About Ritual North
What Ritual North is, who it’s for, and where to begin. A site and newsletter about fatherhood, overthinking, and quiet resilience.
New here? There’s a map. Sort of.
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What Ritual North Is
Ritual North is a long-form journal about fatherhood, systems, overthinking, and the weird little spirals we go on when life feels like toast crumbs in a bed sheet.
It’s not a brand.
It’s not a community.
It’s definitely not a cult.
It’s just one man’s ongoing attempt to build a slower, truer life — in between meetings, meltdowns, and mildly haunted axes.
Some of it’s personal.
Some of it’s observational.
Some of it accidentally becomes a 3,000-word essay about butter.
Who This Is For
🪵 You, probably.
❌ Especially if you're tired of polished nonsense.
🔍 Especially if you’ve ever Googled “why do I feel like this” and then rolled your eyes at yourself.
🧰 Especially if you’re a dad, a doer, or a tired overachiever who doesn’t know how to rest.
You might be:
👷 A quietly competent person who secretly thinks they’re messing everything up.
🤦♂️ A man trying to lead and build, but keeps falling over your own emotional shoelaces.
🪞 Someone who reads things twice because they felt too true the first time.
There’s no life coaching.
No hacks.
No “10 ways to win the morning.”
Just essays. And stickmen. And toast.
Start With These
These posts are fully public — no signup, no paywall, no drama.
They’re the best place to start if you want to understand what this is.
🔊 What Toby Taught Me Before He Could Speak
A story about raising a boy who doesn’t speak, and learning to listen in ways you can’t unlearn.
→ Read it →
🐙 The Decision-Making Octopus
An octopus lives in my head. He has eight tentacles. They ruin everything.
→ Read it →
🍞 How to Make Toast
Everyone knows how to make toast. Until you ask ten people to draw it.
→ Read it →
🪓 I Just Wanted an Axe. Now I Know the Metallurgical History of Scandinavia
A story about restoration, rabbit holes, and the psychology of buying your third axe.
→ Read it →
🧱 You Think You’re Building a Cathedral, But You’re Just Laying Bricks
Zoom out: legacy. Zoom in: back pain and wet cement.
→ Read it →
😵 I Think I Miss Being Bored
A spiralling, mildly unhinged essay about the lost art of staring at walls.
→ Read it →
Explore the Series
✴️ The Octopus Files
A series about internal chaos, emotional sabotage, and showing up anyway.
→ Explore the series →
🍞 The Toast Series
Work is broken and nobody knows why. This starts with toast and ends with system failure.
→ Start here →
🤙 Everything Else
Everything I’ve published — loosely grouped by intent.
How This Works
No schedule.
Sometimes I post three things in a week.
Sometimes I disappear for a month.
I do a newsletter, or at least I try to, when I get around to it.
If you want to stay in the loop:
→ Join for Free — newsletter + comment access
If you want everything:
→ Join Premium – £5/month — full archive, book chapters, longer essays, behind-the-scenes builds
Final Note
Lots of things here are unfinished.
But so are most people.
