Breathing Through Burnout
This was an email originally sent to all subscribers on 14 March 2025
Hi everyone,
You may or may not have noticed the radio silence on my part. I have been cocooning, protecting pieces of my inner self, while trying to deal with what feels like everything falling apart. Maybe you know the story of the boy and the butterfly? I am making progress but shedding my second skin is a slow process. I keep composing things to write, but my brain scrambles and I can’t finish editing. I’m also terrified to send this update, and I think everyone’s going to yell at me, but I also really want to get this out into the world so that I can make progress crawling out of this chrysalis. 🦋 🐛
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear” ~ Jack Canfield (the Chicken Soup for the Soul guy!)
Hello my dear newsletter subscribers,
On a whirlwind trip to Fontainebleau in France last October, crashing on a friend's Dutch barge (kind of literally), I came to the realisation that I couldn't and didn't want to keep LBK going anymore.
Thanks to a little thing called "Life", I no longer had a team of fellow mechanics, and single-handedly building up a new team is not something I wanted to do again. I've brought together multiple teams of mechanics over the past decade, and as they ebbed and flowed through LBK, I remained a constant.
I was the rock.
I am squarely middle-aged now (45) and perimenopause means I don't have the energy that my dirty 30's gave me. 2000 weeks of life remain, if I'm lucky. (Highly recommend reading Oliver Burkeman's 4000 weeks). I don't want to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. I don't want to be a constant anymore. Time to start this rock on a roll.
Working part time at Herne Hill Velodrome has now given me some security; subscriber monthly/yearly contributions to the newsletter have also given me some security. Teaching classes and doing saddle fittings at HHV are things that I will continue doing (aiming for a May start.) And I have a secret dream of starting a YouTube channel creating super basic bike maintenance videos for total beginners - while wearing fake acrylic nails 😹 (For reals tho - a super beginners channel doesn't really exist - that’s either because it’s a dumb idea or no one knows where to start. My bets are on the latter 💅)
But first I have to make room for new dreams by letting go of old ones. Right now I am in talks with Broad Bikez, a community bike project in Hackney run by two young people, and it feels so good to be able to pass the torch. When I was starting up in 2011, I was given great advice by my elders: Terez Kilpatrick (roving expert bike wizard), Kathryn Burgess (of Lock 7 in Hackney), and Ninon Asuni (of Bicycle Workshop in West London) - 3 women bike mechanics that left their mark on the London bike scene (IYKYK). We are always and forever standing on the shoulders of giants. I am indebted to them for their kindness, knowledge, and time given to me, and I am now passing on not only physical tools and a shopfront, but my elders' advice plus my own experiences to BBz.
I will continue writing this here newsletter about bike maintenance - I'm playing with new names/identities, so more on that later. And I will probably buck conventional advice as well and lower the paying supporter monthly rate to £3.50, as I would rather have more people paying less, than fewer people paying more. I would of course welcome you on this journey with me, as I have many dreams I wish to explore, and more scathing takedowns of the bike industry burning inside of me. (So many unfinished drafts!!!)
You can hop onto Broad Bikez's train here. I imagine I might be like a fairy godmother to them, so I'll be bibbidi bobbidi booing around somewhere.
They also have a survey to fill out, and I would be most grateful if you could take a moment to help them get started on their journey.
Please do reply if you have any questions/comments/concerns. Y'all are my lovely supporters and I always appreciate your thoughts. I genuinely wouldn’t be doing this without you.
Ride on,
Jenni x
ps. If you know of any flats becoming available soon in South London, please let me know! My partner and I want to move this summer.