Field Notes

This week’s Field Report follows on from Monday’s episode on Main Character Dressing — specifically the idea of “dressing for the life you want.”

So naturally, I committed to the ultimate test:
I dressed as a Clean Girl.
And so did Old Ma.

What followed was… humbling.

Scraped-back buns. Stark white activewear. An identity crisis involving my hairline, forehead, and general facial geography. Turns out Clean Girl Dressing is not for the faint-hearted — or anyone with a large skull, ginger hair, or a low tolerance for belts.

In this episode, I report back on:

What Clean Girl dressing actually feels like in real life
Why scraped-back buns are basically a humiliation ritual unless you’re a 9 or 10
Whether wearing white really does change behaviour (spoiler: it does, slightly)
Why clothes can affect confidence, posture, and how willing you are to steal your children’s snacks
The unexpected psychological impact of feeling “seen” vs wanting to disappear
Why everyone needs a symbolic power item (boots, hat, gilet, etc.)
The problem with buying “nice pieces” instead of full outfits
Why belts are medieval torture devices
And what Clean Girl taught me about hygiene, confidence, and hand-washing (sad but true)

Finds & Fails

Find of the week:

The concept of a power outfit — clothing that lets you walk into places like you own them (post office, returns desk, life in general)

Fail of the week:

Wearing nicer clothes under the coat
Belts
Stiff blouses
Thinking I could style “mid-range” outfits without buying the full mannequin look

Accidental Life Hack

How to get a workout done without creating a third outfit or extra laundry (sports bra under pyjamas = elite behaviour)

📬 Ask Guru & Granny — Coming Next Week

From next week, we’re officially launching Ask Guru & Granny — the new listener segment where we tackle your problems from two perspectives:

Chronically online (me)
Chronically offline (Old Ma)

If you’ve got a dilemma, spiral, life question, or quiet panic — send it in.

📩 Email: [email protected]
📲 Instagram DM: @rosehoneymorgan

Tell us if you want to be anonymous or named.

Neither of us are licensed therapists.
My mum’s main qualification is “a life well lived” and decades of being deeply unimpressed by nonsense.

📸 Extra Bits & Visuals

You can see:

Old Ma’s Clean Girl attempt
Aesthetic references
Power item discussion

Over on the podcast Instagram:
👉 @field.notes.pod

I’ll be back on Monday with another experiment — and yes, it may cause a domestic incident.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re told to dress for the life we want — not the life we have.

That if we change how we dress, we’ll change how we feel.
That confidence, motivation, discipline, and even happiness might be hiding in a blazer, a slicked-back bun, or a pair of cowboy boots.

But… is that actually true?
Or is this just another internet reinvention fantasy dressed up as self-improvement?

In this episode of Field Notes, I look at main character dressing, aesthetic identities, and the idea that clothes can function as behavioural cues — through humour, cultural anthropology, and lived experience.

This one is for anyone who:

feels permanently scruffy, flat, or half-alive
knows they care about how they look, but can’t seem to follow through
suspects there’s something psychologically real going on here… but also something deeply ridiculous

What we cover

• Main character dressing — what it actually means, and why it’s everywhere
• Dressing for the life you want vs dragging yourself around in leggings and a fleece
• Why clothes can genuinely affect mood, confidence, and behaviour (without becoming delusional about it)
• A gentle roasting of men in tracksuits (you can sit with us — just behave)
• The aesthetics currently doing the rounds online:

Clean Girl
Tomato Girl
Mob Wife
Cottagecore
• Why switching aesthetics can feel like trying on identities
• Whether “rehearsing” a version of yourself helps — or just makes you overthink everything
• The anthropology of adornment, status, and signalling (including a Copper Age man buried with a solid gold penis sheath)
• Why Old Ma is always dressed properly — and why she might be onto something

Introducing (soft launch): Ask Guru & Granny

This episode also sets up a new weekly segment starting next episode:

Ask Guru & Granny

Each week we’ll answer listener questions using:

a chronically online take (me)
and a chronically offline take (Old Ma — archaeologist, control group, deeply unimpressed by nonsense)

You can ask about:

identity
work
confidence
relationships
motivation
or anything you’re quietly spiralling about

Send questions to: [email protected]
Or DM me on Instagram: @rosehoneymorgan

Tell us if you’d like to be anonymous or named.

