What took you so long?

I published my first Substack article on 9 July 2025. I was shifting focus from my coaching business to becoming a writer. I wanted to write about the process of reinventing yourself - or at least, evolving into something new - in mid (later) life. What is it like to let go of one thing and reach out for another? To feel new at something? To have simultaneous doubt and confidence? I thought other people, especially my existing audience of mid-life, mid-career women, might find some of it interesting.

I stopped posting coaching-related stuff on LinkedIn, intending to switch to Substack instead.

Then, nothing.

Not a single thing.

Why?

I could spout all sorts of guff about life, busy-ness, post-carer exhaustion, death admin exhaustion, trying to save a pub preoccupation, husband, holiday, moving house la la la.

All of that’s true. And reasonable. Of them all, the exhaustion was the most real. Once I took my foot off the LinkedIn pedal, the energy I needed to set off in a new direction just didn’t come. Burnt out? Probably.

But also scared. Unsure of what I had to say. Fear of being judged, especially by the new community of writers I was moving into.

Or possibly I just stopped one habit and didn’t create a new one.

But in the last few days, I’ve felt the energy returning. I don’t feel any less tired. I don’t feel any less scared. But somehow there is a spark of motivation that is making me want to get going again, to engage with a community of people who are interested in how to move through life, make changes, surprise people - and yourself - and take yourself to new places.

I’ve been at Goldsmiths on the MA in Creative and Life Writing for a term and a half. I’m loving it. But it’s been challenging. It turns out I have little to no confidence in my ability to read a text and have an opinion that I trust. Weirdly, I’m fine sharing my own writing and hearing any and everything anyone has to say about it, and I’m fine with taking the bits of the feedback that resonate with what I’m trying to do, and respectfully and gratefully parking the stuff that doesn’t.

There are smarter people there than me, or at least they sound smarter, more clued up about the language and the jargon and how to do close reading and then speak their analysis into a group. There’s people whose writing seems effortless (it’s not) and who have brilliant, more inventive, ideas than me. I feel like the last person to be picked for the school sports team - a misfit, unpopular and a bit stupid. Objective evidence (as far as you can be objective about yourself) suggests this is as crap now as it was when I was 13, a self-created mental obstacle course designed to keep me small and out-of-sight so I can think my own private thoughts and not make a fool of myself. More on this another time.

This term has been better than last, perhaps because I’ve been telling myself to stop caring so much. I haven’t gone there to make friends or improve my social life. I’ve gone there to turn myself into a writer.

But I’ve also realised in the last couple of days that I’m holding myself back. We discussed a short story in class yesterday, and I kept my thoughts to myself. Now the moment has passed and I will likely never know whether I had something useful to say or was way off the mark. It doesn’t actually matter which, because it turns out every thought is useful as a learning tool, whether it’s “right” or “wrong”. And so many things in writing (and life?) are neither and both. So it’s time to erase that mental restraint and remember I’m there to learn and grow and there’s no such thing as a stupid question.

I also am thinking about my creativity and what might be possible. Again, am tending to keep myself small, conservative, conventional. Why? What use is that to anyone? Time to experiment. Go weird, wacky, eccentric, it-doesn’t-make-sense-but-it-sort-of-does. See what happens. It’s just words on a page. If it doesn’t work, throw it away and start again. The world isn’t going to end because I had a crazy idea.

Anyway, here I am. Back and with thoughts and ideas I’d like to share. Not necessarily regularly or predictably. But here I am.