Day 1: Introducing 'The Great Unf*ckening'

Who's along for the ride?

Oh HELLO! Come on in and get comfy. Welcome to this new thing I’m doing. It’s a rough and ready attempt to think about why my life isn’t optimal, change some stuff and hope that things improve. I am really bloody glad you’re here.

If you’re reading this a little down the line then I do hope things have become a little unf*cked, but best you start right here to catch up on how it all began.

For the rest of us, let’s dive in in real-time. BRACE - they won’t all be long reads.

Life has been a heck of a rollercoaster recently, and although I know things will improve I don’t think it’ll be an easy ride. That’s ok though, because to paraphrase Andy Dufresne in the Shawshank Redemption, it’s all about gettin’ busy living. So I’m about to get busy on this project and see how to move towards the best life I can be living. The highs and lows will be here on this Substack, every day for the next 90 days.

So why now? And also, just WHY?

You might know about the Do Lectures, as I spoke there last year and shared it. Here is my talk if you missed it.

I went to Do again this year but as a volunteer and not a speaker. It was great and I’ve learned a whole lot of new stuff – not unusual for this, quite wonderful, festival of ideas and inspiration. One of the key things I took aboard was to try to do fewer, better things thanks to Per Håkansson, who has a Substack where he writes regularly about doing just that: less stuff, better. (All links to ace stuff I recommend will always be at the bottom of each post: Per’s Substack for example!).

To that end, and in the light of the last 18 months of overwhelm that I have experienced, I have decided to strategically look at what is working for me, what isn’t, and make some fundamental changes in my life to judge the effects. I’ll be logging all of it here in real time as both an effort to keep myself accountable, and to share honestly with those of you that might find solace or solidarity in my explorations.

What seems to be the problem?

This 90-day process is not going to be easy or linear. It might be a disaster, but Do has yet again reminded me to do braver things, and by that I don’t mean BRAVE as in extending myself on another adventure, but a different kind of brave for me: focusing on the smaller, more consistent and replicable things that will improve my bigger picture exponentially.

So, here are just a few examples of what I’ve been wrangling with:

(Some) of the things that are PRACTICAL that currently drive me frickin crazy:

• I am living between too many places because I rent my home out for income in order to save and support my new business ideas. It works, but only in one way. I desperately want to be in my own home and in one place, but have painted myself into a corner. I’m going to get out of the corner (in 90 days!)

• I own too many possessions: some that I love, and others just a collection of things that I don’t need but convinced myself I do. From antiques to old gifts I don’t want, to tech that limits rather than lifts and clothes I never wear…they swamp me, but even the process of getting rid of them feels like a huge job in itself

• I don’t eat properly because I am too ‘busy’

• No matter how organized I get or how many hours of the day I work, I never feel like I make progress

• My ‘busy’ is actually just a crazy overwhelm and having started too many projects. I need to cull

• I am tired and my body doesn’t recover well because I don’t sleep properly OR eat properly

• I’m not as fit and strong as I was a couple of years ago. WHY? I know why. All of the above and below. After 15 years of chronic pain and recovering, this really pisses me off because I’ve done it to myself.

• My to-do lists are in the hundreds and hundreds (*tears hair out)

• I have thousands of red dots on my phone, showing up all over the screen on my too-many apps. This all gives me a migraine

• I exist on too many platforms, and don’t show up well on any of them. This haunts me

• I don’t see my friends enough or socialize enough. Fuck

• I don’t date. I should date, but all the above makes me feel shitty, so I don’t want to

• My ADHD is still a pain in the ass to manage, and I’m learning more about it every day (and although people like to say all these challenges above and below are ‘just ADHD’, they’re not just that, but that’s a whole other post…)

• Am I perimenopausal? How do we know? What’s perimenopause, what’s trauma, what’s ADHD and what’s looming burnout? How do you treat which bit and what do you start with? I want to ditch all the meds and start from zero. Should I? YIKES.

(Some) Of the things that are EXISTENTIAL that I can find hard to manage:

• I say yes to too much stuff

• My boundaries are too wobbly

• I am a people pleaser

• I find it hard to relax

• Grief. My dad died in the most awful circumstances late last year.  Then his brother died a few months afterwards. Both were unexpected. I’m still reeling from it

• Being single and childfree in a world surrounded by couples and kids – love it and hate it in equal measure

• Body dysmorphia

• Aging

• Climate grief

• General existential dread

LOLS isn’t this fun!?

