I find it a hard line to tread: navigating the persona I have created on social media alongside that of my regular corporate job. In both worlds, I have always been quite good at being guarded. I share online in much the same way that I would with colleagues: a little insight, but nothing too revealing; nothing overly emotional; surface-level, with a sprinkle of humour. The perfect recipe for almost all work-based relationships. It is a strange kind of intimacy. Enough inform

Women have spent decades being interrogated about their bodies. Men, comparatively, have been given an extraordinary amount of grace. So why, when the barriers are often different, perhaps even, do I dare say, ‘lower’? Why are so many men perfectly comfortable opting out of taking care of themselves? There is something I've never quite understood about men. We live in a world where women are expected to negotiate with their bodies almost constantly. We menstruate. We get preg

“So what do you do?” I still don’t have a clean answer. I did not leave psychology because it made me miserable. I left because it was going too well. It happened in a gap. There were four months between defending my dissertation and graduating, and a visa hold meant I couldn’t work through any of them. September to January, and for the first time since I was about seventeen, there was nothing to finish, revise, apply for, or prove. I assumed I’d be bored. What happened inste

Ballet has always asked its dancers to fit inside something: a company, a role, a body, a stage. Dasha Schwartz is more interested in what happens when you take those boundaries away. After beginning ballet at five, training at Canada’s National Ballet School and dancing professionally across North America and Europe, Schwartz came to understand both the extraordinary beauty of the art form and the rigidity of the world surrounding it. So she started imagining something diffe

I read one of my old essays recently, and boy, did I cringe hard. I didn’t agree with a great deal of what I wrote and even found myself questioning some of the language I used. But while I am somewhat reluctant to admit it, I think I’m glad that I hate my own work. I guess, in some ways, that means I am growing. In a world where we’ve permitted ourselves to continuously pick things up and abandon them without much thought, staying with something long enough to become agitate

We're not craving nostalgia. We're craving the last time we lived in a shared reality. There was a time when culture unfolded collectively. Millions of people tuned into the same television finale on Sunday night, queued outside cinemas for midnight premieres, and walked into school or work the following morning knowing exactly what everyone would be talking about. Even the early internet, chaotic as it often felt, revolved around common experiences. Viral YouTube videos, Fla

Nora Ephron once said, “Everything is copy”, meaning whatever happens in your life, the extremes, the mundane, is fair game for your art. In fact, she promoted the idea of digging deep into oneself, whether the story is tragic or embarrassing, to use it for a higher purpose. Life’s heartbreaks can be used not only for the benefit of yourself but also for the benefit and entertainment of others. So, what happens if that higher purpose already exists? It’s been originated and

Every era has a preferred spokesperson. The 1950s had the smiling housewife. The 1980s had the celebrities. The 2010s had the influencers. I'm beginning to think the late 2020s will belong to someone else entirely. A few weeks ago I stumbled across Corner, a new maps app with an unusually simple promise: zero ads, zero influencers. Instead of asking Who has the biggest audience? they ask a different question. Who actually knows this place? Their philosophy is almost radical i

As I wandered through the streets of Málaga, absorbing the beauty around me, one question would not leave my mind. When did we stop adding magic to things? Not magic in the grand sense or fantasy. But the small details that make life feel alive. The carved balconies that someone took time to create. The hand-painted tiles. The weathered doors. The cafés that seem to have absorbed decades of conversations into their walls. Details that serve no obvious purpose other than beaut

I first discovered self-improvement when I was around 16. Back then, it wasn’t as common as it is today. I remember a woman on YouTube who talked about meditation, practising affirmations, and the importance of gratitude. I was fascinated by it because it felt like a whole new life was being promised to me if I practised certain techniques. The very thought that I could change my life made me believe that I had to. A few years later, the internet became flooded with content l

I emerge from the subway at 86th Street, on the Upper East Side, into an afternoon that feels borrowed from another year. The Q train releases me the way it always did, with a hiss, a gust of tunnel air, the sudden return of sky, and for a moment I stand at the top of the stairs just breathing, letting the neighborhood reassemble itself around me. The wind moves lightly through the avenue, softening the city into motion. Roma Pizza still sits tucked into the corner, dwarfed b

I was 23 and driving through the streets of San Diego. I had to solicit fifty doors of small businesses before I could return to the office, where I’d have the business cards I’d collected counted by my manager. I pulled over around 4 p.m. and called my dad, crying. I only had 30 cards and had basically hit every open business in the area. As instructed, I’d park on one end and walk to the other, in heels at that. I was exhausted. It was my first job out of college. Trying to

There seems to be a very specific kind of woman we have decided is liberated. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but she is sexually confident. She doesn’t need a man. She dates freely, talks openly about sex, shows her body without apology, and refuses to feel ashamed for wanting pleasure. She is independent, unattached and, most importantly, completely in control. And to be clear, she should be allowed to be all of those things. But between giving women the freedom to live this way a

I moved to New York City with the idea that I would feel like a rockstar trapped in a supermodel's body when I went out. Then I went out and saw nobody was dancing. Moving to New York City used to come with the promise of a vibrant nightlife and a complicated dating life; but the chances of dating getting easier are low, I’m still single, so let’s stick with dancing I always dreamed of being a true party girl, fur coats in the winter, messy hair every season. Almost everythin

My first encounter with heartbreak was fairly early. Not the kind you’re thinking of (my social skills with boys are virtually non-existent), but a little something called friendship. As a child, this heartbreak did a pretty fantastic job of rattling my brain when I couldn’t yet make sense of the world. When I was nine, I spent two hours making handmade Halloween cards for two of my closest friends, each card personalised for them. But they never showed up. I’d wait exactly