🎄 Cheers to 2023. Big plans for 2024
Hello friends, thanks kindly for your support in 2023.
Next year, we’re going to:
compile and curate 24 essays on stuff you’ve thought a lot about in 2024. Brief will be very similar to this year’s brief
put a bunch of the essays from 2020 to 2024 on paper. I hesitate to say ‘book’ cos 💰💰💰 but shout if you wanna bankroll this 😉
Thank you to Nadia Huq for thoughtfully and sensitively editing 2 essays this year. And thank you as always to Jack Sheppard for his design and enthusiasm for the idea.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed, read, shared, subscribed and made my heart and entire being fuzzy.
Here's to a bangin' 2024.
Amy.x
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Themes to note from In 2023, I thought about that a lot.
👨🏼👩🏼👧🏼 19 of 24 authors hadn’t contributed an essay in any of the previous years. 8 identify as male, 16 female. Oldest 74, youngest mid-twenties. Authors based in Europe, UAE and USA.
☝️ Despite Twitter not being what it used to be and people moving off it, our pages views rose by just under 50%. Lovely to see the numbers rise significantly every year without any marketing and not a whole load of pushing. Good concept + good content finds a way.
❤️🩹 In 2023, I thought a lot about loneliness by Rich Blake had the most page views and shares. Take this line into 2024 with you: “Generally, it’s not obvious and you often can’t see it – in yourself or in others – until it’s too late.” Check on folk.
👏 In 2023, I thought a lot about my employer’s bullshit approach to diversity and inclusion is an absolute rocket. Show it to your execs, send it to your D&I teams, share it with the people who arrange unconscious bias training, remember it when your Comms team has another great idea to promote work culture.
👭 Authors also wrote about different types of inequality – mainly the pressures on women.
In 2023, I thought a lot about:
eggs (as in, freezing them) by Gillian MacDonald
early menopause by Louise Duffy
caregiving and my love life
💪🏾 In 2023, I thought a lot about the parts of myself I’ve ignored is one of the bravest essays we’ve ever published. A mother writes to her daughters about her awakening and how being true to yourself can be cripplingly difficult.
💭 File these 5 under ‘thought-provoking’.In 2023, I thought a lot about:
choices – rewarding good decisions
money – always fascinating to learn what it means to individual
charity shops – treasures in more ways than one
if the childless owe less to the planet (MORE TALK ABOUT THIS PLEASE!)
kindness is the most gorgeous essay. We could all do to take note.
🪞 Reflecting fondly on the past triggered by something in 2023 was a big theme:
my Abaji (grandfather)
an old friend by Alex Hall
grief by Paul Hardy, published exactly 1 year after his mum Joan’s funeral
… as was dealing with traumas:
🤣 We’ve had a higher number of light-hearted essays this year including,
In 2023, I thought a lot about:
being a rock star by Jack Sheppard
naked men by a new friend in the US who has no connection with any of the authors from previous years.
dress codes by Jessica Boyle
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