When Adulthood Gets Loud, Go Back to Who You Were Before

How going back to your childhood bedroom might just make you feel less lost

Imogen Hall

May 17, 2026

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Somehow, I ended up on my old blog the other day.

We’re talking 2015 me, on Google Blogspot.

I was supposed to be writing my very academic research dissertation for my degree, and if we’re being totally real here, I was finding any excuse to procrastinate.

So I read a couple of my old blogposts expecting to laugh, honestly, or to cringe at the words of 20-year-old me but instead of that I found a very different feeling take it’s place.

It made me happy.

And it made me so, so pleased to read it not because it was beautifully written or insightful (I can assure you, it wasn’t), but because by reading that, I realised how much of me hasn’t actually changed.

How much my voice was there. Everything I was interested in.

And weirdly, instead of feeling embarrassed by how unchanged I seemed, I felt reassured.

Like, if that was me then and this is me now, then I haven’t changed as much as I think, and maybe that’s good news?

And maybe it means I’m on the right path again?

What did you have in your childhood bedroom?

It wasn’t the first time an old version of me had shown up at exactly the right moment.

During the pandemic in 2020, I fled London and opted for a more countryside-like retreat (if you can call it that) at my parents.

The downside to that was sleeping in my childhood bedroom, for 3 whole months.

I was 26 at the time, I’d been gone for 8 years, but they are those kinds of people who refuse to throw stuff out for years and years.

So in this bedroom was a wonderful array of stuff from my childhood. Including the following:

My DVD collection, which was almost entirely made up of romance/romantic comedies.. and a bit of Disney. When I was growing up I was so ridiculously proud of this and telling everyone and anyone who would listen.
Entire class school photos, going back to when I was 5 years old?!
My old teddies, dressed in the sweetest little outfits I picked out.
A collection of my best school work, including a beautifully decorated collection of my favourite poems, and an article on ‘are baddies really bad?’ (apparently, I always loved a nuance, even at 13 years old).

I could go into a lot more, but let’s just leave it there for now.

Now, I’ve always sighed at my parents hoarding tendencies, and their desire to keep the room as-is for so many years. But during lockdown, I was grateful.

Because it meant that in the time I wasn’t commuting into work, or socialising, I could dedicate to going through everything I used to love.

And if you read my stuff usually, you know I frickin’ love a reflection.

Being in that room, surrounded by the things that used to feel so deeply me, set me back on the path towards creativity.

Reading the article I’d saved reminded me how much I loved writing. Even if I was 13 when I wrote it.

It reminded me how my history teacher used to say my style was ‘too colloquial’, because I’d be writing about Britain’s prime ministers as if I was a modern day journalist, not a student.

Playing again

In this period, I also went back to my video gamer roots.

This is something that seems to surprise people about me.

“You play video games?! What?!”

I don’t really, but I used to, and if I had that much spare time on my hands again, then I would go back to it.

I’m way too sensitive for any violent ones, even sword fighting, but I absolutely adore the role play ones, creating towns, people, all of that.

So we’re talking Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon and, during the lockdowns, it was Animal Crossing.

Thinking about it now makes me crave that sweet little game again, so so much.

I would spend hours and hours on it, creating my island, meeting the islanders, planting my turnips (lol), fishing, changing outfits, all of it!

And I think what it did was remind me of the creative part of my brain. Because I was playing. I was trying things out. I was focused on the game and the life in the game.

When I played Animal Crossing I found out that you could actually design patterns and clothing in it, with a little bit of imagination, design skills, and researching.

It reminded me how much I appreciate and find joy in cute things like choosing the outfits. And how much I love designing.

Perhaps most importantly, how ridiculously strong I am in my sense of my own style. In how to express myself in that way, even if it was through a video game character.

When career identity goes, what do you have left?

At the start of 2025 I was unemployed following a redundancy, had moved out of London and to the countryside, knew no one. Weekends were good. My husband and I moved for a reason, and loved exploring the fields.

But without the external structure of a job, with no one to make me accountable, and my husband out to work all day, I was by myself a LOT.

This didn’t bode particularly well for job hunting.

I spent a lot of time reflecting but also, feeling very anxious, and not really knowing how to go about things.

