On existing, taking time and building resilience
Or: on upgrading from cold showers to winter sea swims
When people ask me what I do, I panic.
“What do I do?”
Because to be honest, what I’ve been doing for the last few months is simply existing.
Which, in this system we have created that measures all of our worth and defines our identities by how productive we’re being, how much money we’re making and what our job is, feels like my own little act of resistance.
Last week, I went for a swim in the sea and then I lay on the beach with my new and very dear friend, drinking tea from a flask (more economical than a coffee-shop coffee) and then we went home to garden to get it ready for planting our winter vegetables. Then I went to the unveiling of an art installation about the tension between big data and creativity. And then I played Crash Team Racing on the playstation with my partner (and no, I don’t want to talk about how many times I lost after boasting about my teenage Mario Kart prowess).
I did all of this on a Thursday.
This may seem like an insignificant detail but these are activities that previously would have been limited to a Saturday or Sunday. See, I’m a thirty year old woman who was building a career in tech in London and who, up until about a year ago, was completely and utterly obsessed with getting my title changed from ‘Lead’ to ‘Head of’, thinking that the only next step was progressing up the startup career ladder until I eventually made it into the C-Suite.
But things have changed quite a lot for me this year. Because I realised that I had the ability and the power to make genuine change in my life if I spent a little less energy on trying to change the wording on a progression framework and a little more energy on changing my own behaviour.
So this isn’t going to be a piece about how to take Thursdays off. This is a piece about how to use the privilege of having time and space to think and act differently. This is a privilege I believe many of us have, though of course to varying degrees.
First up, I’m going to address the elephant in the room.
“We can’t all just quit our jobs and take months to frolic around thinking about how to make the world a better place. Some of us have kids to feed, rents or mortgages to pay, and responsibilities, Olivia.”
I absolutely and wholeheartedly acknowledge this. Indeed, when I was talking about my plans for this piece, I had some sage advice from a loved one, which was to make sure that it didn’t come across as: “rich white girl takes the summer off and thinks she’s discovered the meaning of life”.
I can’t get around the fact that that is in fact, to a degree, what has happened here. But I still think my experience is worth sharing.
This week, with the news of the US election, many of us are sinking further into despair and throwing our hands up with cries of “well, we’re truly fucked now.” And that’s okay to do… for a little bit.
But really, what we should be doing is taking stock and then taking action. Those of us with certain demographics and resources should be taking a step out of the treadmill of our lives to understand how we got to this point, what the implications are for everyone existing on the planet today and generations of beings yet to come, and we should be thinking about how we can chart a different course. And we should be doing this right the fuck now.
I have the privilege to intentionally make changes in my life and I hope to use that privilege to help create a world where more people can do the same. Because change is the only guarantee in this life, and the best way to build up our resilience to it is to get practising.
How the cold showers escalated
Now, let’s cut back to just over a year ago when I wrote my first piece for this Substack. It was called ‘How to Change Your Own Mind’. In it, I talked about the fact that we all have much more ability than we think we do to rewire our neural pathways and to unpick assumptions about both ourselves and our societies. I talked about manifesting, and the Stoics and Anil Seth’s theory of consciousness. I also talked about why having a cold shower every day is the first step to changing your life. Close laptop, job done.
Here’s the thing though, I wrote that first piece from the comfort of my home in South West London, where I’d been living for many years, whilst taking a break from the job I’d been working in, also for many years (well, 3.5 years, which is an exceedingly long time in my book). Knowing me, I probably then Deliveroo-ed some sushi as a little treat for finally doing some writing.
Whereas I’m writing this one from my house in Brighton, with no job to speak of, half my head shaved, having just spent the morning using my first ever power tool and learning about the changing seasonal habits of rhubarb at the local community garden.
One thing that I can tell you for sure, is that writing about changing your life is a hell of a lot easier than actually doing it.
I once heard that you should keep at least some pillars of your life stable when you’re making big changes elsewhere. Well, screw that, I said, as I:
Moved city
Moved into a vegan household
Decided to set up, not one, but two businesses
Fell in love and entered into an actual grownup and committed relationship (which, for a gal who was chronically single for the majority of her twenties, has been a little bit of an emotional and identity shift)
Oh and I also continued my journey of questioning all of my assumptions about how the world works and what I should be doing in it.
At first, the excitement and novelty kept me going. Friends and family told me that I was glowing and this was the happiest they’d seen me in years. I helped to organise a visit to London for Audrey Tang (first Digital Minister in Taiwan) in July. I had my first client for my healthtech business. Things were all going well.
Then the anxiety set in. And it was pretty crippling. I was no longer living the same life as all my friends in London and, whilst I was making new and wonderful friends, I was lacking all of my safety blankets and familiar spaces and I had very little to cling to.
It felt very conflicting as this is something I had been so excited about and yet there were days when I just couldn’t get out of bed. I think the best way to sum up how it felt is through a poem I wrote from that time:
I feel myself falling
out of one world and into
another
Occasionally grasping for the ropes that I
So willingly cut
Pulling on them but feeling no answering pull
I am untethered, falling and falling
“What do I do?”
Change can make our brains feel unsafe and that perceived lack of safety can have some pretty detrimental impacts on our bodies and wellbeing.
Which is why we develop habits and cling to behaviours, mindsets and circumstances that feel familiar even if we know that they are no longer serving us.
