I Honestly Don’t Know How This Happened

Look, I detest Bonnet Dramas and always have. Anything period - in fact, any fiction of any kind set much before 2010 - I’m just not that into the past. There are rare exceptions that prove this rule such as The Crown. But I cannot think of another.

I also loathe anything futuristic. Sci-fi is my nightmare. Black Mirror or The Handmaids Tale make me feel nauseous even to think about.

So yes, my sweet spot for the TV and movies I will consume is admittedly narrow. Like, now-ish. Give or take a year or two.

It baffles me to share with you then, that I have spent much of my summer consumed by….Bonnet Dramas. My gateway drug was The Gilded Age and having devoured both seasons, some kind of Bonnet Beast was awakened and I started watching Downton Abbey from the very beginning. Not only is this show set in the early 1900s, it was made in the early 2000s century and who on earth have I become.

Never have I grasped the concept of watching iconic shows from the past when they are no longer zeitgeisty. Why would you? The 3867 streaming services I’m subscribed to are pelting so much new content at me while I sleep that investing valuable couch hours delving into archives seems a poor choice.

And yet here I am, excited to spend every non-working hour with my new friends upstairs and downstairs at Downton. My internal monologue is now eternally in the voice of Maggie Smith.

Shall I make myself some tea? Oh no, I do believe I’d rather a biscuit.

What the actual fuck is going on with me?

You won’t be shocked to learn that I’ve given it a lot of thought, just as I always do when I start behaving in a way that’s totally out of character which happens on a reasonably regular basis because I’m weird.

Over summer, I took an extended and extensive break from work, five weeks. My longest ever. I stayed away from the office and made no content - no podcasts, no writing, no social…with the exception of this one newsletter I sent you about why I didn’t want to make any content.

Why I didn't post a 2023 recap reel

I had imagined I would be very productive on my break. I thought I would write a lot. Writing is something I’ve done less and less in the past few years as my podcast output has ramped up along with the demands of being the Chief Creative Officer at a media company.

I miss writing. More than just missing it though, I don’t feel like myself when I don’t write regularly. It’s how I figure out what I think about the world and about my own life. Not writing feels like wearing my shoes on the wrong feet.

Hopes were high for my break. Five weeks, what else was I going to do? But when my holiday began, I found myself simultaneously exhausted and unable to rest my mind.

2023 was a hugely intense year for me, perhaps the most intense of my life, for reasons I want to write about and will soon because I think only then will I be able to properly metabolise it. Like so many, I staggered anguished to the finish line feeling jangled on the fumes of adrenaline.

I spent the first few weeks of my break flinging myself aggressively from show to show, book to book, trying to tip myself into that flow state of hyper focus that allows my brain to switch off and rest. It’s the deepest form of repair for me and I’ve never needed it more.

Nothing worked.

My appetite - no, my capacity - for consuming any type of content that was even mildly upsetting, complex or suspenseful was zero. Not just low but zero.

It was like during lockdown when I used way too many serums at once and fucked my skin barrier. One morning my face just said “ENOUGH” by being very red, very sore and incredibly sensitive. My skin literally hurt. For weeks I could use nothing more than water and a very basic moisturiser until my skin barrier repaired itself.

My levels of emotional and intellectual resilience were so utterly depleted by end of 2023, my nerves so shot, that I think I broke my content barrier.

Everything seemed to make my brain hurt and my nervous system overwhelmed.

Not until I’d abandoned a dozen TV shows, movies and books did I chance upon The Gilded Age. Rich people in absurd clothes dealing with absurdly stupid problems juxtaposed with the lives of their servants who wear nondescript clothes and have actual problems.

Yes, that’s Miranda on the left and that blonde actress in the middle is one of Meryl Streep’s daughters true story

I found this all so unexpectedly and delightfully soothing. The stakes for the main characters in this show are so low - two entire seasons of this show have honestly hinged on whether the new-money lady will get the social approval of the old-money lady and which of the two Opera Houses will have a more successful opening night. Fin.

It was a simpler time. Not better, of course. It’s annoying that the women can’t vote or really work or decide who they’ll marry or wear jeans but - spoiler! - you know all that is to come so you can put it out of your mind and get absorbed by the hats.

Like everyone had a random bird land on their head while at tea

My content barrier still wasn’t repaired by the end of the second season so I immediately transitioned into Downton Abbey from the same writer/creator as The Gilded Age, Julian Fellowes. Currently, I’m into the third season of Downton Abbey and I’m pretty much a member of the Crawley family at this stage.

I couldn’t love this show more

This show has become my tonic as I return to work and get swept up in 2024. Every day I come home from work and watch hours of it. Is this odd? Is it just me?

When I mentioned this on our first episode of Outloud for 2024, other Bonnet Heads among my friends popped up in my texts. “ME TOO” they said.

So maybe it’s a thing?

Speak soon. xxx