Everybody has something in them that they are scared about

(And find out how to support The Single Supplement)

Today is the launch day of my paid-for version of this newsletter but I had some thoughts this week and wanted to share them first. I also didn’t want this newsletter just to be about that. Scroll down if you want to subscribe immediately!

Recently I had a bit of a disagreement with someone who didn’t seem to understand why I was finding something they were doing insensitive. I tried to explain but they just brought it back to themselves and their situation. The message to me was clear: Lockdown is worse for me than it is for you and you should shut up.

A few days later, I saw a tweet by the journalist Marie Le Conte who is isolating on her own in London. She was talking about how tough she was finding things but did a caveat for her tweet about how working parents of young children do have it worse. After an outpouring of support, she later tweeted that the reason she added the caveat was because she knew if she didn’t, she would be bombarded with loads of tweets saying “try having a …