What is something you've changed your mind about in the last year?

I changed my mind about my father. Not in a dramatic way. I just stopped needing him to be different.

That hustle culture and being a present parent could co-exist if I just optimised hard enough. They cannot. Something gives. I've decided what gives is going to be the calendar, not the children.

That solitude is a deficit. I've started treating my evenings alone as a kind of luxury I had been borrowing against for years. The bill has come due and the interest is, surprisingly, a softer version of myself.

I used to believe that ambition required volume — that to be taken seriously you had to be loud about your wins. I changed my mind after watching a colleague get promoted by simply doing the work and saying very little. The quiet ones were paying attention to her the whole time.

I used to think editing was about cutting. Now I think it's about listening for what the writer was actually trying to say and clearing the path between them and the reader. The cuts are a side effect.