Because although the lockdown me of 2020 had found her love of all things creativity again, had started writing on Medium, had taken up illustration and designed her own wedding stationery in 2024, there is nothing like a big life event to shoot you right back down to rock bottom.

And I’d forgotten all of this, at points.

Because in my daily, lonely life, all I could see was the volume of rejections I was getting.

All I could see was this massive great big mountain I had to climb to both earn money, and have a reasonably nice and not insanely stressful time.

It is so ridiculously easy to get knocked down by things in life. Setbacks.

And it is so ridiculously hard to bring yourself back up again, to get your confidence back.

Eventually, I started to think about that time again. I remembered what actually brought me joy and I started incorporating more of those things into my day.

I started being crafty. I started learning more.

As I did this, it wasn’t ‘productive’ to my job hunt. Nothing amounted to a job, or money.

But it both excited and completely calmed me.

I don’t know how else to even describe it.

It’s as if it lit me up, sparked my brain and I was alive again.

Perhaps, it was as simple as having something to get out of bed for again. I’d tapped into the curiosity in me, and the girl who was always so excited to play and create and just make things. Express herself, be that through writing or style. Even if sometimes, it just meant painting a stripey candlestick holder.

But it also helped in a time when I woke up everyday and I was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with not knowing what my career looked like but also, what my day even looked like.

It gave me that reminder of who I am at my core but also, that there was more to me than the pay check. Than the title someone else put on me.

It reminded me that I was Imi, and I was made up of so many quirks and interests and passions.

That’s what brought me back to myself during that time.

I recently spoke to someone who had found me via LinkedIn about this period post lay-off. He had gone through a similar thing, and told me that it has been the most challenging, mentally difficult period of his life but also, that it opened up his mind to other people he could be, to other identities.

His passion projects, his role as a Dad.

And we spoke about how our work identities are so, so dominating over all other identities. So much so that we often forget who we were before our jobs, before our careers.

In this time he realised work wasn’t everything.

But returning to what he used to love, brought him back to himself.

I think that returning to old versions of ourselves can reveal what was always there underneath the career layers.

What you care about

In that blog of mine, I found this post that was all about the annoying questions that people were asking me in my final year of university.

It absolutely killed me. Because it quite literally was exactly how I feel now. Still!!

I like to think that I’ve become less rant-y and a bit more insightful but lord almighty can you see the fire and frustration inside me!

Back then, I was fed up of people asking me what I was doing, because I wanted to figure it out myself, and I didn’t have a neat answer.

Back then, I didn’t like how people defaulted to well-known, safe-sounding career paths.

I didn’t like the feeling of pressure to go at a pace I wasn’t happy with, to apply for grad schemes with big corporates because it was the ‘done thing’, because it was ‘a good name for the CV’.

And it made me smile and laugh and dare I say it, brought a tear to my eye (I’m very emotional), because I was like, wow, look at how pissed off she is at this. And it’s understandable. Why are people assuming she should do one thing or the other?

And the thing is, that girl is still very much me.

I literally wrote a piece the other week called ‘Let’s retire the question “so, what do you do?”

My entire thing is wanting to write and talk out loud about things that people don’t talk openly about enough. Going against the grain.

And damn, reading that blogpost actually made me look back on my year and see things a little differently.

Because I am often plagued with shame of no income for so long, of using my savings, of not having a job. Being a student again.

But reading that back from my younger self reminded me of what I care about. Of my ‘why’, for all of this, the Substack, the career pivot.

It reassured me that what I’m doing is right even if I don’t see a lot yet. Even if it’s really frickin’ hard.

Because I was always like this. This was always what I cared about.

A final note

I think part of growing up is assuming we’ve become completely different people.

We talk so much of changing, of maturing, of growing.

But there is so much comfort in taking yourself back to who you were before, whether that’s child you, teenage you, or another point in time.

For me it was the writing. The questioning. The frustration with neat career paths. The creativity. The sensitivity. The need to make sense of things out loud.

Somewhere along the way, work and adulthood had buried parts of it under performance, productivity and pressure in my career.

But they were still there.

I was always like this.

And, I’m very happy to be reminded of it.

Thank you for being here!

Have you tried this before? Did something spark that old you? The childhood you? As always, I’d love love love to know your thoughts in the comments!

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