An imperfect, joyous life

The last post of 2024

And just like that, Christmas is almost upon us, and I am getting ready to shut down my laptop for the last time in 2024.

This will be my last post before I leave you all to your mince pies and mulled wine, so I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you, dearest readers and subscribers, for supporting this newsletter and leaving such thoughtful comments that make my heart swell with joy. You are the reason that I get to write every day and know that at least one person is reading it. Thank you, and a very merry Christmas to all who celebrate.

Lauren x

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Obsessed with our tree, tbh.

In the process of coming up with the concept for this Substack newsletter, I knew that I was seeking to write something truthful. I wanted to lay it bare on the page, and I thought that the ‘it’ was my work. I was convinced that Not That Deep would be an unfailingly honest, raw account of what it really means to be a freelance social media manager: but as it turns out, my career is probably the least interesting thing that I could possibly write about.

YES, I get to go to fancy events every now and then, and work with extraordinarily brilliant people, and sometimes even receive copies of books before they’re published (still a major novelty). I am privileged enough to be able to set my own working schedule and support other people’s creative process in a meaningful way. BUT, and it’s quite a big ‘but’ (as evidenced by the fact that I put it in all caps), people don’t really care about that.

What I do isn’t going to change lives. That’s not to say that I am not allowed to glean joy and purpose from it, to care deeply about this thing that I have built for myself: on the contrary, I am the only person who really should care quite a lot about my career, my business, my livelihood, my reputation, because it’s mine. And I do, I do care a great deal, because this is my day-to-day, this is the thing that I invest almost all of my time into. Mercifully, my clients are invested in me too, which means more than they will probably ever know.

All of this is to say that…well, I stopped writing about my job a few months ago, and I started writing about all the other imperfect, joyous, anxiety-inducing stuff that makes up a life, and suddenly this newsletter started gaining traction.

Being self employed allows me to invest time and creativity into this newsletter, but it’s not the thing that I want to write about. My heart is in writing about life.

There are so many freelancers on this platform who write brilliantly about all the ups and downs of being self employed, but I have discovered that I am simply not one of them - or at least, I don’t actually want to be.

I want to write about the magic of being human, and fucking up, and not always getting it right, because it’s the times when we’ve failed or learned a lesson that make for the most compelling stories. I want to write about community, about village life, about learning to drive at 30 years old. I want my words to shed light on the parts of ourselves that we keep carefully hidden away.

So, my pledge for 2025 is to write with unflinching honesty, and see what comes out. I’m not sure what that will look like just yet, and I’m anticipating a terrible case of writer’s block when I return to my desk in January and the cursor is blinking back at me on a terrifyingly blank page, but this is what I need to do.

In the meantime, I’ll be switching off my laptop until the 6th January so I can wholeheartedly throw myself into celebrating our first Christmas in our very own home. The Chapel Down fizz is chilling in the fridge, the smoked salmon is in my Sainsbury’s basket and, as I write this, James is downstairs putting up our new curtain poles. Oh, domestic life really is full of thrills.

James and I on one of the beautiful walks on our doorstep

Happy Christmas, folks. I hope it’s everything you want it to be.

See you in 2025! x