Out of the loop

On living a life where I'm perpetually – and perhaps intentionally – a step behind

‘Evening on Karl Johan Street’, Edvard Munch, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Upon opening my phone most mornings, I’m met with a sensation akin to how I imagine it’d feel waking up from a coma. I joined Substack two years ago because I was seeing an increasing amount of insightful, powerful writing emerge from this platform, and I wanted to participate.

Most of that writing is extremely timely, reacting to current events with absolute precision and analysing things from every possible angle. The glaring problem is that I’m not reactive enough. I’ll open this app, or any form of social media, with the best intentions of wading into a discussion with something I thought was both meaningful and original. By the time I do, countless people have already beaten my point to death, sometimes in a much more eloquent manner than I ever could. I’ve borne witness to too many hot takes being eaten up, spat out and replaced by lesser, colder ideas, and by the time I’m ready to say my piece, everyone’s already moved on.

It isn’t that I don’t have anything to say. Most of the time, I have too much to say about things that don’t really concern me at all. Those thoughts and feelings just don’t manage to form themselves quickly enough for the algorithm. By the time I’ve figured out how I want to dissect a cultural moment or current event, it’s already been thoroughly examined and the bones have been picked clean. With such an oversaturation of content being churned out on the daily – a lot of it good, a lot of it bad, a lot of it AI-generated – do I actually have anything left to add?

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve always envied people who seem to have an innate grip on what’s hot. A lot of creatives seem to live at the precise centre of culture – they instinctively know which designers to watch out for, which debut novel will be a New York Times Bestseller in six months, and which movies will garner the most buzz at the latest film festivals. I, meanwhile, might be able to tell you everything about the newest iPhone, or recite the tracklists of my favourite pop girls’ every album off the top of my head, but I’m helpless otherwise.

That feeling of permanently being one step behind has plagued my life since I was a kid. Even as far back as school, I’d learn what was “cool” second-hand. For example, I’d listen to bands in my friends’ MSN taglines and pretend I’d known them for years, and then become flustered when I couldn’t keep up with a conversation about that band in person. I just desperately wanted to be involved.

That same feeling still shows up today, even if it’s in tiny, mundane ways. I’ll read a solid list of recommendations on here, whether it be must-see television or the apps that will change my life or the clothes I need to buy, and I’ll devour it with genuine enthusiasm. I bookmark them and vow to watch the series or try the app or buy the product, and then I don’t. Weeks pass, and by the time I circle back to my multiple bookmarks, everyone’s moved on. There are new obsessions to talk about and suddenly the things that felt urgent now feel slightly stale, and I’m unsure whether it’s worth engaging at all.

My recent breakthrough of realising I’m neurodivergent has given that feeling some long-awaited clarity. As it turns out, my brain isn’t designed to fire out hot takes on a whim. It’s built for stewing. I’m definitely guilty of being reactive and embarrassing myself online in the past, but that’s an approach I’ve been actively changing. I want to sit with things and come at them differently, without feeling the need to tell everyone about it. I care less about being first to things, and more about eventually getting it right. That’s a noble practice in theory, but it’s disastrous in an economy of instant reactions.

For a very long time, I mistook this as my failing. I confused people’s speed and reaction time with intelligence, thinking those who could regurgitate information confidently in a TikTok about what matters right now were the ones to pay attention to. That isn’t quite the case, though. I’m quite often astounded at just how many people get it wrong in favour of being the ones to speak first, tripping over themselves to add their unnecessary two cents on top of discourse that is already spiralling out of control.

One of the more uncomfortable truths I’ve been confronted by in my late twenties, particularly since moving to France, is that I’m not as clever as I once thought – at least not in the way I’d always hoped to be. My brain is unable to breeze through information and spit out polished commentary on demand. I trudge, and I get stuck. My mind wanders and goes off on tangents. I’ve realised that I’m a lot better at feeling things than I am at immediately diagnosing and discussing them.

There’s a strange relief in being able to admit this. When you stop trying to be the person who knows everything, you leave space to become the person who notices what everyone else might glaze over. Leaving London for Montpellier nearly two years ago was, consciously or not, my attempt to get out of the loop entirely. Life in the UK had started to become exhausting, with everything seemingly moving way too fast. I initially loved the city and the abundance of things that came with it, but by the time I left, I was overstimulated and malnourished.

Everyone there seems to be chasing something, as if there’s something to prove. I’d go to work and watch as people gave up their dignity in favour of a meagre promotion that coughed up an extra £500 a year, before tax. People would bankrupt themselves two weeks before payday – myself included – to try the hottest new restaurant or club before anyone else. There’s an illusion that you have to be “in” on what’s happening, otherwise there’s not much point being there. It was exhausting.

