It's 2026 and I Bought a Typewriter. Bear With Me.

I don't entirely remember where the idea came from.

Actually, that's a lie. I do. I wanted to type out a quote from my favourite poem, I had this vision of it looking beautiful on the page, all proper and considered… and I couldn't find anyone to do it for me. So naturally, the logical next step was to buy a typewriter.

Call it an ADHD purchase. Call it a quarter-life crisis (we're going with that). Call it what you want. I found a beautiful one, obviously the colour was a factor, let's not pretend otherwise and for £40 I sent my husband to Nottingham to collect it without a second thought.

To his enormous credit, he didn't even ask why. Just said okay and went, seventeen-odd years in and he's very used to my side missions.

And then it sat there.

As things often do.

I bought the ink. I set it up. I admired it. And then life carried on at its usual pace and the typewriter waited patiently on the shelf while I absolutely did not use it.

Until now.

Now I use it to write notes.

Not emails. Not DMs. Not a voice note fired off while I'm doing three other things. Actual, physical, sit-down-and-think-about-it notes — to friends, to my kids, to people I want to make smile.

It started with little messages. Funny things. Gratitude notes. The kind of thing that takes two minutes to write but means something when it lands on someone's doormat or kitchen table. There's something about receiving a typed note that feels considered in a way a text just doesn't, no matter how many heart emojis you throw at it.

I've also made air-dry clay envelopes that hang on my kids' bedroom walls, little wall-mounted pockets for notes, inspired by something I spotted on Pinterest and immediately had to recreate. The idea being that the kids can post notes to each other, and I can leave little messages for them too. Manifestos. Jokes. The occasional motivational quote they definitely roll their eyes at but secretly appreciate. Now the typewriter feeds into that too.

Here's the thing about typing on a typewriter though.

There's no backspace. Well, there is, technically, but using it feels like cheating, and I am absolutely the kind of person who will start the whole thing over rather than have a visible correction sitting there judging me. So you have to slow down, you have to think before you type, actually commit to the words, and get it right first time.

For a brain that usually has about forty tabs open simultaneously, that is genuinely revolutionary.

It's not painstaking, that's the thing I didn't expect. It's actually quite meditative. One task. One thought. No notifications, no distractions, no temptation to edit yourself into oblivion. Just the clack of the keys and something real at the end of it.

This year has been a bit of a slow down year for me, quietly.

I've been reading again, like actual books, imagine?! I've been making things with my hands. And now I'm typing notes on a second-hand typewriter like it's 1987 and I couldn't be happier about it.

There's something in leaning into the analogue, the intentional, the things that ask you to be present. Especially when so much of life and work lives on a screen.

I might even start sharing some of the notes on Instagram. Little typed thoughts, observations, the odd quote. We'll see. But if you get a typed note through your door from me at some point this year, know that I sat down deliberately and typed it just for you.

That feels worth something.