So, with all of this going on, it transpired that trying to set up two businesses was a bit much. Especially when one was about helping healthtech businesses sell to the NHS and one was about fundamentally deconstructing and reimagining our capitalist system. There was just a teensy bit of cognitive dissonance that I was struggling to reconcile.
Plus, all this time for soul-searching (and napping) made me realise a few things. One being that it’s actually pretty liberating to not answer the question “what do you do?” with a job. That being forced to try new things may bring you passions and skills that you would never have realised were latent in you otherwise.
Take this morning for example: I woke up a bit ill, a lot grumpy but also very grateful that I didn’t have to sit behind a screen all day if I didn’t want to. So I took myself off to the community garden where I ended up chatting to the co-founder about how we could gamify one of my favourite books (Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future) using AI, whilst he also taught me how to use a handsaw and the difference between Western and Asian sawing techniques.
Because we are all so much more than our jobs. Every single one of us has a totally unique and complex identity that cannot and should not be reduced to our job title and the organisation we work for. When I actually think about this summer, here are the things that I have been doing:
Getting involved with a local community garden
Making new friends
Navigating relationships with old friends now I’m in a new city
Reading books
Sitting on the beach
Swimming in the sea
Coordinating Audrey Tang’s visit to London
Supporting a healthtech company doing really cool things to sign their first contract
Discovering an enjoyment of music I never would have listened to (dub and neo-trad Irish folk I’m looking at you)
Learning how to cook delicious vegan food
Testing ideas for what Uncommon Threads could become
Building the foundations of a relationship
Prioritising my physical health for the first time in a very long time
Playing Crash Bandicoot
But there is one thing that I have been doing that I think has been the most transformative (much as transforming one’s playstation skills is essential). And that is throwing myself headlong into life circumstances where I have met so many people doing different things to me. And I mean genuinely different things.
Of my new nearest and dearest, one was made redundant from their job at a charity preventing sexual violence against women and now project manages the community garden, whilst also training to be an expert herbalist.
One left the intense and heady days of Extinction Rebellion to grow and support a local charity building young people’s self-esteem to help them to genuinely thrive into their adult lives.
One is working two jobs to support himself through a masters degree looking at how we can reimagine education.
Beyond this, I have also plugged into a network of people who are energetically and urgently working out what needs to be done to build resilience in light of a collapsing economic, political and environmental system. They’re pushing for us all to become citizens of society, rather than bystanders or consumers.
And you know what’s so great? Every single one of these people recognises how fucked we are. But they’re not letting it paralyse them. They’re each using their own unique set of interests and skills to forge a path into the unknown on the belief that we can do things differently. We can do more than our jobs.
So, to return to my original theory from that first post all those months ago: that having a cold shower every day could change your life.
Well, I was bloody well right wasn’t I?
Except now, rather than sitting in my anxiety, I have got myself back up and I have upgraded to freezing cold November sea swims.
And I truly believe that I have been able to do that by building a supportive community of people who turn up, with spare hats when you’ve forgotten yours, flasks of tea and the abandon to scream at the top of their lungs when the cold water hits them and hold your hand to dive through the crashing waves. Because we can do the scary thing, we can make enormous changes in our own lives: but it’s much more fun when we do it together.
Which is why I've realised that this space - Unravelling Together - needs to be exactly what it says on the tin: a place for personal reflection on what it means to unravel from the system we're in, and to do it collectively. My other project, Uncommon Threads, will focus on the educational content and practical tools for change. But here, I want to share the messy reality of what change actually feels like.
So, if you’re as scared as I am of what the US election means for all of us, don’t let that fear stop you in your tracks. Feel it. Use it as fuel to run into the sea and scream as loud as you can.
And when you’ve dried off, write a list of all the things you do that aren’t your job. Think about the things that make up your existence as a beautifully messy, complex and unique human being. And think about what change you could make in your life to do embrace all of those things or by trying something you’ve never tried.
It might be scary, but you never know, you might just end up sitting on a beach surrounded by people who you didn’t even know existed six months ago but who are now loves and lights of your life.
Or at the very least you could surprise yourself with your ability to use a handsaw.
Olivia, this piece feels like a breath of fresh air! Your reflections on embracing existence beyond productivity and redefining identity outside of job titles resonate deeply. I was inspired reading about your journey of shifting from cold showers to freezing sea swims—and how community has played such a crucial role in supporting those leaps.
I recently did a big ol' scientific write-up on the benefits of hot and cold exposure (cold plunges, ice baths, freezing river dips, etc.), which you may find an interesting read... I learned a few things myself in the research phase that were especially curious, like how your norepinephrine levels can increase by up to 530% after just a few minutes in cold water, enhancing focus and mood.
Your idea of taking action by embracing life’s ‘beautiful mess’ is a powerful reminder to live fully, even (especially!) when the world feels chaotic. Thank you for this candid look at change as a collective and personal adventure.
Love this!
One thing reading this made me think about is how sometimes it feels like it isn't reconcilable to work in a corporate job and also try to improve the world around us. Because I work in a corporate job sometimes I feel like there's no point trying to do anything else to improve the world - I've already 'sold out' by not being an activist, and so I probably don't have anything to contribute. But maybe the better thought is how we can bring these two worlds that feel quite different closer together. I like the idea of listing the things you do outside of work - and if work is only one aspect of your identity then why can't another aspect be doing something of value to try and improve the world. Would be great to discuss with you!