(Neither of us are licensed psychologists or counsellors. My mum’s main credential is “a life well lived” and decades of not indulging bullshit.)

What’s coming next

I’ll be actually trying this in real life:

testing different aesthetics
seeing whether clothes change behaviour, mood, or self-control
and reporting back honestly — including whether it’s worth the laundry, the sensory overload, or the effort

Photos, visuals, and Old Ma’s homework will be shared on the podcast Instagram.

Follow for clips, extras & deleted scenes

📸 Podcast Instagram: @field.notes.pod
(behind-the-scenes chaos, visuals, and things that didn’t make the edit)

If this episode made you laugh, think, or feel mildly called out — share it with someone who’d enjoy being part of this group chat.

See you on Friday for the Field Report.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Housekeeping: Ask Guru & Granny starts Monday

You send in your problems.
You get:
a chronically online take (me)
a chronically offline take (Old Ma)

Questions can be about:
work
relationships
identity
confidence
decision paralysis
....anything

Send questions to:
📩 [email protected]
Or DM me on Instagram: @rosehoneymorgan or @field.notes.pod

Tell us if you’d like to be anonymous or named.

(Neither of us are licensed psychologists or counsellors.)

Spacedust discount code - https://www.spacegoods.com/ROSE18621
(they actually give one to anyone. still... I think it's 20% off)

This Episode
This week I went all in on mushroom coffee - far beyond the recommended daily allowance - and flirted with the idea of ayahuasca.

Not at a retreat.
A workshop.
Which is very much the pre-retreat.

I went in curious, sceptical, exhausted, and - unfortunately - deeply distracted by a fit shaman, which immediately ruled out any future scenario involving vomiting, purging, or losing control in front of an attractive man.

So: ayahuasca is crossed off the list for now.
Mushroom coffee, however? Fully in the running.

What this episode covers

We’re all knackered.
Properly frazzled.
Running on broken sleep, caffeine, and whatever scraps of energy are left after bedtime.

And yet Instagram and TikTok cannot agree on what we’re supposed to do about it for more than eleven seconds.

So this field report looks at what actually helped — and what absolutely did not.

In this episode, I cover:

What ayahuasca actually involves (spoiler: buckets, purging, and zero dignity)
Why psychedelic “healing” feels wildly incompatible with my personality
A deeply unsettling mushroom horror story involving horses, Marmite, and sixth form
Why I don’t buy the idea that neuroplasticity + strangers + vomiting is the answer
Mushroom coffee vs normal coffee — how it actually feels in the body
Brain fog, focus, and that rare feeling of being mentally “on”
Why mushroom coffee feels more like:
a full night’s sleep
peak flow
a few days before ovulation
Coffee side effects (yes, including that one)
The creatine variable (and why it complicates the experiment)
Sleep deprivation, parenting, and surviving on medium-to-go energy
Why mushroom coffee works brilliantly before midday and terribly after
How to make mushroom coffee taste genuinely good (no grim watery nonsense)

Mushroom coffee & ingredients mentioned

We talk about:

Mushroom coffee
Functional mushrooms
Nootropics and adaptogens
Lion’s Mane
Cordyceps
Chaga
Reishi
Maca
Creatine and cognition
Brain fog, focus, and fatigue
Coffee alternatives

Brands mentioned (not ads):

Spacegoods
DIRTEA / Dirty

How I actually drank it (the non-feral version)

Full mug of oat milk (yes, the whole mug)
Microwave for one minute
One tablespoon mushroom coffee
Stir
Drink

Optional (if you’re feeling fancy):

Hazelnut or pistachio crème (M&S)
Do not bother with water
Do not add washing-up admin to your life

Find of the Week

Mushroom coffee made properly — creamy, hot, and not vaguely punishing.

Fail of the Week

Drinking it after midday.
Absolutely wired.
Absolutely no sleep.
Do not recommend.

What’s next

I’ll be back on Monday with:

the first proper Ask Guru & Granny
another thing I’m actually trying
and a report on whether any of this is helping or just rearranging the exhaustion

See you then.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tiny cultural translation (for non-UK / under-25 listeners)
•Bargain Hunt: British daytime TV where people buy antiques and act like it’s a pension strategy.
•Wordle: a daily five-letter word game we all got hooked on in lockdown.