I am not ungrateful, don’t come for me.

So, what’s missing from the above starter-lists of stuff that’s pissing me off are, of course, the good things. And yes there are many, many things that are good and that I’m grateful for, but this 90 Project isn’t about just being happy for the good bits. It’s about me digging into the shit bits, not just ignoring them and pretending everything is ok. I’ve done enough of that, of crossing my fingers and wishing that things might go back to how they were before my break up, my ADHD diagnosis, my dad’s death and all the other shitty things that have happened in the last 18 months. But they won’t go back to how they were, and that’s just how life is.

It was when writing my book Do Hope (out in October by the way, pre-order available here) that I realized that I needed to take my own advice and move forward with no shame about the messy, difficult bits. I can just accept where I am and hope things will get better, and even more than that, I can be proactively trying to make them better myself. No one is coming to save us, any of us, but by looking at life honestly, I believe that I can find ways to improve each shitty element just a little bit. Maybe some bits by a lot. Who knows.

So, although I’m going to be celebrating the wins and cheering for all the great gifts I have in my life, I’m also going to bitch, moan, feel defeated and annoyed and share exactly how the tough stuff makes me feel. It won’t happen overnight, and sometimes it’ll feel there’s no change for ages, well I’ll just have to suck it up. That’s the point of the 90 days – plenty of room to be honest, grow and see progress.

Oh…and I’ll be sure to drop in the Art History memes from time to time too btw.

There is a better way

I fundamentally know that there are better ways to live and better serve my creativity, passions and self. There are ways to be happier than I am, because I have been, and I want to find what those are at this stage in my life. Nothing quite shakes you and wakes you up like trauma, bereavement, aging, loss and grief. Our time here is finite, and I want to feel like I am making the best of it, especially now after all that has happened.

It’s when I really enjoy myself, get rest, eat well, give effectively, and tap into my innate gifts, skills and joys that I am able to be and feel my best. I’ve been a bit lost about all that stuff for a while since a cascade of things knocked me about. I won’t say it knocked ‘off course’ because perhaps this is the course and these are the lessons, but I’ve definitely been bashed and set adrift. It’s time to get a handle on things again.

Are you in?

I’d love to take you along for the ride I’m about to try to go on and the challenges it throws up. I’ll stay on Instagram, but maybe a little differently, and I’ll also be trying to show up here on this Substack for at least 90 days. It’s my space to explore my thoughts and see what happens, and I won’t be censoring myself. Well, I might be a bit, but not a lot, and that feels like SUCH a frickin relief.

Why 90 days?

Well it’s 90 days because it’s practical for me, and feels time-banded and doable to my brain. For the first time in ages I’m at home in Cornwall without any big trips for at least 8 of those weeks. In the final 4 weeks I have a Coppafeel charity hike to Mont Blanc, the first of my 2 retreats this autumn, and I’ll be revving into the launch of my book which will be on the 5^th Oct,  almost exactly 12 weeks on from when I started this little project. It feels like the perfect amount of time with a pretty good closing point.

This won’t be glamorous. It will be messy, ecstatic, bare, sad, challenging, joyful and real. It’ll be full over overshare and perhaps I’ll feel some real resistance to sharing it at all. But I’ve tried hiding away, and I’ve tried managing my work/socials at a distance, and it just doesn’t work. So rather than waiting till I get back to 100% before I try to show up on here, and rather than only coming back to share when I feel good (which doesn’t feel real to me), why don’t I just change things up a little bit and see if that helps, and share that journey with you in case it helps you too.

THE CAVEAT

I won’t be sharing all the hardest and rawest stuff on Instagram or anywhere else public. I’ve learned over time that putting your rawest and most challenging emotional and experiences out to the world can be a brave and good thing, and many of my most wonderful online connections have come from doing just that, but I don’t think it’s a sustainable thing for me to do when I’m trying something different which will be as raw as this might be.

