The skills you learn from working for yourself.

I’ve always expected that the honeymoon period of freelancing would end, and yet three years in, my rose-tinted goggles are still firmly on. I see a world filled with unlimited possibilities: working in my underwear, on the floor, in the bed, in the kitchen, refilling my big mug of tea over and over. Taking an afternoon off to go out for a walk or a drink with friends and work all night instead. …

Generate real change in your life.

Millions of us are used to starting every year with a miserable ritual. We set ourselves vague goals for huge changes without giving ourselves the means to obtain them. Then we feel guilty when we don’t succeed. We feel like a failure for not losing weight or reading a book a day or meditating each morning. Rather than being an way of creating the empowering changes that we feel like we need in our lives, New Years Resolutions are made for us to fail, and make us feel terrible when we do.

That’s why for 2021, I won’t be making any resolutions. 2020 was too awful for me to want to put myself through another failure. Instead, I am setting out 12 habits that I will add in to my life, month by month. Since it takes 30 days to create a habit, this seems like a perfect plan to create real change. By the time I introduce the next habit, the former one will be an integrated part of my lifestyle. I will try and connect each habit to the last, so as to build on preexisting habits. …

Restrictions are necessary, but the side effects on our mental health must not be overlooked.

The pandemic spread like wildfire because of the connectedness of modern existence. Never in human history has there been so much intermingling of individuals from across the globe, so much movement in so little time. Ironically, this connectedness is also the first thing the pandemic destroyed. As borders closed back up and transport is cancelled, many people are stranded far away from the people they love, or on lockdown and unable to see their closest friends who only live a block away. This has been creating isolation all year, but loneliness is always accentuated during the holidays.

More than a religious holiday or a commercial one, for Christians, Christmas is a family holiday. For better or for worse. Christmas is arguing over politics and an overworked chef having a meltdown, it is radically different personalities in the same family clashing and setting off sparks, it is meaningful gifts, spilled drinks, laughter and time dedicated just to each other. It is love, at its purest and most complicated. …

In heterosexual relations, they evolved to bring men and women together through a shared experience.

One of the most widespread — and false — assumptions about orgasms is that what cis-women feel is fundamentally different from cis-men — women’s orgasms are seen as more lip-biting, toe-curling, mind-blowingly intense than guys’. But whether on a physical, neurological or psychological level, the opposite is true: men and women actually have very similar experiences of the big-O. The differences are far more important between individuals than between the genders.

So why does the myth persist that women’s orgasms are better than men’s? Part of this could be Porn — because women start to moan and cry out as soon as they see a penis within a 50-metre radius. Despite the fact that the sex acts that place women’s pleasure at the centre (oral sex, or stimulation of the clitoris with or without penetration) are severely underrepresented in mainstream porn. …

“Want to join a toxic messaging group, where we’ll insult and body shame you to keep you motivated?”

The picture triggers me instantly. A mirror selfie, from the side, of a girl so thin you could see the shape of every rib, poking out violently from her skin as though they were making a desperate bid for escape. The post stands out almost as sharply in my Instagram feed, which is mainly body-positive bloggers, feminist artworks, and forlorn photos of my friends losing their minds during lockdown.

It’s from one of Instagram’s pro-ana, or pro-anorexia accounts, providing “inspiration” to girls with eating disorders, “motivational” content to get them to carry on starving themselves. As someone who suffered from an eating disorder herself, I cannot take my eyes away from the account. Those old feelings of obsession, the desire to take up as little space as possible come back to me, and I long to make my body melt. “It’s so unhealthy. It’s wrong. It doesn’t look good,” I think to myself. But that wasn’t my first thought. My first thought was “Wow, she’s so thin. She’s so disciplined. …

How to navigate the new system to earn money and have fun.

I took a long break from Medium in the beginning of the year. By way on an explanation, let’s just say 2020 got me. It’s been a turbulent time for everyone, and while some people have managed to be extremely productive during consecutive lockdowns and restrictions on our daily lives, I was amongst those who struggled to work in the face of such uncertainty. It brought a strange mix of feelings, this pandemic year. On the one hand, fear and anxiety, on the other, the humour and human connections that are forged all the faster in times of disaster.

The long break from the platform meant that the Medium I came back to was very different from the one that I left. …

And to those you didn’t know you had.

This year I started my biggest project yet: writing a book. When the idea first came to me, it felt straightforward enough. I was a writer. In terms of word count, I’d written several books worth of articles, reports, and university essays. I had no idea how little I knew about what it actually means to work on a book project — until I started.

Then suddenly, I had loads of questions that seemed very silly — like what does it actually mean to write a book? What does a writer do every day? Where do you start? How do you plan your time on such a long term project? How do you stay motivated when the end result is so far away? And, my biggest question: is it normal to feel completely and utterly lost? I had genuinely no idea what I was doing — and I couldn't find answers to my most basic questions. …

Whether you're a woman or a man.

Things that might affect your sex drive: being tired, being stressed, birth control, whether or not you feel comfortable with your partner, hormone fluctuations in both men and women, levels of physical activity, work-life, family life, chronic illness, trust, personality, natural libido.

Things that don’t affect it: your gender.

We have this stereotypical idea that men will always want sex, and that women are reticent. It’s a trope of married couples in movies and TV — he longs to get physical, and she is happy to do it once a year under duress. In reality, each couple is different. …