Gum on My Shoe

By Charity Megan Riley The following is taken from the introduction to my 2025 novel Bipolar Dreamer . In the late 1990s, many young women wanted to be Felicity Porter, a character on a TV show called Felicity , which aired from fall 1998 until spring 2002. The pilot episode reveals a socially awkward, intelligent girl named Felicity, in Palo Alto, California, asking her high school crush, Ben, to sign her yearbook. He writes a note saying that although he never got to know her, he always wondered what she was about and he admired her. After she reads his message, she changes her college plans. The main character in Bipolar Dreamer , Phoebe, is part Felicity — the hopeless romantic part — but she is mostly me. Like me, she is a big fan of the show Felicity and dreams to have the life of the star character — to be on her own, far away from home, and to be doted on by several young men. She is smart but suffers from problems she can’t clearly define. Phoebe’s stressors are main...

This post was inspired by a recent conversation with Fran. We were talking about some of the things she’s done lately. These include joining Finding Female Friends >50 , a nonprofit organisation dedicated to fostering friendship connections for women. (“Welcome! Your new BFF’s [sic] are waiting to greet you.”) Fran’s already attended a number of their online sessions. Some she found valuable, others less so. She mentioned two in particular, one of which she’d loved and one that hadn’t resonated for her. “That’s cool, though,” I said. “You gave yourself the opportunity to hate them!” I love that she’s open to trying things out to see what works for her and what doesn’t. It can be uncomfortable discovering you don’t quite fit in with a particular situation or group. Fran nevertheless recognises it’s not a failure if she decides not to continue with something. I’m not good at this myself. I tend to only try things I’m likely to enjoy or find valuable. That more or less rules out ...

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If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way. — Napoleon Hill In my final post of 2025 I commented that while I was happy to assert my identity as a writer and blogger I wasn’t ready to accept the label of “influencer” despite it having been suggested on several occasions. That all changed when I learned (via this guest post by my friend and fellow blogger Aimee Wilson) that there are different categories of influencer. The article Aimee cited was Types of Influencers: Mega, Macro, Micro, and Nano Explained by The Viral Union (TVU). The types are distinguished by their respective number of followers and thus their perceived influence. Mega Influencers (1M+ followers) Macro Influencers (100k to 1M) Micro Influencers (10k to 100k) Nano Influencers: (under 10k) That last category caught my attention. I’m pretty sure I have fewer than ten thousand followers. Does that make me a nano influencer? It sounded kind of cool, especially when I read that TVU — w...

You don’t need to do this perfectly. You just need to keep choosing yourself often enough that life remains liveable. That’s the work. And you’re already doing it. — Cheryl Stott I recently shared my thoughts inspired by William Styron’s “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.” Since then I’ve been reading a very different yet no less engaging book on mental health. Living with Bipolar and other mood disorders by Cheryl Stott was published in paperback on January 26 this year. This review is based on the Kindle edition which came out a few days later. I was immediately drawn to the clean presentation of the text. There’s little to get in the way of the content itself. This is in keeping with the author’s aim to help people newly diagnosed with bipolar disorder understand what their diagnosis means — and what it doesn’t mean. Living with Bipolar is not a clinical manual and it’s not a Memoir. It’s the conversation many people never get when they are diagnosed. This Extended E...

It all happened so quickly. One moment I was walking to the car after a meal out with friends. The next I was lying face down in the dirt. It took a few seconds for me to realise what had happened. My life didn’t pass before my eyes — no Chicken Run “it was really boring” revelation — but as I lay there my priorities were surprisingly clear. I was most concerned for my (rather expensive) glasses. Then my beloved tweed jacket. Then whether I’d dropped anything out of my pockets. Then that I must be covered in mud. It was a while before I realised my left hand was hurting quite badly where I’d extended it to break my fall. As I got slowly to my feet I figured I probably hadn’t broken anything but I had no clear idea how I’d ended up on the floor. My friends were no less bemused. Jack and Aimee had been on the opposite side of the car and saw nothing. Walking behind me, Spencer had seen everything. Except there’d been nothing to see. A stumble, then me flat on my face. They were all ...