Career highlights

Day 23: Best of ME 2025

This year was not the best in terms of my professional output. I nearly quit journalism twice. For the first eight months of the year, my main gig was as a receptionist for a martial arts gym in Battersea, which I really enjoyed. This is the first month since last September that I haven’t had to do anything other than write. Only in the last few months have I been able regularly take two days off per week.

Work has been an intoxicating source of validation from me and I have had some difficulty disentangling my performance at work from my identity. As a freelancer, “performance” for me translates to my ability to earn money. Struggling with this isn’t just failing at a certain aspect of my life; it’s being a failure. This is an unpleasant way to live. This year, scrambling to earn enough money while still chasing my passion, work was not just something I did, it was my whole life. When I momentarily escaped the so-called Real World, even if just for a weekend, a chasm would form in my brain. There were two Ellas: Work Ella and Free Ella. It became painful to return to work. To watch myself slip away, grasping, grasping, as I spiralled back down into the toil of daily life.

Things are going well again now, so I’m not sure I have really solved any of the above, only I don’t have to worry so much because I feel positively about myself. Although my ideas around what work might look like for me in 2026 and beyond have certainly softened.

Despite the stress, this year has been one of my most successful to date. I have a stable gig with The Lead, a publication I’ve loved since it launched a few years ago. I’ve diversified a lot, from video journalism to podcast producing to social media, and, most importantly, I’ve spent more time on the ground.

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Here are some highlights:

The last flags of Faversham

In September, I went out in the middle of the night with a group of flag vigilantes in Faversham, Kent, who were climbing up lampposts to remove the flags put up by far right agitators. My feelings about this story were complex, I was afraid to wade into such a visceral, divisive issue, but I really believed in it. So much so that I travelled down to Kent and booked myself a hotel without a guaranteed commission. The danger of what I was doing only dawned on me when I was already on the train. It was fairly exhilarating, and is definitely my favourite story of the year.

On the streets of St Helens, would Reform win?

Following Reform’s byelection success in May, it was projected that my hometown, a typically Labour town, would switch to the hard-right party by 2029. So The Lead sent me back to investigate. This was my second time presenting a video and my first time interviewing people on camera. I found it so fun. I’ve always put myself in the “writer” box, but it has been brilliant to explore other modes of reporting.

Ordinary: The Reality Issue

We only published one issue of Ordinary this year: The Reality Issue. This was our first every fully DIY issue of the magazine and, thanks to the prowess of Mary, it was beautiful. It also contained one of the rawest essays I’ve ever published, written around this time last year, when I was completely and utterly depressed. You can no longer buy the Reality Issue (sorry) but you can read my piece.

Interoception: Has science found the silver bullet?

At the beginning of the year, I was asked by Women’s Health to write about interoception, a little known sense that neuroscientists are beginning to give a lot more credence. “Interoception” as a topic is vast and nuanced (too much so for a 1,500 word magazine article). Interestingly, researchers are beginning to understand the interplay between interoception and our feelings (and, vitally, mental health disorders). This is the result of a wider paradigm shift where scientists are rejecting the Descartes view that our brains and bodies are separate. This was a fascinating feature to work on.

Becoming our own spies: The rise and rise of surveillance culture

A hill I’m dying on: you cannot add me on Find My Friends, Life360 or Snap Maps. I wrote about the rise of social, or horizontal, surveillance culture, and how we are all being coerced into opting in to mass surveillance for the benefit of who? Companies.

This article was a casualty of the sale of the Observer to Tortoise Media and initially got spiked before I placed it in The Lead. Very glad it didn’t go to waste.

Can psychedelics enhance your workout?

In autumn, I clocked on to an emerging trend in recreational drug culture: taking psychedelics as a pre-workout. From scranning a quarter of a tab before a 10k run or nibbling some shrooms before a sparring session, everyone I spoke to for this piece seems to swear by it. I, personally, think it’s daft.

“Treated like table Salt’”: why Ket’s so Cheap

It’s been very heartening to see the launch of What Are You On. There is an absolute dearth of outlets willing to publish, niche, compassionate and real reporting about drugs. I’ve been thinking about the price of ket for ages, after doing some extensive reporting on ketamine addiction in 2024, so it was great to find a home for this piece.

‘I get to do whatever I want in the moment’: why more people are going to gigs, festivals and clubs alone

I finally got that sweet, elusive Guardian commission. Iykyk. I got the idea for this article after ditching my friends at Waterworks and had a wonderful time bopping about on my own, bumping into people I’d only met once before, at 3AM at Waking Life in 2024, and (thankfully) my friend’s boyfriend, Ben. The sense of freedom and self-actualisation was intoxicating. Proper little side quest.

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That is all. Sorry for being so self-aggrandising. I used to do this on Twitter, before it was X. As I said, work has been an intoxicating form of validation for me. If you read any of these and have anything to say (positive or negative) please tell me.

Tomorrow will be my last post of this daily series. No idea what I’ll write, but hopefully it won’t be at 9:30pm.