in praise of small talk
shooting the breeze is just the best
👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hi! If you’re new to these parts, the short version is this: I’ve worked for myself for a long time, writing 15 (!) books, largely done from home. It sent me a bit doolally, being alone that much and also working within an industry that hasn’t always treated me kindly. That’s why I started writing How to Build a Life, now delivered to thousands of readers in over 80 countries. I’d been desperate to unpick why I seemingly had a dream career but life in general felt so underwhelming. I figured out that my brain likes writing but my soul needs something else, so at the start of this year - in addition to still writing my novels - I took a job in a high school mixing teaching and pastoral work. In one million ways this makes no sense at all, apart from the fact that working out of the house with teenagers is making me really very happy. I’m almost 40, a solo parent by choice, and knowing all this means you’re all caught up. WELCOME.
One of the unexpected joys of the new job has been the re-emergence of small talk in my day-to-day life. I know there’s some technical term for it, all the sort of “zones of intimacy” different relationships have, like we have our BFF’s, and then our life-long friends, and then maybe the school mums and the gym girls or the bookclub lot. And then beyond that the looser connections, the guy who makes your coffee every morning or works at the greengrocers or the neighbour who lives a few doors down so you know them well enough to say hi to but not to like, cat-sit.
OH WAIT I KNOW THE WORD! I think I mean co-workers. Oh my gosh, I haven’t had colleagues in such a long time - ten years, I guess?? - that I thought I’d invented a whole new category of relationship but okay, right, I was slow but I got here in the end: I enjoy talking stupid sh*t with the people who work at the same place as me, who don’t really know anything about my life or deep feelings proper, but who I see and engage with every day. The people I pass in the staff room or toilet or in the corridor and have thirty-seconds-to-two-minutes chat with, tops. Maybe fifteen if we’re on bus duty. These aren’t people I’d lend a book to, and they’ll never know the names of my parents or when I lost my virginity, but we talk about the weather a lot and I’ll always ask if their sore throat has cleared up yet, if they had a nice weekend.