The Difficult Second Album

My month of rest and contemplation: and also, a return to regular programming

Hello and welcome back from the longest break I’ve ever taken from Substack. That’s a pretty inconsequential claim seeing as I’ve only been here since January 2025, but larger in the sense I usually pop my head into your inboxes on a weekly basis. What happened was this: on May 4th, I published an idea that had been swirling around in my head for a few months about a modern version of the Vogue Cultural Literacy Test. Didn’t see it? That surprises me. It is, and probably will remain to be, the most read thing I have ever written. 15,000+ views and counting, a couple hundred new subscribers, and an invitation to talk about on The Drum’s podcast later, I have stared at that piece for what feels like an eternity. At first, I re-read it a lot, as every piece of traction it gained gave me more anxiety. It was just an idea! I didn’t say it was right! Then I stopped rereading it and just watched as the like count went up on a post about it. I gave up all together when it actually reached my long followed ice queen Brenda Hashtag.

Would You Pass The Vogue Cultural Literacy Test?

Around the same time as I published this piece, I also came across the concept of Women in SPAM, a term that came to me via Betches (and therefore when I spoke about it I attributed it to them). I have since found its the IP of a very smart social angel called Lauren Cameron, who has founded a community (!) and dropped merch (!), which is very SPAM and very cool. Before all this, I had reposted an image of Samantha Jones with the acronym (Social Media, PR, Advertising and Marketing) splayed over it introducing the concept to my modest subscriber count. This also grew like wildfire.

Both of these posts are probably small fry to the actual people who have followings and have sustained them for the last decade or so of social. I have always been firmly on the consultancy side of virility. Working, in this order, as follows: responding to people on the internet for brands, to making the content they respond to, to writing the content they respond to, to contracting people to make that content, to building strategies on how brands can make and commission that content, to running teams of people who do that. In all my many wasted years on the internet, I have never had this much heat on one thing, let alone two. Exciting, but exposing. A sort of rush. I get why you all do this now.

Then, crucially, I went on holiday. I spent 11 days in Mexico with my friend Phoebe as we travelled through CDMX and then down to the cost of Puerto Escondido to trade the tube for tacos and tequila, holding up surprisingly well for two pale angels in 40 degree heat. We rode horses in the Oaxacan jungle, we drank Pacificos whilst trying to not our legs touch one another. We traded secrets and smoked thin little cigarettes. It was a much needed complete brain reset. It culminated in my sister in laws wonderful hen do, or bachelorette as I learned to call it (she’s a Long Island Baby, Knicks in 5!!!), back in Condessa, where a booze cruise down Xocomilco gave me some well deserved mild food poisoning and I spent an 11 hour flight back to London questioning my life choices. A step back on these fair shores and straight back into my Real Life™️, where a fulfilling job keeps me busy, and a fulfilling social life keeps me tired, and an overpriced gym membership keeps me guilty, I avoided opening up Substack, or LinkedIn, or really anything for fear of the little counter of expectation in the corner. Yes, the lady who puts more pressure on herself than anyone else, had created a complete misconception in her own head that she really had to get back writing her Magnum Opus. A completely ridiculous fight or flight that left me paralysed. I would have never survived in another era.

Having a terrible time in Mexico

This meant: no Rush Hour - if you’re new hear, that’s a weekly newsletter about creators + culture I’ve never had any issue spewing out in the 30 minutes in a Friday morning I’m having my coffee. It also meant: no follow up to the Vogue Literacy Test - a 12 part series I had committed to before I really realised I’d have an audience. I had given myself writers block and was punishing myself for it daily. It was ridiculous. I am many things, and I am not many things, but one thing I’ve never struggled with is to sit down and write about something on the spot. It is the rare flow state I can enter. Anything more useful was lost on me, and now so was this. I realised I had activated my fight or flight over the pressure of a difficult second album. Wanting to ride the wave and momentum. But there was no record label or even fan base to disappoint. And yet, years of being on the phone to clients telling them to engage or die, to react quick or miss the opportunity, had started to wrap itself around my neck like a telephone cord.

But then I woke up this morning and I went on a run and reflected on a conversation I had in Dublin airport on the way back from a work trip this week with an amazing colleague of mine. We spoke at length about spirituality and mediumship and astro-cartography and the act of seeing what’s maybe not obviously there, the very heart of a strategist IMO, and something unlocked in the back of my head and said ‘just get the fuck on with it babe’.

So, here it is, the difficult second album is in production. This is nothing more than a note to say, hello. I am collating stories for a bumper Rush Hour. I have pages of notes for the next edition in the Literacy Test series (it’s going to be about books btw). I am open for observation. There is no point in this piece other than to opine about the open goal in front of us all. You’ve just got to kick it in the back of the net.