Skip rope one million times

Skip rope one million times

March 11, 2022/Charlotte

This was written in March 2019. Content note: Christchurch terror attack, descriptions of sickness. It started with vomit, then bile. The ambulance was called, but I couldn’t walk, so they called the fire service...

The inside of a small housebus, showing drawers, a bench, a couch with yellow cushions, and some plants.

Live on the radio

Housing, Life

December 9, 2021/Charlotte

After my most recent article about living in a bus came out on Stuff, I received a few messages, one of which was from Wallace Chapman. I was a bit distracted when I got...

A desk in front of a window, with sunlight filtering through. On the desk is a laptop, and there are indoor plants all around and on the desk.

Decluttering to live tiny

Housing, Life

September 7, 2021/Charlotte

Stuff takes on a different dimension when you’re moving into a minibus. Every item, like slippers or a backpack, takes up more space, relatively. You can’t have backups of anything. There is minimal storage...

The Asbestos Pause

Housing, Life

June 15, 2021/Charlotte

When I first bought my bus and started planning to build it into a tiny home, I envisioned a few months of working on it. Maybe six. Nine at the most. The timeline was...

My favourite essays

Humour, Life, Parenting, Politics

December 23, 2019/Charlotte

This is by no means a comprehensive list of essays and writers I value, it’s just a curation of some of my favourites: to share, and also so I have all these links easily...

Step into power, step into pyjamas

Comics, Dating, Life

June 13, 2019/Charlotte

I don’t know exactly when or how I stopped being insecure about how I look. It’s not that I learned to love my body and see all its flaws as beautiful. They’re not beautiful,...

Blame the women, why don’t you

Dating, Life, Parenting

December 10, 2018/Charlotte

I’m angry and sad about Grace Millane, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the rhetoric that inevitably emerges every time a woman is hurt: that she somehow brought it on herself. And I...

We all hurt each other accidentally sometimes

Comics, Life, Parenting

November 20, 2018/Charlotte

I was sitting outside a cafe and I watched as a pram fell over backwards, pulled down by a bag slung over the handle. I heard the sound of the toddler’s head hitting the...

Slingshots and Gunshots

Comics, Life, Parenting

November 6, 2018/Charlotte

This one’s for you,...

Eavesdropping at the library

Humour, Life

October 12, 2018/Charlotte

Central Library, evening. There’s an older bearded dude sitting next to me charging his phone, and a younger dude tutoring maths to an even younger dude at the next table, and this is...

A half full glass of beer with pink undies in it.

Chewing on used serviettes

Dating, Humour, Life

October 6, 2018/Charlotte

This is how much I like butter. If you said, “would you rather give up butter for the rest of your life, or lose a toe?” I would say “you’re no friend of mine,”...

On celibacy, fantasy, Jane the Virgin, feminism, and not dating

Dating, Life

March 15, 2018/Charlotte

Obsessively binge watching Jane the Virgin coincided with – and perhaps influenced – my decision to stop dating and stop having sex. Not dating when you are romantically-lonely is uncomfortable and dissonant. It means...

Sometimes labels help; what ADHD means to me

Life

March 13, 2018/Charlotte

Today is the 4-week-aversary of getting diagnosed with ADHD, and I’m in a mood to celebrate. Unfortunately my son is home sick from school, so I’m stuck under him on the couch while he...

The Evolutionary Purpose of Nipple Hairs

Life

March 11, 2018/Charlotte

I just read a marvellous piece by Anne Lamott about liver spots and growing old, and I’m not even half her age but I had some thoughts, and these thoughts happened in the 27...

New Degree, New Hair, Who Dis?

Humour, Life, Parenting

March 1, 2018/Charlotte

When you’re a student and a solo mother, your budget for personal grooming is comparable to driving to the other side of town for a holiday instead of going to Thailand. Which is why...

A poem for men on dating apps, men on the street, men in bars

Dating, Poetry

February 20, 2018/Charlotte

I am not your hun. I am not your babe precious sexy what you up to now wet dream. You can’t fool me into thinking we are intimate. I don’t know who you are...

Healing came from little white pills

Life

November 13, 2017/Charlotte

Four months ago I started healing. This is what healing was like to start with: trembling knees, lungs that wouldn’t inflate properly, memories I didn’t want to remember, crying myself to sleep, crying in...

