Parents: have you bought skincare for your baby or child? (E.g. Bubble, Rini, EllaOla, Palorama, etc)
I'm reporting a Thingtesting story on kids' skincare. What attracts you (or your kids) to these products? Are they needed?
You can be anonymous. My DMs are open & reposts would be appreciated!
& so much more! Thank you to everyone who has supported me on this leg of my freelancing journey! I’ll be hitting the ground running when I’m back in September, so if you’re interested in working together, let’s chat then. See you on the other side. 😎
🗞️ I also got my second Times byline in their small business section, writing about lessons from startup failures: www.thetimes.com/business-mon...
👟 I edited Issue 1 of Run Don’t Walk, a new magazine celebrating people, ideas and community. Get your copy of that here: www.rundontwalk.co
⚛️ I worked with the team at top European VC Atomico as copywriter for the iconic State of European Tech report.
👩💻 I reconnected with my colleagues at @sifted.eu to write articles and meaty reports for them on behalf of sponsors like Microsoft, BCG X and Amazon.
🐻 I published my first travel piece, an account of my Appalachian Trail hike for the Times newspaper: www.thetimes.com/uk/article/h...
It's been 18 months since I finished hiking the Appalachian Trail. Now I’m off on another adventure, to hike the Pacific Crest Trail! 🥾🏕️
A career break is nerve-racking. Last time I worried I was short-circuiting momentum; in fact it was reenergising & made room for new opportunities. Such as…
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A very nice article on @lostreelsuk in the new and very cool RUN DON'T WALK magazine... many thanks to @sarahdrumm.bsky.social for the support and exposure!
Good times! They tried to stop me going into their empty cafe the other week - members only!
DAY 18 - Many exciting milestones today. We climbed to the top of Kuwohi mountain (aka Clingmans Dome) which is the highest point of the AT. We also crossed the 200 mile marker! We took a shuttle to Gatlinburg which is... an interesting place. Like a MAGA Margate in the mountains.
Fascinating, although I'm not sure it's only a 'sense of shame' holding women who want to do this back... there are a myriad of practical considerations - finances, career, etc - to make if you plan to be a truly solo parent. www.theguardian.com/society/2024...
"These personals offer a new-old way of approaching dating — farmer’s market rather than meat market." ❤️ www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/s...
If you are interested in what's going on in European tech and startups, then give the team at Sifted a follow! Occasionally featuring: me :)
My favourite Appalachian flower!
DAY 17 - 18 miles of up and down today, phew! The woods are getting more beautiful by the day — shoots of grass are appearing and wildflowers are starting to carpet the forest floor.
Sierra curve still looking good for hikers...!
One exciting thing about this day is that it's when entered the Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited in the US (for good reason - it is beautiful). Normally visitors must book their spots to sleep in the park's shelters, but as thru-hikers we were permitted to pitch our tents. (2/2)
DAY 16 - My toughest day on trail so far. I was exhausted, extremely hungry from days of hiking + not eating enough, and unenthused by the 4,500ft climb we had ahead of us today. We’re not the only ones hitting a rough spot; a guy at the Marina called his hike yesterday. (1/2)
DAY 15 - We’re now more than two weeks in and I am ACHEY despite holing up in hostels at any opportunity. Today we hikes 14 miles and climbed 3,000 ft to arrive at Fontana Dam. We grabbed a free beer at the Marina, then hitched a ride in a golf cart to the lodge, where we met up with another hiker.
This also describes what I am doing - moaning about social media on social media, with no intention of leaving social media 🙃
"We’re in this very funny paradoxical moment in history, which is full of moments of dynamic hysteria, yet everything always remains the same. We get this wave of hysteria – angry people click more! – and those clicks feed the systems and nothing changes." www.idler.co.uk/article/adam...
DAY 14 - The rain kept on coming! Last night a hiker told me the point of waterproof clothing isn’t to keep you dry, it’s to keep you alive. Alive? Check. Not dry? Check. We slogged through 14 more miles of misty ridge walk then bailed to a local cabin in the woods to dry out and eat pizza.
Social media encourages and rewards division, othering, hatred, suspicion and arguing with each other so that we spend more time on these sites.... to look at adverts!!! It's all for adverts!!
The full article is dismal — a homophobic attack on an individual who has committed the crime of... working on the rebrand of a British company?
Over the years, public discourse has become more polarised and disturbingly dehumanising. Social media and the behaviours it encourages has a lot to do with it, imo. But this Daily Mail article — good grief. Why does hating a rebrand morph into an opportunity to target marginalised communities?
DAY 13 - The rain. My god. People talk about rain on the AT, but you have to experience it to know it. We managed to snag a bunk at the Nantahala Outdoor Center that night, where I also saw my first ever GROUNDHOG. I had no idea what this giant rat was so I showed this pic to a waitress who told me.
...this was a fun and jam packed day of hiking, so it gets two posts. We hiked up two 'balds' and got great views, and I was also handed my first trail beer at the top of the second. Cheers! (2/2)
DAY 12 - A church in Franklin runs an all-you-can eat pancake breakfast for hikers in exchange for some light proselytisation, which sounded like it would set us up for the 17m of hiking we had planned. Worth the sermon. They also took photos of us and got us to write letters to our parents (1/2)
