else doesn’t make you better — it just makes you disappear.

Comparison is the thief of joy – or so we’re told. But it feels like comparison is so natural and prominent – sometimes even encouraged.

In workplaces, in schools, even your mum telling you what Kathy from down-the-road’s daughter is doing. We grow up looking at other people, measuring ourselves against them. No wonder we get to the point where we look everywhere else but in the mirror.

Comparison can act as a guiding light sometimes, it can show us if we’re on the right track, give us inspiration – but it very quickly can spiral into negativity.

I’ve spent a lot of my life comparing myself to others. Feeling less than, more than, even on the same level. Measuring my worth based on how I showed up compared to the people around me. Oh, well, she has better eyebrows, but my cheekbones are more pronounced.

I just made that example up, but you get the point.

I feel you end up just losing all sense of yourself. I used to look in the mirror, and not even see myself, but a version of me that was relative to everyone else. It became a disease of the mind.

It’s painful. As there’s never a way to really measure up to another person, no matter how hard you try. If I were to compare myself to every person on the planet I would short circuit on insecurity and self-doubt. There’s no winning that game.

Someone will always be doing better, someone will always be prettier, have more money, be smarter. And that will kill us. And there will always be someone who is worse off than we are. And even though it shouldn’t, that gives us relief.

I feel in your 20s comparison is a lot more prominent. I talk about this in my latest podcast episode ‘Lost, Learning & Figuring Life Out – The Truth About Your 20s’ (available on my profile, hint hint).

In your 20s, everyone is doing something different. You can compare yourself against all your ex-classmates, your colleagues, whoever – in one sense or another, you will fall short. Maybe you just got a promotion, but someone else has just bought a house. Maybe you have started to settle down, but that person’s stories you obsessively watch on Instagram has just gone travelling for six months and all of a sudden, your cozy settled down life feels like a trap.

On the other hand, that person you hate has just lost their job so really, you’re doing fine. And feeling a bit smug.

It’s like we need this sense of comparison and hierarchy in a way in order to feel solidified and confident in where we are. Because really, there are no rules anymore. No guideline, no gold star at the end of the week and extra play time for good behaviour.

But what piece of mind do you get with that, constantly looking over your shoulder, looking sideways, anywhere but forward and on your own path. Other than temporary validation (depending on who you’re comparing yourself to), all it really does is distract you.

As deep down, we don’t want to admit that we’re all scared, and knowing that others are in the same boat as us is slightly less scary.

Are you in the same boat though, really? No one you compare yourself to will ever live the same life as you, so your comparisons are actually null and void. You will also never be happy with your achievements or any progress you make if someone else is doing better.

What an empty life that will turn out to be. As they say, the only person you need to compare yourself to, is the you from yesterday. Even then, be kind to yourself.

As the gender wars spike even further with the ‘male loneliness epidemic’ and the rise of red pill content, the rift between the men and the women of this generation feels almost irreparable.

When I first saw the article in Vogue, I focused less on the article itself, and more on the reactions to it. A lot of women felt validated in their decision not to date and in their single status, a lot of men were offended, and there was a good mix in the middle that just didn’t care.

Overall, the article seems to be adding fuel to an already growing fire online. But is this article just another form of ‘rage bait’ to attract attention and spark debate, or is there something deeper?

The article talks about the fear of getting the ‘evil eye’ from onlookers into relationships, a desire to maintain freedom, and a continued step away from the traditional happily-ever-after of marriage and family. There was also talk about a loss of ‘aura’ whilst in a relationship — I myself can relate to that one.

I think there’s no dispute that the dating world has become confused. More confused than it ever was (not that I was around to see it). I’m also not the first person to talk about it, nor will I be the last. So why is this? Why is dating so hard today? And will men and women ever find peace?

As we do move away from that stereotypical happily ever after, women are increasingly focusing on their own lives and ambitions, and the mask on the male gender starts to slip. As teenagers, a lot of us look at men with stars in our eyes, thinking they’ll be the solution to all our problems. Then we grow, and we start to see the socks left out on the floor, the dishes left in the sink, the emotional toll on our lives, and we start to think that maybe it’s actually a burden.

