This edition of A-Mail is brought to you by Leapers:

How are you doing? 2024 got you down? Or living your best life? Every year, Leapers asks freelancers about their mental health, to understand how we've coped with the past 12 months. The research shines a light on the gaps in support and the challenges we face as freelancers. It's completely anonymous, and insights are shared publicly in early Jan.

Your voice matters – take part today

I started writing this from the waiting room of urgent care.

I'm fine! Dramatic, but fine. I had a minor mishap while cleaning – I didn't think it warranted a trip to the hospital, but my boyfriend insisted. The nurse checked me out, determined that indeed nothing was wrong and sent me off. 

My non-injury is not the point; this is about thresholds. The reason I’m telling you about my hospital visit is because I’m on the cusp of a major life change right now (more on that another time) and finding myself in a literal waiting room felt … significant. 

I was there for five hours, so I tried to make some notes. I wanted to find something poetic to say about waiting rooms and how they're liminal spaces. How I never think about them — except when I'm in one, and then I can't think about anything else. How time passes so strangely within a waiting room; both slow and fast all at once. And the moment I’m out of that space, the discomfort of my stay there evaporates like a dream when you bolt awake.

But I couldn't get my arms around any of that while I was there. I kept fumbling around the dark corners of my mind, but it wouldn’t come. Maybe that’s because I’m in the most uncomfortable part of my transition, stuck waiting in the space between the before and the after. In the holding pen. And from this vantage point, it’s impossible to see the full shape of what’s ahead.

✨ sOmE pErSoNaL nEwS ✨

• Come and write with me tomorrow! My favourite writing community, the London Writers’ Salon, are running a 24-hour writing sprint and I’m hosting one of the hours. We’ll be gathering virtually for 50 minutes of silent, focused writing. I wrote most of my book by going to LWS’ Writers’ Hours so I’m thrilled to be taking part in this amazing event. It’s free and you can sign up here (my slot is 10 AM GMT).

• Guidelines for editors working with freelancers. I’m super proud to have worked on a set of best practice guidelines for organisations working with freelance journalists. The recommendations outline some basics around pay, kill fees and rights and I’d love to see more newsrooms take them up! This project was a collaboration with Donna Ferguson for Women in Journalism, plus Emma Wilkinson and Lily Canter from Freelancing for Journalists. There’s also a brilliant write-up about the project in IJNet.

Stuff I’ve read/watched/listened to/bought that you might enjoy as well.

• I’m currently doing my usual autumn re-watch of Gilmore Girls and I’ve discovered the brilliant Gilmore to Say podcast. I love everything about the format – two besties, the adorable Tara and Haley, who talk v v fast about the show and crucially it’s not a re-watch! Episodes are thematic so they jump around the entire series. Last year, I tried to get into Scott Patterson’s pod and didn’t vibe with it so was delighted to discover this one.

• Another podcast recommendation, this one very different: In The Dark. Specifically, season two which is about Curtis Flowers, a Black man from Mississippi, who was tried six times for the same crime.

• Maybe it’s because I’m tuned into the theme of waiting that I spotted this story by Sam Wollaston about a man who waited nine hours for an ambulance. It reminded me of one of my favourite Romanian films, The Death of Mr Lazarescu – except this story is worse because it isn’t fiction.

• Also in the realm of medical reads, this piece in Flaming Hydra by Emily Bell about a bout of temporary amnesia has haunted me since I read it in the summer.

• I finally read Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and thought I understood the hype while I was engrossed in it but since finishing it, I have to confess that it’s not really stuck with me.

• What the book did though, however, was introduce me cult of The Oregon Trail video game. A 1970s educational computer game about life as a 19th-century pioneer. I’m yet to try the original, but I’ve been playing Boom Town, a phone version of the game. You build a little town, harvest crops and send supplies to the pioneers – it’s silly and dumb but I’m hooked.

• I know November is nearly over now, but I’ve been loving Jason Chatfield’s NO-vember challenge. Every day for the whole month, he sends a short email teaching you how to get better at saying no to stuff.

• Speaking of newsletters, my other shout-out is for a non-Substack email if you can believe such a thing exists. Working It, the FT’s career newsletter written by Isabel Berwick. It has smart, helpful work advice and is a breezy, pleasure to read.

• And lastly, I’ve got a winter recommendation for those of you with cold hands. Mittens! My boyfriend bought me a gorgeous leather pair from Cos, which makes them feel a lot more grown-up than the woolly kind I had as a kid. Cos have another pair in their winter collection this year, which are slimmer fit than mine, and these ones from Toast look divine. They also make an excellent gift, to which I can attest.

Let me know what waiting room you’re sitting in right now and/or how you cope with that discomfort.