Hurdling: a 2023 highlights reel

reflections on this year, a roundup of articles and a celebration of another year of writing on the internet.

Hello. How are things and how are you? It has been A Year™️ hasn’t it? I ended 2022 living in London, living with my boyfriend and doing a job that was making me miserable. I’m ending 2023 living in Amsterdam, living with my husband and doing a job that gives me an unbelievable amount of joy and meaning. Things have really turned around, eh? If you’d told me on New Year’s Eve last year that this is where the year would end up, I think I’d have spat out the pint of cider I’d been drinking just before my now-husband got down on one knee on a beach in west Wales and asked me to marry him. Madness.

Of course, there are plenty of other important moments that have filled the nooks and crannies that surrounded all those Big Life Things™️. Many of those moments were wonderful, too many were awful but all those moments wrapped themselves around each other to form lessons to learn – both about myself and about other people, too. 2023 has been, for me, a year of really understanding who I am, what I stand for (and what I won’t stand for) and what I really do need to be happy in myself and in my life. In and among some truly horrible and challenging experiences that shattered my confidence, made me question who I was and how I showed up in the world and eventually sent me to therapy, I found my feet again. Things feel like they make sense and I feel like I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. As the poet Wendy Cope puts it, ‘this is peace and contentment, it’s new.’

Next year will likely look different. I keep banging on about ‘The Snapshot’ to Jonny and our closest friends. The Snapshot is the picture you can take of this current moment, of how everything currently stands in your life. And for us, life is good. It’s really good, actually. We’re healthy and well. The people we need in our life are in it. No one is really unwell. We haven’t lost anyone yet. We have incredible support to lean on when we need it. The majority of our friends are in the same life stage as us, sharing our snapshot and making it a brighter and a more vivid picture. Our snapshot is one that’s worth treasuring and making the most of before the picture inevitably begins to change and fade. You can get more of most things, but you’ll always lose time.

I began to really devote time to this newsletter when I was made redundant. I had three delicious (yet also incredibly stressful and anxiety-inducing) months of pay and time to do with as I pleased. I spent that money and time on friends, family, too many boozy afternoon lunches and moving to Amsterdam. I also spent that money and time on treating this newsletter like a full time job. Writing it, planning it and growing it. It kept me sane, it kept my creative juices flowing and it opened up a new world of work for me that didn’t look like one I’d ever had before.

There are now nearly 1000 of you here reading my words every week. I try not to look at the numbers because this is more about the words for me, but whenever I do look and see how much this community has grown, I’m genuinely astounded. And not only are so many of you reading my words, loads of you are actually paying for them too. What a completely wild and alien concept. Thank you everyone, and thank you Substack.

So, to end this year with the energy of Spotify Wrapped (and yes, Taylor Swift does feature on this list too), I’ve rounded up a highlights reel of what went out on Hurdling this year. My favourite interviews, all the Vibe Checks, the top Get Over It essays on work and life and the Go Away travel guides from this year. Go get a tea, coffee, wine or a Baileys (it’s Christmas, after all) and scroll down to re-read –or to read for the first time, if you’re new around these parts.

Speaking of Christmas, I’m trying to reduce the the physical presents I’m giving this year and have opted to only buy special versions of things that my people already love and use, like coffee, chocolate, candles and fancy socks. I’m also doing a lot of my Christmas shopping with Choose Love, buying essential supplies (like blankets, sleeping bags, coats for children and hot meals) for refugees in the name of family and friends. If you have writers and readers in your life who you think might enjoy a Substack subscription to Hurdling, you can give them a gift subscription here.

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Hurdling: a 2023 highlights reel

INTERVIEWS

• Jane Shepherdson on life as the No. 1 Topshop girl, why creative people (not financial people) should be running a fashion business and why Philip Green is ‘a monster’.

• Stan West on what it was really like being a dancer on the Barbie set, the trickle down effect of the writers' strikes and how self-belief sticks around a little more with age.

• Cate Sevilla on the importance of asking the bigger questions when joining a startup, the realities of navigating a big job alongside parenthood and what it’s like to be commissioned by Hillary Clinton.

• Lo Constantinou on surviving being pushed out of the workplace, turning your skills into a business, and why she won’t give up on her mission to help mothers back into the workforce.

• Martin Luke Brown on being true to yourself, the music industry's problem with TikTok and the importance of slowing down.

• Catriona Innes on 'success' not feeling like you thought it would, using writing to process your grief and the reality of the editing process.

ESSAYS ON WORK

• On what it meant to be a Topshop Girl

• On what I learned from moving to a 4 day week

• On what I did when I got made redundant

• On what it’s really like for teachers to be on strike

• On the books (and a few other things) that made me a better copywriter

ESSAYS ON LIFE

• On what it’s really like to run off and get married in Vegas

• On what do to when your friend moves to the other side of the world

• On the dermatologist recommended skincare routine I swear by

• On the genius of (Taylor’s Version) and the power of words

• On the only five British foods I’ve actually missed since moving to Amsterdam

VIBE CHECKS

You can also find all of this year’s Vibe Checks here, my weekly dose of joy and motivation to get you through the week that gives you something to think about, and recommendations of things to read, listen, watch, do, buy or find.

TRAVEL GUIDES

• Go Away: to Barbados

• Go Away: to Lisbon

• Go Away: to Paris

SILLY

• A brief history of (and a short ode to) my ride or die: the crisp

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Other things I enjoyed this year…

THREE THINGS I WATCHED AND LOVED

• Beef, the TV series starring Ali Wong that stars with road rage incident between two strangers and descends into brilliant, clever, dark comedy chaos.

• Barbie, the movie starring Margot Robbie that made me (at last) feel so comfortable in celebrating what it is to be a woman.

• How To With John Wilson, a tutorial documentary show that features everyday advice and meaning from an anxious New Yorker. My favourite episode is the one about why there’s so much scaffolding in New York.

THREE THINGS I LISTENED TO AND LOVED

• The Record, the album by Boygenius: specifically the song Not Strong Enough

• My Big Day, the album by Bombay Bicycle Club: specifically the song Turn The World On

• Sentimental Garbage, the podcast by Caroline O’Donaghue: specifically the episode on weddings with Ella Risbridger

THREE THINGS I READ AND LOVED

• What A Shame by Abigail Bergstrom

• Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey

• The Success Myth by Emma Gannon

THREE NEWSLETTERS I PAID TO SUBSCRIBE TO AND LOVED

• Things Worth Knowing by Farrah Storr

• Letters of Note by Shaun Usher

• Freelance Writing Jobs by Sian Meades-Williams

THREE SNACKS I ATE AND LOVED

• Tony’s Chocolonely Lil’ Bits, Caramel Sea Salt

• Cheetos, Cheddar Jalapeño

• Old Amsterdam Aged Gouda Cheese, dipped in mustard

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And that’s a wrap. As I said, it’s been A Year™️.

The time and energy I put into this newsletter is essentially now made possible by those who support it financially. Paid subscriptions mean that I can devote time to this writing that might otherwise be spent taking on other paid writing work. If you fancy becoming a paying subscriber for 2024, I’ve popped a little end of year discount here, which gets you 10% off for the whole of 2024 (£5 a month or £50 for a year).

Thank you so much for reading my writing this year. I’m so excited to keep writing and sharing more in 2024 – I already have a lineup of exciting interviewees and new things bubbling away.

Until then, have wonderful festive breaks where you eat everything and hug everyone.

See you next year,

Em