Finding Sanity is a newsletter about making sense of the world we live in and imagining the world we want to create.
Why “Finding Sanity”? The world is currently a big ol’ weird, scary, insane place right now. And I am trying to make sense of it all, without falling into a pit of doom and gloom.
I want to shine a light towards a new future. I don’t want to point you there, but I want to walk together as we both discover the kind of world we want to live in, the kind of world we want to create. Because of some mystical reason, you and I are both alive at the (potential) end of the world–so let’s figure it out together.
I don’t have all the answers. I’m not even sure if I have an answer, but I feel as though talking, thinking, living, and writing is a way to figure it all out.
I’m trying to find some sanity, and here, I share my thoughts so that you can, too.
You can expect a post from me on a weekly or fortnightly basis. For a taster of what to expect, check out:
If you enjoy my writing, you can buy me a coffee to fuel my work.
Who writes Finding Sanity?
Hello, I am Isabelle and I am a writer, and a reader, a thinker, a hoper, a doomer, and a crier.
I have straddled two worlds my entire existence. I was home-educated when I was young, and grew up desperately wanting to live in the ‘normal’ world. When the opportunity was presented to join the ‘real’ world, I jumped in with both feet, getting a job, buying a house, starting my own business, ready to be a career-driven, boss babe. I was neck deep when I realised I actually hated that world and wanted out. I am still trying to work out where I fit into this world.
If that wasn’t enough, I am what you would call a ‘zillennial’, which means I was born on the cusp of the millennial and gen Z demographic. This also means I am lucky enough to have been born at a time when climate change has been an ever-looming issue for my entire life, presenting a very real risk to my future. So I have to figure that one out, too.
Now I am slowly carving out a life for myself in the in-between places, one foot rooted in reality, and one foot dangling someplace else.
Why I write…
I love to read. I really, really, really love to read. My Storygraph profile says I particularly enjoy contemporary, literary, and romance fiction, alongside philosophy, science, economics, psychology, religion, politics, business, art, feminism, sociology, race, gender, education and speculative genres. So… just about anything.
My love of books is recent, though, I’ve never been one to grasp poetry, classics or Shakespeare. I got a C in my GCSE English, and that’s one of the highest qualifications I have.
Writing, although I’ve attempted this writing thing multiple times–starting with an abandoned zero waste blog in 2014, up to the lovely world of Substack–I never imagined myself as a writer. Still, I’ve always loved words and stories in untraditional ways.
I’ve spent my life collecting endless screenshots of quotes in my phone’s gallery, I pinned photographs of book pages and unfinished prose by unknown authors. I crafted stories in my head, all interwoven and connected with each other, devouring fan fiction, and watching countless videos on as many topics as I could comprehend.
Unknowingly, I cornered my undiscovered love of writing and turned it into a marketing career. Believing I had nothing to say myself, I wrote for others, creating stories for them. Slowly and tentatively I realised I may actually have a knack for this writing thing, but I still toed the line and kept it within my allowed topics of copywriting. But now, I want to blow off the restrictions of business, sales, and what is ‘normal’, and I want to write different stories. Ones that will guide us along the arduous journey of bringing the world back into balance.
