Everything I Wish I'd Been Told, As A Graduate

Unsolicited life advice for the Class of '25. Floss!

Photo by RUT MIIT on Unsplash

Hello Team CCC! How are you? Happy June! I’m writing from a part of the world with all of the weather. Today. I experienced a moment of joy and wonder when I was walking home from the office. After seventeen soggy seconds, I remembered that I had an umbrella in my bag! This is what it’s like to be a woman in her forties! Prepared!

I’m hoping to escape the rain this weekend. I’m heading to Barcelona, for an event with my brilliant friend

Donna Freitas

at Backstory bookshop. Tickets are free, you just have to let Backstory know you’re coming (fire regs) - click the link and feel free to share it with anyone you know who might be in the area…

I’ll be staying at the Grand Hotel Central, which is a space that celebrates writers and all artists. (I’ve heard a rumour that writers can get a reduced rate, as long as they’re happy to leave the gift of a book when they visit the huge hotel library. I’ll report back!)

The Pity Party paperback is coming soon! You can preorder here or here (or ask your local indie!)

I can’t tell you that it’s very funny but I can tell you that Marian Keyes, Nikki May, Nina Stibbe,

Sarah Knight

,

Jennie Godfrey

and

Lauren Bravo

think it’s very funny. I wrote the book I most wanted to read - a romantic comedy with depth, and characters you want to spend time with. Big feelings, and a good hang.

This letter is for full subscribers. The Spring Upgrade offer will be ending this week (as summer will hopefully be starting any minute now!) This is a great time to upgrade, because soon we’ll be starting the CCC Summer Camp sessions. I’ll be offering workshops and sharing interviews with some of my favourite creative people. We’ll all be feeling nourished, inspired and excited about our future projects. I’m also planning to offer a gloriously messy group meander through The Artist’s Way. Whether you’ve done it before, or you’re curious, or like me, you’ve never got past Week Four, you’re very welcome to join us!

Now - dear Graduates (and everyone else who has ever been 21)

I’m a fool for a list, especially a life advice list. I snort them up like an anteater (perhaps an anteater who knows they should be a bit more moderate with the ants, or one who is looking for the specific strain of ants that will help with energy and snout definition). The thing about most life advice is that most of it is accompanied by a silent ‘Well, duh!’ Knowing how to live well is one thing. Living well is quite another.

Still, life advice is on my mind. It’s graduation season! The other day, I heard Everyone’s Free To Wear Sunscreen on the radio. I was surprised to find that it moved me to tears. And I was flossing at the time! Baz Luhrman told the world to ‘Floss!’ in 1999, when I was 14. I didn’t start until 2024, when I was 39. It took me 25 years to understand that doing something boring and fiddly for a few minutes every day would make me feel about five per cent better in general – and that made it worth doing.

I’ve written this as an aide memoire as much as anything. A note to self, with a big caveat. When I graduated, the 2008 crash was a year away. The first iPhone had just become available, and I honestly didn’t understand why anyone would want to phone anyone from their iPod. I don’t think the international conversations about racism, sexism, privilege and wealth and inequality were happening in the same way and at the same volume that they are now. But maybe I couldn’t hear them. I was shamefully ignorant of so much. I was Eleanor Shellstrop. The world is very different now, and I think much harder to thrive in. I had no notion of just how lucky I was. I was deeply anxious, quite entitled, overwhelmed by my fear of failure and adept at getting in my own way.

This is what I wish I’d known, then. And I hope that I can come back to this list in twenty-ish years, and stand by it, and feel invigorated by it. I hope you find something useful here, and that it might prompt you to think about an old idea in a new way. The first and best piece of advice is this: Ignore any advice that doesn’t resonate with you, and don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

1. Understand the 50 per cent rule