New listener segment starting next week: Ask Guru & Granny

From next week, we’ll be answering listener questions — anything you’re stuck on, spiralling about, or quietly panicking over.

You’ll get:
•a chronically online take (me)
•and a chronically offline take (Old Ma)

Send your questions to: [email protected]
Or DM me on Instagram: @rosehoneymorgan or @field.notes.pod

Tell us if you’d like to be anonymous or named.

Neither of us are licensed psychologists or counsellors. My mum’s main credential is “a life well lived” and several decades of being unimpressed by nonsense. Mine is that I'm now a guru.

We are all exhausted. Properly frazzled. Brain-fogged. Running on caffeine, habit, and whatever scraps of motivation are left after bedtime.

And then you open Instagram or TikTok and get hit with the most infuriating contradiction imaginable:

Drink coffee for energy.
No — coffee is ruining your nervous system.
Try mushroom coffee.
No — you need to microdose psychedelics.
Actually, you just need perfect sleep, perfect routines, and zero stimulants (good luck with that).

So today, I’m trying to work out what we’re actually supposed to do when we’re tired, overwhelmed, and drowning in wellness advice that can’t agree with itself for more than eleven seconds.

This episode looks at energy, focus, and brain fog through the lens of:
•coffee vs no coffee
•mushroom coffee / nootropics / adaptogens
•microdosing psychedelics
•and why optimisation culture often collapses in real life

I react to some of the most common reels doing the rounds right now — doctors, nutritionists, biohackers, and internet experts all offering wildly conflicting advice — and try to slow the whole thing down enough to make sense of it.

What we cover
•Why so many of us feel permanently tired and mentally scattered
•Coffee on an empty stomach: cortisol, hormones, gut health — fearmongering or fair warning?
•Mushroom coffee explained (what it is and what it definitely isn’t)
•Common functional mushrooms and adaptogens you’ll hear about online, including:
Lion’s Mane, Cordyceps, Chaga, Reishi, Maca, and other “brain-boosting” blends
•Nootropics vs stimulants: focus without the crash?
•Brian Johnson, extreme optimisation, and the fantasy of total nervous-system stability
•Psychedelics and microdosing: potential benefits, real risks, and why this conversation has gone so strange online
•The Stoned Ape Theory (and why archaeologists absolutely love an unprovable idea)

This episode also introduces my mum — Old Ma — an archaeologist, lifelong observer of human behaviour, and proudly chronically offline control group. She brings a very different perspective on psychedelics, energy, and the idea that modern life can be “fixed” with powders and protocols.

This is not medical advice. It’s an honest attempt to translate modern wellness culture for tired people who don’t have the bandwidth to fact-check every reel.

⸻

Follow for clips, extras & deleted scenes
•Podcast Instagram: @field.notes.pod (deleted scenes, extra bits, behind-the-scenes chaos)

Next up: I’ll actually test some of this advice in real life and report back.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Absolute lol Brick have given me a code : https://www.getbrick.app/ROSE90330
It may not get you any more of a discount that you can get yourselves (I haven't clicked it yet), and they may request that I take it down after listening to this episode. But hey ho. The show notes are looking professional this week.

Field Report of the dopamine detox experiment. I tested three “highly scientific” methods in my most dangerous scrolling window: 7–10pm after the girls are asleep.

What I tried:

Night 1: full raw-dog detox (no phone, no TV, no music, no book… just vibes and existential dread)
Night 2: reading instead (Kindle + a dangerously moorish fantasy romance)
Night 3: TV without the phone (feat. the Bonnie Blue documentary and a sudden moral debate I wasn’t prepared for)

We also cover:

why “doing nothing” is a rich man’s hobby
the weird way scrolling has ruined reading
why watching a whole film now feels like personal growth
sex being transactional across human history (lightly… then not lightly)
Flatmate’s Field Notes: my husband’s unhinged business analysis of Bonnie Blue
Find of the Week: Brick (a physical gadget that blocks apps unless you walk to it)
Fail of the Week: realising I’m not enjoying reading like I used to (rude)

If you tried a dopamine detox too, I want your results. And if you’ve used Brick, please report to the group chat (my DMs).

Follow: @rosehoneymorgan
Podcast IG: @field.notes.pod

New Monday episodes + Friday Field Reports.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.