The One Where I Catch You Up (On, Well… Everything)

A chatty update on being a "mature student", my writing journey, and still having nothing figured out

Oct 03, 2025

Hello there!

It’s going to be a bit of a chatty one today. A little less depth, but perhaps a lot more fun?

I write today’s piece as I head off for a week’s break, and block myself from Substack (probably).

Thing is, I realised that I haven’t taken a pause from my weekly posting schedule since I started back in April/May time.

And along with working really frickin’ hard at this Substack stuff, I’ve been doing my degree, and trying to put myself out there in the freelance world.

Yesterday, I finished this term’s assignments and exams and no word of a lie, I burst into tears.

And in the spirit of “processing my emotions”, as opposed to just distracting myself from them, I let the tears flow, before deciding to put on my favourite ‘calming relaxing piano music’ playlist, and have a chill evening.

Now I’m about to properly switch off, I wanted to catch you up on a few things…

The chaos of being a “mature student”

In June, after six months of unemployment, job hunting, and starting my Substack, I decided to go back to university and study Psychology. No set answer on “what are you going to do with it” yet but it was time to follow what I’d been drawn to for years.

Since then, it’s been a rollercoaster of adjusting to life as a student again (harder than you’d think), managing my emotional ups and downs regarding my new ‘writer life’, and trying to just, ya know, take care of myself mentally.

So, turns out the main challenge I’ve come across is that I am actually doing a Masters of SCIENCE.

And yes, I did know this when I signed up to it.

But my creative, subjective brain has been bumping up against all the rules and scientific jargon.

The funny thing is, a big reason for wanting to study was because I really frickin’ love understanding people and myself better. When I read a fascinating research study, it lights me up. When I’m chatting away in my seminars about the ‘sense of self’, I love it.

But it’s a shift from the reflective writing I love here on Substack into the world of variables and quantifiable definitions and hypotheses, and that is the tricky bit.

Confidence, for example, isn’t just ‘confidence’. In psychology it gets sliced into things like ‘Self-Efficacy’, ‘Self-Concept’, ‘Self-Esteem’… basically a million ways of saying slightly different things. Confusing, right?!

So yeah, quite the opposite of my Substack, where I write like I talk, I use exclamation marks, and it takes everything in my soul not to include emojis sometimes.

But what I have learnt, is to give myself a teeny tiny little bit of grace with it. Because studying is hard.

Growing in confidence

I am still finding that most people I see in real life don’t ask about my writing, and I wonder if that’s down to:

a) They find it awkward and don’t know how to talk about writing.

b) I don’t shout about my writing enough, so they’re waiting for me to mention it.

I think it’s probably a combination.

People tend to ask about the degree instead which I guess makes sense, because it’s a universally respected thing to do — find a company and get a job, or go back to uni.

I don’t love this, but I am seeing myself becoming more comfortable with it. People like to talk about what they know, and what’s familiar to them, and that’s totally okay.

So I’m continuing on my merry way, and every time I speak confidently about my writing or my psychology, it reminds me of how ridiculously far I’ve come from the me of a year ago, who didn’t even tell anyone she wanted to write.

She’s a paid writer!

On that note, I am in fact a paid writer now. Yep.

I have done a stellar job at not communicating my paid tier on here because, to be quite frank with you, I wasn’t sure how to do it, and I was scared I’d announce it and no one would sign up.

Going from a set salary, to having to determine your monetary worth as a self-employed person, has been a lot harder than I thought it’d be.

It’s a really interesting topic for future exploration - that specific kind of confidence around self-promotion that most of us struggle with.

But I do have my paid option, and I’m proud to say that I also have a growing paid community!

This tier has access to some of my most personal, vulnerable pieces (I know, as if that’s even possible) like my Romantic Rewrites series, where I give the myths I grew up on a modern reality check: chasing excitement vs safety in relationships, the rollercoaster of boredom, and the dangerously blurry line between friends and lovers.

Or my piece on motherhood - the one where I respond to the people who told me I should “just have a baby” after being made redundant right after getting married.

If you’re someone who craves that kind of honesty, and my writing speaks to you, please do consider upgrading, it’s just £4 a month!

But if that’s not for you right now - genuinely no pressure. The vast majority of my content remains free, and I’d like to keep it that way.

Big steps out of comfort zone

This week, a podcast episode launched that I was involved in. I chat about my career journey until now, why I stayed in the safety of my old job for so long, and what made me want to change.

I don’t feel like I did the best I could because I feel like there is SO MUCH I have to say about workplaces, culture, confidence, sensitivity in the workplace, toxic management, ya di yah. But I sure as heck am proud for doing it.

Oh, and I posted on LinkedIn announcing what I’m doing right now.

I’m kind of done with people acting all serious and generic on that platform, so I felt like I could inject a little bit of vulnerability to the feed.

After all, in order to get the kind of career you want, you need to put out the kind of energy I want to attract back.

Listening to the extravert in me

I find myself resonating with a lot of introverts out there and I think it just goes to show that labels are labels, and we are very complex human beings.

Because while I sit roughly in the middle of the scale, adore my alone time and space, I absolutely thrive off of being around people.

I was that person in the office who actually said hi to people, went to lunch, was always up for a coffee and a chat, and whose job was practically to build relationships.

So, I am delighted to announce that I’ve taken myself out of my cocoon (as in, five days a week at home on my own) and joined a co-working space.

It’s actually reminded me of just how powerful social connection is. Sometimes I forget that in a few months I’d not only lost my job, my entire routine and all of my work friends, and I’d moved to a new town.

And yes, I do have a husband who I enjoy hanging out with, but we need our friends too. We need a bit of community, a bit of belonging.

My co-working days have been kind of transformational, and I know that sounds dramatic but it’s true.

I’ve met so many brilliant, talented people who are all in a similar self-employed boat.

Perhaps most importantly, having to constantly introduce myself means I’m having to actually get my act together, start taking myself seriously, and own my current journey.

“I’m growing a community on Substack, trying to become a paid writer, and studying Psychology again” is a bit waffly, but people are interested, which is fun.

Sometimes I have a little treat at the co-working space too…

Take a break!

My Substack journey so far has been an odd one. I had one note go viral back in June and, well, I got slightly carried away with my expectations for growth.

The thing about a quick increase is that people start unsubscribing the minute you actually post your essay (because they never actually read your pieces!).

In August, I lost more subscribers than I gained and it made me more determined than ever to keep posting and not take a break. I started panicking about what I was writing, piling the pressure onto every post and feeling like each one had to be better than the last.

After some time, and really working on my mindset, I’m back to loving it, connecting with other people on here, and enjoying it a tonne.

But I do need a little breather.

So yeah, I’m switching off my brain for a bit. A whole week with my husband in Portugal - chatting, drinking rosé, reading books (finally!), and relaxing by the sea. He’s trying to convince me to go surfing but given my atrocious balancing skills, I’m on the fence about that.

I can’t wait to chill with him. We both put a lot of pressure on ourselves, in all honesty. High standards and all that. So, time like this is important.

It’s only a week, so I don’t know why I’m being so dramatic with it, but I kind of wanted to treat it like annual leave so that I would actually do it.