How to Be Hopeful

My year of living joyfully

'Happiness is a thing that must be done over and over and over again. Like laundry. And sex. It’s not a thing you are - it’s a thing you do.'

Not getting enough sleep, doomscrolling on your phone, and feeling acid anxiety every time you watch the news? You’re not alone. One morning, Caitlin Moran lay in bed and realised: she had finally reached Peak Despair. The point where, in books and movies, the heroine decides to move to a remote farmhouse, walk an ancient, 600-mile pathway, or adopt a baby hare. The moment where someone goes on a quest to find … hope.
But this, this is not that kind of book. Caitlin tried — but it turns out remote Welsh farmhouses are really expensive. No-one with a job can walk 600 miles. And it’s incredibly hard to get access to baby hares in Crouch End.

And so, Caitlin decides instead to go on a domestic quest. To see if you can stay in the same house, in the same neighbourhood, but feel better about the frantic modern world by trying to make better days. Leaving social media, eschewing 24/7 news for local newspapers, sitting on buses without headphones, and listening to what people are really saying. Picking litter, donating blood, rewilding a garden and, the hardest thing of all — learning to fall back in love with the world again.

Over the course of a year, Caitlin finds that life can be radically transformed when you rebel against the news cycle and algorithms that want to keep us angry, adrenalised, and anxious. You can’t change the world — but you can change your days. And, once you’ve changed your days, maybe you could change the world. Just a little bit.

Being hopeful is a decision. How To Be Hopeful is the diary of how one person made that change.

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