We’ve also grown seeing the stories of our parents, grandparents, maybe a parent’s friend — there’s always at least one relationship where you think, ‘Why are you still together?’

In movies, when the husbands were jokingly made fun of for not knowing how to cook or find their way around the store, I didn’t find that endearing. When a couple cheated and got back together — I didn’t think it was brave that they worked through their issues. With the exception of Mitch and Gail in Dawson’s Creek.

It was all just passed off as something to be expected. For women to hold the emotional burden of the relationship. To act, essentially, as a second mother. To put up with bad behaviour and let it go because of ‘love’ and expectation.

I’ve been the person in the relationship who has done everything for their partner, put myself on hold, cleaned, cooked, tried to be who they wanted so I’d be loved. What did I gain? A loss of identity and confusion over why the things I did weren’t enough.

Even in the relationships where I didn’t ‘over-give’ and I was loved, I still lost myself. Because although he wasn’t a bad person, I still carried the emotional weight of the relationship. I still found myself not receiving back the things I gave. And it’s not that he didn’t want to; he just didn’t even think about his actions or what he was giving me.

I felt that I just couldn’t grow in that relationship, there was nothing bad, it was just stagnant. There wasn’t room for me to really evolve. I felt myself putting my dreams and goals aside. Making myself smaller. As I’d seen so many other women do in my life. Why should that be the case?

It’s not that women don’t ever want love or partnership, but we shouldn’t just accept it in any form it comes.

Personally, I do want love. I do want partnership. But I want an adult that will support my dreams, my ambitions, inspire me, be able to function on his own, and have emotional intelligence.

As otherwise, what am I inviting into my life? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Love on its own is never enough. And if I’m going to pick someone to be with for life, they can’t be a factor in making things worse, or even just be okay, but instead influence me positively in some way.

So, do I think having a boyfriend is embarrassing? No. I think having a bad boyfriend is embarrassing, and always has been. I think the dating scene is embarrassing. With all of the ghosting, cheating, non-committalness. I respect myself more than that.

But also, I think we need to remember that online isn’t necessarily real life, and things are a lot less worse than they appear to be on the internet. And I think it’s possible to be independent, achieve your dreams, and also have love. You just need to be a bit more intentional with who you choose.

Imagine a world where dreams are fulfilled, where passions are chased, and imagination leads…

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One thing I admire about the human race is our ability to dream. We’re born dreamers, innovators, creators of worlds we know nothing about. There are no boundaries to what is and isn’t possible. As we grow, we’re instilled with the ‘reality’ of how things are, and the way things should be. Suddenly, walls are built around the things we believe we can do, and that little dreamer gets buried under the rubble. Still there, but kept far away, where they won’t cause trouble.

There’s a lyric in Billy Joels ‘Piano Man’ that hits me every time I hear it.

‘I’m sure I could be a movie star, if I could get out of this place.’

I feel his yearning, his wistfulness, his hopelessness. I ponder on how many people walk around with the pain of their broken dreams in their heart, of wishes unfulfilled, goals never reached. How many people are trapped in the confines of their situations, not seeing a way out, unable to pursue the things they love, but are adamant that they could do so much ‘If only things were different.’

I wonder how many people dismiss their hopes and passions, because they don’t see a world where it’s possible. Because they’ve been let down too many times. And each time, that light inside dims further and further, until it becomes just a distant memory, never to be touched. A secret harboured, of the life that could have been. And a fake resolution they tell themselves over and over to ease the heartache: ‘It just wasn’t meant for me.’

How many people do we pass by every day, not knowing that one person’s dream was to become a painter, one’s to become an actor, another’s to re-define life as we know it.

Where do they go? The essence of these hopes and dreams. Surely, they don’t just dissipate. They must live on within us still, needing only a spark to re-ignite that once burning flame. Just something small, to get the cogs of the imagination turning again, to re-think what is possible, to live outside of the boundaries placed on them.

I like to imagine a world where these dreamers are resurrected, where passions are fulfilled, and where in the same way we’re born dreamers, innovators, creators, we die as ones too.