Work in Progress — 2025
People keep telling me this was a good year.
They’re not wrong. It was.
Things moved. Work landed in places it hadn’t before. I found myself in rooms I used to imagine from the outside. There were moments where I caught myself thinking, oh shit— this is actually happening now.
That mattered.
It just didn’t resolve anything.
For a while, I thought that once enough things lined up externally, something internally would relax. That I’d feel authorised to slow down, or settle, or at least stop wondering whether I was facing the right way.
That didn’t happen.
If anything, the more that happened, the clearer it became that permission wasn’t coming. Not from institutions. Not from audiences. Not from momentum.
That wasn’t liberating. It was clarifying.
2025 didn’t make me feel finished.
It made me stop waiting.
When I started this Substack, I called it Work in Progress and described myself as “still loading”. That still feels true. I’ve just become less impatient with it.
I also called myself a radio dreamer. That was true too.
I’ve since realised there are more ways to dream than I knew how to name back then.
What people mostly saw this year was movement. Output. Me being busy. Slightly unavailable. Always onto the next thing.
What they didn’t see was the quieter part.
Me sitting on the floor of my bedroom at 2am with a notebook, rewriting the same episodes again and again. Changing tone, pace, rhythm. Scrapping drafts not because they were bad, but because they weren’t right yet.
There’s no metric for that part.
No applause. No proof.
But that was still the work.
And I didn’t experience those nights as struggle. I chose them. They were quiet, focused, and strangely comforting. The part of the day where everything else dropped away and things actually made sense.
Not because I’m especially disciplined — but because that’s where I felt most like myself.
This was also the year I realised how easily busyness gets mistaken for arrival.
If you’re always moving, always producing, people assume you’ve crossed something. They don’t always see the uncertainty underneath, or how movement can quietly turn into avoidance if you’re not careful.
I stopped correcting that assumption.
Not out of arrogance — just because I didn’t need to narrate myself so much anymore.
In the summer, things went a bit flat.
I’d just left my role as an assistant producer at Rinse FM. Rinse had been playing in the background since I was a teenager. I listened long before I ever imagined being part of it, and I still lock in regularly.
So leaving wasn’t bitter.
It was grateful — and disorienting.
Something that had felt foundational was suddenly gone, and nothing replaced it straight away. Just space.
That’s when the questions crept in.
Does any of this even matter?
What’s the point?
It wasn’t a dramatic spiral. It was duller than that. The kind of doubt that just sits there and slowly drains momentum.
At one point, I genuinely considered stopping. Finishing my degree. Getting a normal job. Clocking in and out.
It wasn’t a moral crisis.
It just felt incorrect.
Like Skepta said: That’s Not Me.
I didn’t keep going because of belief or optimism.
I kept going because stopping would’ve meant undoing work that already existed.
So I went back to basics.
I stopped measuring everything.
Stopped justifying every decision.
Started working again in a way that didn’t require an audience.
Nothing external changed overnight.
But my orientation did.
For a long time, I’d tried to make myself easy to place. I explained references before anyone asked. Softened edges so things wouldn’t feel too specific, too dense, too much.
Somewhere this year, that impulse eased off.
If something doesn’t land now, I let it miss.
If a reference goes unexplained, I leave it there.
If a project doesn’t translate neatly, I don’t rush to sand it down.
That isn’t arrogance.
It’s just trust — in the work, and in the people who find it.
There was a moment this year — quiet, private, not worth posting — where someone whose opinion I respect told me they believed in the work. Not in a this could go somewhere way. In a this already matters way.
That didn’t change what I was doing.
It just reassured me I was facing the right direction.
I did think, briefly, about giving up.
Not dramatically. Just as a passing option.
And then I realised I couldn’t. Not because I’m exceptional or especially resilient, but because quitting would mean walking away from something I’d already given a lot of myself to.
That felt wrong.
So I kept going.
I don’t want arrival anymore.
I want concentration.
I want to work in a way that holds up even when no one’s watching. I want things to feel solid before they’re visible.
I have a habit of treating everything I make like it might be my magnum opus.
It’s probably excessive. But it’s the only way I’ve found to work without cutting corners.
I don’t do it because I think everything will last.
I do it because anything less feels dishonest.
I still want the work to connect.
I just don’t want to contort it to get there.
And that feels like a good place to leave things.
What was playing while the year happened
On The Run
This lived in my headphones while I was moving through London. It feels restless in a way I recognise, forward motion without a destination. I once had it on loop riding a Lime bike from Tottenham Court Road to Hoxton with two dozen Krispy Kreme donuts rattling around in the front basket on my way to a Rinse FM shift. I briefly thought that meant something. It didn’t. But the song still bangs.
Wyl Up
This one is inseparable from my Tuesday afternoon shifts at Rinse FM. Brighter Days Family’s show always landed during that slot, and it was consistently the highlight of the shift. There’s something grounding about knowing a certain sound will arrive at the same time every week. This track still carries that feeling of things running properly.
Transit Ride
Thinking music. Movement music. It feels like being in between places, which is where most of my year actually happened. Nothing dramatic — just forward.
Sabotage
This is here to stop the playlist from getting too reverent. Sometimes you need noise. Sometimes you need to knock things over and reset your posture. It kept me honest.
That’s Not Me
This one speaks for itself. It’s not rebellion, or ambition, or a statement of intent. It’s recognition. I came back to this a lot during moments where a version of my life looked sensible on paper but felt wrong in practice.
Together
London DNA. Community without speeches. Bass-led belonging. A reminder that none of this happens in isolation, even when the work itself feels solitary.
Sade Like A Tattoo (Skep’s Jungle Remix)
Past and present talking to each other. Jungle energy without cosplay. Proof that reinterpretation doesn’t have to mean dilution — it can mean care.
Oye Como Va
I like ending here because it doesn’t feel resolved — just confident. Loose, rhythmic, still moving. A good place to stop without pretending anything’s finished.
None of these tracks are here to make a point.
This is just what was playing while the year happened.
Here's to your autonomy, independence of structures and ultimately, your freedom. 🐻