I question everything.
I roll my eyes and shake my head a lot.
I treat life like it’s cinematic.
Where every mundane moment feels supercharged.
I move slowly, always.
And I savour every last drop of my stay here.
Be Difficult, Darling is a weekly newsletter where cultural commentary acts as a catalyst for conversations about questioning and rebelling against the shoulds of our existence, because “it’s just what people do”, doesn’t mean you have to.
At the beginning of 2024, I wrote that my mood for the year was, Be Difficult, Darling, which was widely shared on Instagram and a phrase I’d been writing about since 2023. Here’s how I described it, and I guess it’s a working thesis for this newsletter:
Never feel guilty for moving slower.
Create from freedom instead of fear.
You don't have to do what society expects you to.
Allow yourself to outgrow things.
Romance your friends when the world says... you can only romance your lovers.
You can always change your mind.
Stop waiting for people to say yes to you.
Wear the damn thing.
You can refuse people's demands.
Date yourself hard.
Question what you were told to never question.
"It's just what people do", doesn't mean you have to.
Please say no.
Reclaim the joy of being single, instead of settling.
Embrace your wildness.
You don't need to convince anyone to love you... when there's 8 billion other people in the world.
You're an adult. Just do what you want.
So, that’s what we’ll be exploring over here, and it’s an act of what I call Quiet Rebellion, part of my Manifesto for Slow Living.
The way we’ll be going about it is by using the culture that seeps into our pores, be it reality TV, social media trends, dating app prompts or conversations I overheard on a bus, as inspiration. We’re already in content overload, so instead of consuming something and moving on to the next thing, what if we sat with it and connected it to our own lived experience? Perhaps the way to satisfy our uncontrollable cultural hunger is to sieve through it all and let it plant the seeds of thought that are the precursor to understanding our humanness.
This is a space for you if you’re endlessly curious about life and prioritise growth, self-awareness and consider yourself somewhat of an erudite conversationalist. But, also spend your time criticising celebrity beauty brands, looking for Real Housewives gossip on Reddit, harassing your friends with memes every morning, and wonder if your back will hold out while you haphazardly learn a viral dance.
As for me, your writer, I’m Giselle La Pompe-Moore, trying to convince my friends to call me Gigi.
I’m an author, I wrote a book called Take It In which was published by Penguin Random House (Rider Books) in 2022 and I’m currently writing my first novel (which I’ll no doubt be sharing the process of here).
I’m an artist working with textiles, word, and sculpture. Currently in the studio creating my first series.
I’m a slow living advocate, so I sometimes facilitate group workshops and talks on this as well as expert comments for articles (receipts: certified trauma sensitive mindfulness and meditation teacher, mental health and psychological first aider).
As for who I really am?
I don't want my obituary to be filled with things that I achieved and accomplished, peppered with names of magazines, awards, and brands I worked with. I want it to be filled with the poetry of what I experienced during my time here. I want it to be never-ending prose of the sunsets I saw through grainy train windows and lovers I kissed in the 2 minute window before the taxi arrived. Oh, I want there to be details of the art that forever changed me, the cakes I baked and sculptures I made. I want there to be traces of the ink-stained paper that is home to my writing, the marathon-like lunches with my girlfriends with Shirley Temple-stained tablecloths. I want stories about me running into the ocean in my knickers and sleepily stretching in the morning in silky pyjamas. I want parts of my legacy to be about how I saw the neighbourhood cats stretching as cinematic. I want to be known for noticing and observing the significant in the insignificant. I don't want lists of only material things but simply things with meaning.
And, this is what I hope you get from your time here with me, the space to think, contemplate and write your own version of this (as well as being utterly entertained). To discover what you want from your own existence and be wildly devoted to it, even if it doesn’t make sense to the world we live in.
Ready to join us?
Thrilled to have you here!
Any questions, drop me a line
Giselle x
