There came a time when I began to suspect that much of what I called myself was a collection of habits, fears, preferences and carefully defended opinions.

I had become rather good at being me. It took up an extraordinary amount of energy.

So I began to look. At the stories I told myself, the importance I attached to them, and the peculiar ways I arranged the world around my own reflection.

There was something exhilarating about this. The less there was to defend, the more room there seemed to be.

I carried a Polaroid camera everywhere. The notebooks were part of the same enquiry: tender, ridiculous, sometimes merciless.

I wasn’t looking for a better version of myself. I wanted to find out what remained when I stopped taking myself quite so seriously.