Living Blogs

Discover independent living blogs and writers on BlogRolly.

• You Are Not Failing: Navigating Student Loan Debt, Mental Health, and Wage Garnishment — Not failing, just navigating a broken system. As a former nonprofit worker turned financial strategist, I walk Black wom
• Things to Try if You Don’t Feel Heard : 5 Ways to Express Yourself Differently — Feeling unheard in your relationship? I offer 5 things to try if you don't feel heard, practical steps on how to feel he
• How Do I Let Go Of The Friends Who Chose My Abusive Ex? — When friends chose my abuser the betrayal cut deeper than the breakup. In this post I explain how to let go of friends w
• How Do I Meet New People Without Pretending To Be Someone I’m Not? — Hard truth, the best time to meet people is now. In this column I push back on the stories that keep you isolated and la
• I Thought We Had Something Wonderful… Until I Saw A Picture of Her Ex! — Ever been blindsided by a photo? I tell the story of meeting someone who made me feel seen until she showed a picture of
• I’m Trying To Be More Social, So Why Don’t People Want to Talk To Me? — Struggling to get strangers to talk at concerts or on ski lifts? I explain why people seem standoffish and answer "why d
• It’s the end of the world as we know it (but I feel fine) — Strange truth, most of us feel fine even as we call the world a disaster. I tease out Ipsos MORI and World Values Survey
• The Burger King bathroom — Ever stumbled into a Burger King bathroom and found a small underworld? A late night visit became a micro lesson about s
• Never real — A line from Thomas Bernhard stopped me cold. In this piece I wrestle with "never real", the second person narrator in Wo
• End of one road, the start of the next — Cold air, empty streets and the tiredness that feels earned. I ran to match the mental exhaustion as the year and decade
• Truth as of a City — When the world shrank my garden grew. I've kept a lockdown diary about staying at home during lockdown, pruning dogwood,
• Shopping Mall — Who knew a mall could feel like home. In this Shopping Mall book review I revisit Matthew Newton's Shopping Mall from th
• Never was a cloudy day — Oddly enough my red perpetual week-to-view diary became a lockdown diary 2020. I wrote something every day, turned the l
• In praise of the pub queue — A packed Central London pub made me rethink pub queues. In this post I defend queues in pubs, explain queue etiquette, a
• Pub Thoughts — Ever noticed London pubs quietly advertising a fiver pint? On a Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia walk I ramble about affordable
• We are spirits in the material world
• Just a perfick day — A perfick Friday, Lou Reed on the radio, and a rediscovered 1915 post office turned café in Bagenalstown. Consider this
• inspiration opening doors — A wake up call at 60 changed my path. I write about finding purpose after 60, lessons learned from illness and joy, and
• impact - life changing, world changing. — What makes a life count? In my IndieWeb Carnival November 2024 piece on reflecting on impact I tell a personal impact st
• sunfire — Three hours in and the day finally clicks. I set aside the small challenges and decide to move forward, holding sunfire
• some things are hard — Woken by pain in the middle of the night? I write honestly about living with chronic back pain for 20 years, muscle spas
• talking to myself — Ever hear your own brain sing back? Here I riff on a Talking to Myself lyrics parody, a dark personal microblog post abo
• How Much Should We Give a Joymachine? — What if my neighbor felt a million times more joy? In this holiday post I imagine conscious AI joymachines Hum and Sum,
• Keeping Informed — How do you stay informed without spiraling? I map my daily news routine, from Google News headlines while shoveling cere
• Rollercoaster — Crunch time for BCAF registration. I'm racing to finish five Shapeshifter Sculpting pieces before March 31, testing a Jo
• The Afterlives of the Rich & Famous — 698 graves across twenty-nine states turned into a strange, joyful hobby visiting presidential gravesites and famous tom