I’ll share some stuff on IG of course, and try to be consistent, but I know that I back away from Instagram when I feel introverted but I don’t always back away from writing or sharing more privately. Writing works for me, but I don’t want to leave my vulnerable stuff out for random scrollers to find until I get my bearings.

So, I’ll be sharing my usual IG stuff (and hopefully more consistently!) but I will be only giving mostly lighter updates on there. I’ll be sharing deeper and more difficult things here, because it’s a subscriber newsletter. I’ll make most of the posts completely free, but there will occasionally be different levels of privacy because some ringfencing feels good to me for the most difficult stuff. For some things I might make a small paywall to create a self-selecting closed safe space, but if you’re on my IG you’ll still get a good share of the basics too!

A taster of what’s on the menu (subject to availability, obvs)

Some themes and topics that might feature and be explored in the next 12 weeks:

• How to do less, better

• How to choose what to let go of

• Overexposure (or the feeling of it) in the digital age

• What’s expected of you versus what really works for you, and how to know the difference

• Breaking up with apps and socials

• Learning to say no, and why it can be so hard

• The pressure we put on ourselves versus the pressure we believe we are under from others

• How to cope with existential dread about the world we live in

• Improving poor nutrition and eating habits

• How grief affects ongoing life

• Losing a parent

• How to recognize crap sleep, and steps to improve it

• Navigating the content I consume and how to choose  what to consume without either overwhelm, or putting my head in the sand

• Cold water swimming

• Can I still run distance, or am I actually fucked?

• Body dysmorphia

• Losing weight, being healthier

• Time boxing/rejigging my schedule for deep focus and work in a way that works for me.

• How to stop being a people pleaser and not feel like shit.

• How to tell people to eff off and actually stick to it

• The perimenopause journey (or is it?!) (ffs)

• Meds – stopping/starting/figuring them out

• Aging (which is better than death of course)

• What to do when you don’t know what to do

• Being childfree by choice, but the process is HARD

• Single life and dating in 40’s

• Hiking and the outdoors

• Chronic pain recovery and management

• Keeping your mental health fit in the current world

• Managing overwhelm

• Figuring out starting a business for the first time in your 40’s

• Managing late diagnosis ADHD

• Disordered eating

• A nomadic versus a rooted life

• How to unpaint yourself from any corner you painted yourself into

Etc. FUN RIGHT? LOL

ALSO

In the spirit of letting go and clarifying, I sent an email to my beloved Patreon community on the weekend to let them know I’m closing it down. I’ve had such lovely responses to the message I wrote them about loss and changes leading to my decision, that I’m going to share it with you tomorrow. I don’t think they’ll mind.

To finish up….

I’m not going to punish myself with this project, but I imagine the above topics and more will show up and I’ll be honest about what I learn along the way. Alongside this I’ll be growing my business, offerings and stepping into my potential and power – that’s the plan anyway (and here’s hoping my honesty in this 90 Day Project doesn’t eff all that up, lol).

I’m not going to guarantee that each post will make sense or lead seamlessly into the next. F*ck that - it’s the kind of perfection that’s keep me paralysed. I might even contradict myself too! Ahh brilliant, I can’t wait. 🤣.

We can do brilliant, wonderful things and it’s all possible. Life’s too short not to try, and it’s definitely too short not to admit that you might have been doing things that don’t serve you and therefore need to reimagine, reevaluate and reboot some stuff!

I want to feel better! Less burdened, more purpose filled, less achy in body and soul, to use my gifts the right way, to re-harness the hope and passions I believe in.

I want to love myself fully, and I will.

I don’t know what will come up or show up. I don’t have a fixed plan, but I will keep moving forwards and sharing my thoughts and feelings on it all daily. Shit, I might even stop, but I’m at least going to start.

12 weeks of MUDDLING.

Are you coming with me?

Love, Gail x

P.s. If you think you know someone who might enjoy this project, please send it on or share it on your channels. Thanks for the support!

Links to Ace Stuff

(none of this is sponsored or placement btw)

• Per Håkansson’s Substack; ‘Fewer, Better Things’

• My DO Lectures talk is here to watch (About 28 mins - I overran the 20 minute rule but I’m told it’s worth the watch)

• Pre-order Do Hope here