Moving to the south of France promised the opposite. Me in 2019 would have likely thought differently, but I liked the idea of slower mornings, smaller stakes and, effectively, a higher quality of life. I wanted my days to revolve around little routines, like going to the market and coming home to cook something fresh every day, having a dedicated space to write in the sun and creating an existence that felt like mine alone, rather than trying to fit into everyone else’s.

By and large, I got all of that and more. I’m physically removed from the scene, but I’m certainly still digitally invested. I do have slower mornings, I do go to the supermarket and cook (almost) every day, and I do have a space to write in the sun – but I find myself spending a lot of time scrolling through an endless stream of Very Important People saying Very Important Things about Very Important Topics. They seem to know exactly who and what matters at every given hour of every given day, which sounds like an arduous task if you ask me.

I watch from my little apartment here in a small city in France, thinking about laundry and tax returns and whether we need more cat food, and I feel a strange split between relief and envy. Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad that I’m not an active participant in the rat race anymore, but I hate that I’m still letting it dictate whether I have anything worth saying at all.

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Being an active participant on the internet in any capacity doesn’t make it any easier. There’s so much information out there – essays, threads, video breakdowns, reviews, lists of things to read, watch, buy, stream, believe. For every genuinely thoughtful piece of criticism, there are ten performative, sloppy, AI-generated takes masquerading as essential nuance.

There’s also this strange, tangible feeling of gatekeeping and condescension that emanates from some creators. People will cling to their discoveries as if sharing them would devalue their social currency; at the same time, there’s widespread, thinly veiled scorn for anyone who isn’t able to keep up.

If, like me, your starting point is already “I’m slow at this” or “I never quite know where to look”, it can be paralysing. I’d love to be discerning, but the influx of information literally never stops. Being informed is crucial, but with things moving at such a rapid pace, it can be daunting to participate when you don’t know where the widespread moral consensus currently stands. One misstep, and the ground can shift completely.

So where does that leave someone like me, who moved away from the centre of things but still wants to write about all of it? I care deeply about culture and politics and the internet, but I’ll always most likely be late to it all. The answer I keep coming back to is disarmingly simple: maybe I’m not actually meant to be “in the loop” in the way I’ve desperately tried to be for years.

Maybe my goal with this newsletter, and with my outlook on life in general, isn’t to predict or define what’s “cool” by other people’s metrics, or to be the first one to weigh in every time the discourse catches a spark. I think I’m actually better suited to observe from the edges, and to let things land in my life and sit for a while before I start running my mouth, as has been typical of me for too long.

When I think about the moments that have stood out to me this past year, for example, they’re startlingly ordinary: finishing the furnishing and decor in our modest dining room, and being overly proud of the results; hosting family and friends in our new city, watching their faces as they take in their surroundings; lounging with my husband and two kittens and binging Breaking Bad on a rainy Sunday; and sitting on my balcony at sunset whilst listening to an album I refuse to retire, even though everyone else has already rinsed it into oblivion.

I mean… what a dining room, you have to admit

I don’t think any of this will ever trend, as hard as I might try. None of it will land me on people’s radar, or on any lists of the most cutting-edge, trendy creators to look out for, but it’s honest – and I think good writing is when it’s raw and coming straight from the heart, no matter what the topic.

So, here’s what I can promise both you and myself: I’m never going to be the person who tells you what you should be watching, reading or wearing. I’m not going to be the one with the sharpest or fastest take on whatever everyone’s arguing about today. What I can offer instead is something intentionally slower and smaller.

I’d like to simply post frequent letters from a life where I choose to be a step behind. One of the many beautiful things about the south of France is that a slower way of life is encouraged, and it’s been one of the easiest things to get used to since moving here. My thoughts are allowed to simmer and marinate, and I’m able to live with people’s recommendations and new releases long enough to decide for myself what I’m into, instead of constantly having it spoon-fed to me.

I’ll certainly indulge in pop culture from time to time, but that’ll be alongside discussions about moving countries, mental health, marriage, work and trying to build a calmer existence without disconnecting entirely. I don’t want to romanticise living abroad and dress it up with fancy cafés and Pinterest-esque collages, either. I want to show you the unflinching reality of things like our aging Mediterranean apartment with leaky radiators and cold terrazzo floors, the painstaking process of becoming a French citizen, and the trials and tribulations of enduring culture shock – it’s a beautiful journey, but I want to actually embrace the good, bad and the ugly of it all.

I’ll never be ahead of the curve, but maybe that doesn’t have to be the point. If you’re also the type of person to forever be out of the loop, you’re in good company here – I’d love to build or join a community of people intentionally living a slower, quieter life.

À bientôt, mes amis !