Notes from Cultivating an Intellectual Life #1: January
From mermaids to Beethoven - this month's check-in on my 2026 intention
My intention this year is to cultivate an intellectual life.
Not in an academic sense, and definitely not in a “look at what I read” way. More in a “I’m done with idle evenings and weekends” type of way. I wanted to find ways of paying better attention, following my curiosity more seriously, and making space for thinking in a life that often feels quite full already.
Last year, I did this instinctively. I followed my curiosity with starting my self-study into philosophy and long rabbit holes that eventually became my Sunday newsletter series. It made my life feel joyful, meaningful, and - crucially - alive. But it didn’t feel particularly deliberate.
This year, I wanted to see what would happen if I treated that curiosity as something to tend to, rather than something that appeared when it felt like it.
This is the first monthly check-in. Intentionally not a list of things I did, read, watched (there are plenty of Substack posts that do that very well), but more like notes from someone trying to work out - in real time - what it might mean to live a little more intellectually. Whatever that means.
January 2026: From Instinct to Intention
This month, I really noticed the difference between drifting toward an intellectual life and choosing it on purpose.
Each week, I made a point of doing something that nudged me out of my usual routines - a lecture, a video essay on something I didn’t know much about, a new way of engaging with something familiar. That variety really held my attention, but what surprised me was how energising it felt when it was intentional rather than incidental.
When I feed my curiosity, I tend to want to socialise more - to ask better questions, to hear what other people think. Not to show off what I’d learned, but because conversation starts to feel like a continuation of thinking rather than a performance of it.
I don’t think I’d fully appreciated just how curious I am - or how flat I feel when that curiosity goes unattended until now.
Where I Directed My Attention
Let’s be honest: January tends to be a bit of a slow month for culture - even in London. We are all tired, broke, and dragging ourselves into the office on those cold, icy mornings without a pig in blanket to look forward to, all of which makes the start of the year feel pretty bleak.
Knowing this, and how I normally find January, I booked myself onto a handful of lectures and treated them as non-negotiables - the same way I do for a gym class or dinner with a friend. Leave work on time. Cross the city. Sit, absorb, take notes.
This month, I went to lectures on mermaids, the philosophy of Fredrich Nietzsche; and on 100 years of sex discrimination in philosophy. The latter two were fascinating and will no doubt resurface in my Philosophy Curriculum, but the mermaid lecture was the one I wouldn’t normally have chosen - and probably the one I took most from.
I think that’s because I listened to it twice.
The first time I listened to it, I was mostly trying to keep up with the amount of information the lecturer was giving. I learned how fundamentally different Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid is from Disney’s adaptation, and how the figure of the mermaid has long been tied to ideas of longing, transformation and belonging.
I approached the lecture slightly differently the second time I listened to it. I found myself less focussed on taking the information in and more interested in what the lecture was circling around. For example, there was a lengthy discussion of the watery woman as a figure of horror - of fear, of impending doom - particularly in early Greek mythology. Whether merewifs, mermaids, or sirens, these figures are often described as curiosities in themselves: beautiful, unsettling, and dangerous. Men are transfixed, lulled by the beauty of song and appearance, drawn down into the water and ultimately to their deaths.
I couldn’t help but think of Plato’s Symposium - specifically the way he frames desire and love as something that draws us upward, toward beauty and truth. Given how disparaging Plato was of Homer and of poets more generally, I started to wonder whether that contrast was intentional on his part - or whether I was overthinking it (very possible).
I’m not sure I can listen to every lecture twice, but it did make me wonder whether I could approach future lectures with less of a rush to write everything down - but with more attention to what the discussion is really circling around.
What Nourished My Thinking
I don’t think cultivating an intellectual life means rejecting the digital world altogether, but perhaps it does mean being a bit more intentional about what I let shape my attention. I’ve spent a good amount of time curating my social feeds so that what I do consume feels added value rather than something to pass the time.
This month, Daniel Anastasio’s work on classical music has been incredibly nourishing. As a lover of classical music, I’ve learned so much from his videos - the way that he doesn’t just explain compositions technically - he treats them as emotional structures, ways of working through uncertainty, tension, and release.
His content has genuinely slowed the way I listen to my favourite scores and compositions. I find myself less interested in individual moments and more attentive to how feeling unfolds over time - how themes return, shift, and resolve.
Physical Conditions of Thinking
One thing this month made very clear is that thinking needs a certain kind of environment.
My husband and I have just bought a house - one that will be undergoing a fairly major renovation - which means months of dust, noise, and general disruption. Between that and work, I realised I needed a third space: somewhere that wasn’t home or the office, but some place where sustained attention felt possible.
Coffee shops, lovely as they are, don’t quite work for me. My brain has a habit of tuning into nearby conversations whether I want it to or not.
So I went looking for something quieter and landed on The London Library. Floors of books, small reading rooms, little nooks that make it easy to sit and stay with a book, and the quiet sense that time moves a little slowly - I instantly signed up. It’s quickly become a place, for me, where reading and thinking feels unhurried.
Threads I Followed
As usual, my reading this month wasn’t especially linear. I tend to find one thing that catches my attention and then follow it for a while. In January, that led me down a few different paths:
On the decision of a Texas University to ban Plato from its introductory to philosophy class (I am still perplexed…)
They don’t obviously belong together, but on reflection, they all seem to orbit questions about power, tradition, and what societies choose to preserve or discard.
That, at least for now, is where my curiosity seems to want to linger.
The section below is for paid subscribers and includes personal notes from the month with deeper reflections alongside how this month looked on the pages of my journals
Personal Notes
What does it actually mean to cultivate an intellectual life when you don’t control your time?
