Recent Intelligence: culture, ideas, and obsessions to elevate your week /031
what i've been consuming, contemplating, and completely absorbed by
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This week, I considered sending out one of the two Travel Guides we've been holding onto, or perhaps a new Life Update – it's been a while. But truthfully, we're right in the middle of a major life change, and there just hasn't been time for either. That said, pulling together this instalment of Recent Intelligence (sifting through saved folders, bookmarking rabbit holes, and half-read essays) has been just as time-consuming. So maybe it wouldn't have made a difference.
We're incredibly excited about what comes next – this new chapter has been two years in the making. However, just as we were moments away from getting what we'd been hoping for, I made a strange, last-minute decision that put everything in jeopardy. I was confounded by my own actions and began, in all seriousness, to wonder whether I was actively trying to sabotage my own life. I'm always looking ahead, always wanting more – sometimes forgetting that everything I've ever wanted, everything I've ever needed, has been in front of me all along.
The reasons behind self-sabotage are unpleasant to examine, but they often reveal themselves with a brutal sort of clarity when we're willing to look. Low self-esteem quietly suggests that perhaps we don't believe we deserve success. The fear of success itself can loom even larger – it may bring new expectations, pressures, or scrutiny, all of which can feel deeply unsettling. There's also a peculiar comfort in struggle, in being more familiar with the chase than with the having. The pursuit becomes part of our identity, and without the striving, we're unsure of who we are.
Sometimes, standing on the brink of achieving something significant can trigger a fear of the finality that comes with it. What if this isn't what I really want? What happens once I've got it? Is this truly the right path? These questions can paralyse decision-making, or provoke sudden, irrational behaviour – a flight response to pressure that defies logic but feels emotionally urgent.
Impostor syndrome can amplify all of this. If we feel as though we're merely pretending, or don't genuinely deserve the opportunity, success may feel fraudulent. As we approach the finish line, the inner critic grows louder: They're going to find out I'm not good enough anyway – better to ruin it on my own terms. There's often an unconscious need to retain control, even in failure. If we're the ones who sabotage things, we retain agency. If I make the strange decision, at least it was mine. No one can say I wasn't good enough.
Sometimes, the goal we're pursuing isn't truly aligned with our deeper values or desires, even if we've been chasing it for years. One part of us wants it; another may fear it, resent it, or feel coerced by it. At the final moment, that internal conflict can erupt – through impulsive choices or risky decisions that seem to come from nowhere.
For some, trauma or early conditioning creates an unconscious association between success and danger. If someone grew up in an environment where success invited punishment, jealousy, or instability – whether through abusive parents or toxic competition – they may unconsciously equate success with threat. Others are simply wired to feel most alive when there is tension, risk, or chaos. As things begin to feel settled or predictable, they disrupt them, recreating the adrenaline of uncertainty.
Psychologists have names for these patterns: self-handicapping, approach-avoidance conflict, the upper-limit problem, the neurotic paradox, existential anxiety. But terminology doesn't make the experience any less bewildering when you're in it – when you're watching yourself make choices that appear perfectly designed to destroy the very thing you've worked so hard to build.
Perhaps I'll never know the precise mechanics of my own behaviour (I haven't been in therapy save for a few sessions when I was fifteen), but what I do know is that recognising it made me introspective. It forced me to consider whether we're all just running from some version of ourselves – the successful one, the settled one, the one who has what they want and must then reckon with what that means. Maybe the real question isn't why we sabotage ourselves at the crucial moment, but why we're so afraid of becoming the person we've spent so long trying to be.
But here's what I've come to understand: the fear isn't of failure at all, but of discovering that success doesn't transform us in the ways we hoped it would – that we remain, fundamentally, ourselves. And perhaps that's not disappointing. Perhaps that's the point. Maybe the courage isn't in becoming someone new, but in finally accepting who we've been all along – self-sabotage, contradictions, and all. The two-year journey, the strange last-minute decision, the introspection that followed – maybe this too was part of getting what I needed, even if it wasn't what I thought I wanted.
This edition of Recent Intelligence: culture, ideas, and obsessions to elevate your week includes a limestone townhouse on the market in one of England's prettiest villages and another for rent in beautiful Holland Park; my top five favourite Robert Redford films (and I've seen many); a dissection of AI's spectacular unravelling as Silicon Valley's most intoxicating promise crumbles; and so much more.
CULTURE /my top five favourite robert redford films
Barefoot in the Park (1967)
Out of Africa (1985)
The Way We Were (1973)
Legal Eagles (1986)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
RECENTLY /at hyperreality
Two weeks, two instalments of Notes Between Us. We explored weight-loss drugs reshaping dating and desire; London's sterile high streets and urban cloning; the aesthetic reset where filler dissolves and “Ozempic hair” emerges. Giorgio Armani's only regret revealed something about time and sacrifice. We examined algorithm-approved films, the ghost of Barneys, AI campaigns, and the “performative male”. What happens when chatbots echo our darkness? When beauty builds from code? Revisit what you missed – here.
Below, for paid subscribers: the articles worth your time, including an NHS doctor's evidence-based longevity secrets (spoiler: he only takes three supplements), why your brain age might be the best predictor of how long you'll live, the narrow window when hormone therapy could slash dementia risk by 32%, and the uncomfortable truth about AI's $750 billion gamble that's already showing cracks.
If you've been seeking weight and stillness in weightless times, we'd love to have you there.