How respectful parenting can shrink foxes

Parenting

October 4, 2017/Charlotte

“Mama I had a dream about foxes and it was so scary and that’s why I don’t want to go to sleep!” Kids make up a bunch of excuses for not going to bed....

How to answer questions when you’re not “good”

Life

October 1, 2017/Charlotte

Since I had a breakdown a few months ago, conversations have become harder. It’s like there’s an invisible time limit to sympathy that no one has expressed to me, but I’m conscious of not...

Black and white thoughts

Life

September 27, 2017/Charlotte

I often imagine things in black and white, like my brain gets stuck in monotone flashbacks to pre-technicolour days. I suppose they are the days that seem simple because I do not live them....

The Worst Online Dating Opener I’ve Ever Received

Dating, Humour

September 11, 2017/Charlotte

I received the following message last night. – Never have I wanted juice less. – I don’t know why killing rats is a redeeming feature. – Does this strategy ever work for getting dates?...

The monsoon and the shudder

Dating, Life, Poetry

August 31, 2017/Charlotte

When your heart is a desert the smallest of loves can feel like a monsoon. You were not the avalanche or the earthquake you were not the biggest of loves but you were the...

You just need to keep me living, ok?

Comics, Parenting

August 30, 2017/Charlotte

...

How Mr. Men and Little Miss Teach Kids To Hate Themselves

Humour, Life, Parenting

August 27, 2017/Charlotte

There are a lot of books that I enjoyed as a child that dismay me as an adult. But I try not to be a loud too often so I usually just burn them...

What To Wear When Meeting Your Ex

Dating, Humour

August 22, 2017/Charlotte

Meeting your ex in person after a breakup can be a confusing time, regardless of how it ended or at what point in the recovery process you’re at. Sometimes you might bump into them...

Honesty in a world more comfortable with deceit

Life, Politics

August 9, 2017/Charlotte

There’s a tale told by Kumashiro of a game played by a group of children, girls against boys. The girls choose the game and they win the first time. So the boys demand a...

Yes I love you, no I don’t want to be touched right now

Life, Parenting

August 8, 2017/Charlotte

Being a feminist mother of a (white) son sometimes involves a different approach to that of parenting daughters that goes beyond the strange things that happen in their nappies (how naive I was before...

The things I think I should do when I feel unworthy

Comics, Dating, Life

August 4, 2017/Charlotte

Not too long ago I got dumped, and after I’d cried, and told all my friends; after the shock started to fade (although I couldn’t breathe properly for days); after all that I thought...

Because I’m a bossy person

Comics, Parenting

July 30, 2017/Charlotte

...

I spend a lot of time sitting in my car

Life

July 28, 2017/Charlotte

When I was about 15 years old my best friend became a Christian and because I did not also become Christian, she declared me to be “evil” and broke up with me. I was...

Self love? Take selfies

Life

July 26, 2017/Charlotte

Apparently taking selfies makes me narcissistic and vain. The internet is fond of telling us what we are doing wrong and how we should be otherwise to what we are. But every selfie that I...

When you don’t want to go to the shop

Comics

July 24, 2017/Charlotte

Sorry flatmates, I know I’m the only one with a car, but I’ve already taken my bra off for the...

When jokes don’t work

Comics, Parenting

July 23, 2017/Charlotte

...

The undeserving poor

Life, Parenting, Politics

July 23, 2017/Charlotte

The first thing that’s relevant for you to know about me is that I’m a beneficiary. It’s such a dirty word, isn’t it? Beneficiary. Conjures up images of the great unwashed, the worn-out mothers...

Octopuses, poetry, whiskey, and algorithms

Dating, Humour

July 21, 2017/Charlotte

Look, even if I got nothing else out of my dating experiences, this story would almost make it all worth it. It starts like most of my dating stories, with matching on Tinder. We’ll...

Home is a place that is still

Life, Parenting

July 17, 2017/Charlotte

The thing about the urge to run, the crazy cannot-possibly-stay-where-I-am urge to run, is that it immobilises me. Fleeing something hard in my life is no longer an option and so I stay. I...

The velociraptor attack

Comics, Parenting

July 15, 2017/Charlotte

...

Here’s what happens when you find out I’m a mother

Dating, Parenting

July 14, 2017/Charlotte

Apparently this is what happens when you become a mother: This is hard for most mothers, I think, when our complex identities become overshadowed by this one role. But it’s particularly challenging when you’re...

Charlotte Fielding

Charlotte Fielding

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