Personal Nuclear Reactors
Hello loves!
We are basking in the dog days of summer in the northern hemisphere. My new novel is unfolding slowly, dreamily into words, but it's hard to concentrate when all you want to be doing is floating in the Hampstead Heath Ladies' Pond with your friends. Here are five things I've been thinking about recently (through the haze of Aperol Spritz).
An Opinionated Guide to a First Trip to London
One of the great joys of the past few months has been how many friends have been able to visit me in London. In many cases, it's been their first trip here, so I put together a first-time visitor's guide taking them through some of my top suggestions of shows to watch, things to see and places to eat. It's opinionated and very much built around my friends' tastes and preferences, so your mileage may vary!
As an example, one spot I always insist people visit is Novelty Automation in Holborn. It's a collection of satirical hand-made arcade games with silly themes like the Small Hadron Collider or the Alien Probe Machine. It's unbelievably charming in a quintessentially British way, and you won't find it on many "Classic London Tours".
Alistair Mackay's The Child
One of the most devastatingly beautiful books I've read so far this year is Alistair Mackay's The Child. It's the story of a man who returns to Cape Town after living in New York because he wants to adopt a child, just as the city enters the worst days of the water crisis. The book is extremely courageous, full of moral nuance and deep insight about magic and messedupness of Cape Town, interwoven with thoughtful contemplations about how we make families.
Thrillingly, the book is launching in the UK, so if you're near London on 20 September, do go to the launch!
Planning the task is half the task
One of the most productive things I've been doing with my summer is spending a lot of hours in therapy. It's going great, except for all the stupid f e e l i n g s, and the fact that my therapist constantly nags me to be kinder to myself. I mean I would, if my self wasn't such a jerk! I swear she started it.
In all seriousness, I've been looking for ways to build more self-kindness and self-care into my life. Real self-care, not buying overpriced single-use sheet masks. The thing I've found that has by far made the biggest difference? Hiring a part-time remote PA.
It's a dreeeeam to have someone just finally do those stupid niggly tasks that have been lurking on my to-do list for over a year now. But the benefits far exceed the few hours a month I'm paying them for: I've found that the process of briefing them on what I need their help with actually completes half the task. So often, the hard part of doing a task is just working out exactly what you need to do. I'm finally getting through large, important projects that have been blocked for months now, and feeling so much lighter for it.
My bestie and I used to do this for each other by swopping admin tasks sometimes. It's so much easier to do someone else's admin than your own: firstly, because you don't have the same emotions about it (those pesky f e e l i n g s) but secondly, because the process of your buddy explaining the task to you has usually forced them to figure out all the steps involved, which was half the work in the first place.
My buddy Andrew recently recommended a brilliant (free) web app that can help with this. It's called Goblin Tools, a set of simple single-task tools designed to help neurodivergent people with things they often find tricky or overwhelming, like translating the tone of a text message or estimating how long a task will take. But my two favourite tools are the Magic To-Do, which turns a vague plan ("Write a blog post") into actionable steps ("Choose a topic," "Create an outline" etc.), and the Compiler, which turns a messy braindump into a neat to-do list. If you've got a spicy brain that isn't served well by normal productivity tools, give it a try.
A song for Dungeons and Dragons Nerds
This very nerdy Dungeons and Dragons song by Tom Cardy is unironically my favourite song right now. It's also on Spotify. If you don't play D&D, this might mean nothing to you, I'm sorry :)
Squeak Piggy Squeak
What are the parlour games you play with your family and friends? Parlour games are those indoor party games that don't require any special equipment except maybe a pen and paper, like Charades or Twenty Questions. My favourite thing about these games is that the rules end up spreading by word of mouth, so they mutate. My group of friends, for instance, plays a lot of Werewolf, but we insist that the moderator comes up with a unique setting (like "six months into the first Mars colony"), and every player concocts an entire persona and backstory. We also play the Salad Bowl game, but we have an extra round where you're only allowed to make one noise as the clue, and another where you have to communicate the word using sock puppets.
I was recently introduced to a new favourite - a variation of "Squeak Piggy Squeak" - where someone leaves the room and blindfolds themself while everyone else changes seats, then the blindfolded person returns and calls out a number and an animal ("3, cow"), and the person that number of seats around the circle has to make that animal noise (they moo) before the blindfolded person tries to guess who's sitting there.
Parlour games are the best, and I'm always trying to learn new ones. What are some of your favourites?
Wishing you play, neat to-do lists, and kindness to yourself,
Sam