Recalibrating: A Personal Note on Growth, Grief, and Returning to Writing
- Archontia Manolakelli
- May 8
- 3 min read
Updated: May 18
After a long pause, it feels right to break the silence with a more personal reflection.
In the past two years, life, as it often tends to, has unfolded in ways that demanded my full attention and emotional bandwidth: a difficult stretch at work, the loss of people dear to me, disconnection in relationships I am still working to rebuild, physical and mental health challenges, and a heavy sense of responsibility for things that weren’t quite my own to carry but I did anyway.
Somewhere along the way, I lost a sense of purpose that once felt foundational. And that unraveling brought with it a kind of existential disorientation I wasn’t prepared for, along with a lingering tinge of uncertainty about where I am headed.
It was, and in many ways still is, the kind of season that doesn’t announce itself loudly, but quietly unsettles everything. It has led me yet again to a recognition that growth requires parting with old identities and embracing new, sometimes uncomfortable, realities.
That is something that takes time and space to come to terms with, even if everything looks virtually identical on the outside.
I have always found clarity through writing during times like this. It is how I think things through, how I connect ideas, and, maybe most importantly, how I connect with others. But for a while, it felt like the last thing I needed was another commitment, even one I love.
So I stepped away from it. Not because I had nothing to say, but because the act of sharing started to feel like another responsibility that I didn’t have the mental space to tackle. I knew it would not be forever, just long enough to make space for recalibration and I felt guilty for not keeping up, even if the decision to pause was a conscious one, but now, with some of that space reclaimed, I know it was the right thing to do.
Returning to this project doesn't come with big declarations or rigid plans, just a renewed intention to keep writing about things that matter to me: the overlap between psychology and design, the nuances of architectural experience, the connections between theory and practice, the ways space shapes us and how we shape space in return.
This blog remains what it’s always been, a place to share insights, explore questions, and make ideas from architectural and environmental psychology more accessible to those working in and around the built environment: designers, students, researchers, and the curious in-between.
If you are new here: welcome. This space explores how psychological research and architectural theory intersect with design practice for anyone interested in how the built environment shapes our behaviour, emotions, and experiences.
If you have been here before: thank you for sticking around. I am looking forward to sharing more, with more depth and hopefully a little more clarity.
Thank you for your patience.
I am glad to be back.
Archontia Manolakelli is an ARB Chartered Architect and Behavioural Design Researcher based in Manchester, UK. Her work embeds behavioural science into the design of everyday spaces as a quiet force for change, helping workplaces, schools, and civic environments better reflect the people who use them. Grounded in environmental psychology and evidence-based practice, her approach is collaborative, inclusive, and quietly transformative, bridging the gap between theory and application, academia and practice, science and intuition.
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