• Why Is There a Headstone in the Dickens Museum? — Ever noticed the headstone propped in the Dickens Museum garden? I tell the true story behind that cenotaph for Robert S
• The Man Who Taught the World How to Remember — Who proposed the two minute silence that shapes Armistice Day? I unearthed a British Pathé clip and traced Edward George
• Fantasy Coffins — A lion, a plane, a Coca Cola bottle parade through Teshie, Ghana at funerals. Here I tell the origin story from 1951, ex
• Six Olympians From the Past — Curious where famous Olympians are buried? I dug into Cemetery Club biography notes and cemetery records to trace six at
• Bother the Men! The Grave of Mrs Howard Paul — A knackered Victorian gravestone sent me to Brompton Cemetery. I traced Isabella Hill, better known as Mrs Howard Paul,
• Staring Into The Face of Death — Curious about Napoleon's death mask and the strange afterlife of relics? I walk readers from the British Museum to Saint
• A Magnificent Erection — A 5 foot tall penis in a Mexican cemetery? I tell Catarina Orduña Pérez's tale and her family's decision to install a pe
• Execution: 700 Years of Punishment in London — Looking for a darker London history fix? I visited the Executions exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands and revie
• The Top 7 Graves Associated with Dickens — Ever wondered where Charles Dickens walked after writing A Christmas Carol? I've mapped the top 7 graves associated with
• The Last Mourner — Who last visited Annie Elizabeth Jones' grave? In this post I trace a Victorian photograph, the ceramic immortelles and
• Lady in Red — What links a scarlet robe, Ellen Terry and Millais' Portia painting? I trace the history of a garment that ties three wo
• Let’s Go Outside — Standing at Highgate Cemetery beside George Michael's simple grave, I reflect on how Outside, Freeek! and Older helped m
• Naughty Naughty — Think microfilm is boring? On a whim at The National Archives I loaded a reel and found a 1873 copyright file that led t
• Remembering Reginald Warneford V.C: The First Airman to Down a Zeppelin — A crowded Brompton Cemetery funeral scene tells the story of Reginald Warneford V.C. I recount his daring June 1915 atta
• The Comedian — Meet Edward Askew Sothern, the prank loving Victorian actor whose Dundreary spawned fashion and 'dundrearyisms'. In this
• The Risks of Amateur Grave Restoration — Watch a bright green painted Victorian tomb and you can see why I wince. I unpack the risks of amateur grave restoration
• 'I see the Four-fold man, Humanity in deadly sleep'; Ben Edge and the Children of Albion, Fitzrovia Chapel — A chapel marooned in a corporate square becomes a glittering folk altarpiece. I wandered the Fitzrovia Chapel and give a
• To the memory of the Maharani of the Punjab; Jind Kaur (1817-1863) Kensal Green Cemetery — A small tribute of fairy lights caught my eye at the Dissenters Chapel in Kensal Green Cemetery. I trace Maharani Jind K
• Alexander Joseph Dourof, 'last of the sword swallowers', Camberwell Old Cemetery — A vanished showman from the Russian Royal Circus, Alexander Joseph Dourof, known as the "last of the sword swallowers",
• 'The Resort of Thieves and Harlots'; Victoria Park Cemetery, Bethnal Green — Ever wondered why Victoria Park Cemetery was called "the resort of thieves and harlots"? I tell the story of Victoria Pa
• Dead babies, the wrong grave, a costermongers funeral, parakeets and an oddly faithful cat; Hammersmith Cemetery, Margravine Road, W6 — A shocking discovery in Hammersmith Cemetery sent me digging through Victorian newspapers and coroner reports. I piece t
• Reanimated! The shocking fate of George Foster (1769-1803) — A frozen canal held a terrible secret. Drawing on parish registers and workhouse records I reconstruct the last days of
• Buried with her baby in her arms and her coffin draped with the Spanish Republican flag: Conchita Supervia (1895-1936) Liberal Jewish Cemetery, Willesden — On a summer visit to Willesden I spotted an altar of four tortoises and a coffin draped with the Spanish Republican flag
• Thirty minutes from sundown; time travel in the Anglican Chapel, Kensal Green Cemetery — Thirty minutes from sundown the Anglican Chapel at Kensal Green feels like time travel. With Meriel I explored the catac