This might be my voice. This might be a mask.
How am I supposed to write if there are no metrics for self-expression?
This might be my voice. This might be a mask.
How am I supposed to write if there are no metrics for self-expression?
I’ve been writing since I was a kid. It even became part of my career – through UX writing1 though, not creative writing. And after years of writing to be clear, concise and polished, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to write like… a person.
That’s partly why I started this newsletter.
Yes, it’s a way for me to explore the topics that fascinate (and sometimes overwhelm) me, like the systems that maybe need dismantling and the small ways people are making it happen. But even more selfishly, it’s a structured way to practice expressing myself. A place to focus on output rather than just consuming.
I’ve spent most of my life not knowing who I am. Or knowing but hiding it – it’s hard to tell which. Like many late-diagnosed autistic people, I grew up believing something was wrong with me, something that I needed to mask to stay safe, to belong. I learned to trust others more than myself and to emulate their experiences rather than live my own.
So, when I sit down to write, I’m not always sure who’s showing up.
And I over-analyse and second-guess everything. Will I seem snobbish if I use proper punctuation and grammar? Will I come across as untrustworthy if I don’t? Do I sound unintelligent? Robotic? Will they think I’m AI?
It’s easy to write as a UX Writer, because that’s the kind of writing you can test against metrics.
There are no metrics for self-expression.
I can only hope that if I keep showing up, I’ll start to find my own voice. One that is truly mine, that I can trust and that doesn’t have to be perfect.
All the tired, silly, resilient, contradictory and loving parts of me, finally given the safety to be seen? In this economy?
So thank you for being here. Even if I’m mostly writing this for myself right now, it means something to know that there could be someone on the other side of the screen witnessing my journey.
Snails against the machine
Small ways we’re taking back control of our world
Have you heard of time banks? The idea is this: what if your time and skills were enough to get what you needed, no money involved?
Say you love to cook. You could spend an hour preparing a meal for someone in your community, and in return, you’d earn a time credit. You could then spend that credit on whatever you needed, like house cleaning, dog walking or help with your taxes. One hour equals one hour, no matter the task.
Why does this matter?
You could be unemployed, disabled, retired or unhoused and still receive what you need without having to earn money first.
It keeps value within the local community. There’s no Visa or Stripe charging local shops transaction fees, no Uber service fees for booking a ride to a doctor appointment.
Time banks redefine value. Traditionally under-valued tasks (like care or other domestic tasks) are valued just as much as highly-valued services (like tax help from an accountant or legal advice from a solicitor).
It builds trust and interdependence within a community.
As a disabled person, I often worry about my ability to stay employed and how I might care for myself in the future. Time banks give me hope.
I was excited to learn that the town I’m moving to later this year already has an active time bank. I’m pretty agoraphobic 🫣 so getting involved probably won’t be an easy task for me. But I am looking forward to reclaiming some control over a tiny part of life.
Interested in finding your own local time bank? Try starting here:
UK: Timebanking
US: hOurworld
International: Community Exchange System
Late-stage updates
This week in capitalist whatthefuckery
What are the most successful movies you can think of? Maybe one of the Harry Potter movies? Or Star Wars? Turns out, despite earning hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, neither of these movies have technically made a profit.
It’s not just a weird accounting fluke – it’s by design.
A video by Morning Brew breaks down how movie studios use creative accounting to make massive hits look like flops, all to avoid paying the talent that made the the movie what it is.
The Tolkien estate never got their 7.5% of the profits from the Lord of the Rings franchise, a series that generated an estimated $6 billion in revenue.
And this kind of trickery isn’t limited to Hollywood. You’ve probably already heard about big businesses fudging numbers like
Charging themselves inflated fees through things like ‘internal licensing’ or ‘management services’
Claiming ‘losses’ to delay or avoid taxes altogether
Shuffling profits into offshore shell companies
I’m not in the film business, but I’ve worked in tech. I’ve seen how value created by workers quietly becomes payouts for shareholders and executives, while everyone else is expected to be grateful to have a job.
It’s easy to feel like there’s nothing we can do against billion-dollar bookkeeping tricks, but these systems depend on our silence. Paying attention is a start. Talking about it is a start. And so is noticing the people already building alternatives in the cracks these systems leave behind.
Shiny things from the curio cabinet
Things I’m noticing, loving or want to share
In my previous newsletter, I mentioned we had a robin nest in our little garden. This week I learned what that actually entails.
Did you know baby robins spend a few weeks of their lives outside the nest but still unable to fly? At this stage they’re called fledglings. They flutter from place to place, still being fed by their parents while they learn how to be birds.
I was… kinda horrified to learn this when we found a robin fledgling fluttering around the garden. We get a lot of neighbourhood cats passing through that I’m sure would love to stumble across a defenceless baby bird.
I keep questioning whether I did the right thing by hanging up that birdhouse. At the time, I didn’t know baby robins needed to survive on the ground for several weeks before they could fly. I guess neighbourhood cats would roam anywhere birds might nest, but still… I can’t help feeling responsible for this fledgling’s fate.
I’m probably too sentimental to be a bird person, I’m realising, or maybe a wildlife person in general. Because of course the mortality rate of wild birds is incredibly high. That’s just how nature works.
The fledgling found a way out of our garden a few days ago, so I may never know what happened to it. But I hope it makes it.
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Thanks for reading! See you next week.
UX writing (short for ‘user experience writing’), also known as content design, focuses on crafting the words you see in digital products, like buttons, error messages, menus, or confirmation screens. The goal is to help people move through apps or websites with clarity and ease.