The Blog
The emotions, actions and thought processes of my creative work.
This is where I share what I’m doing and why, how I’m thrashing out problems and what I’m trying to achieve.
The Eco Lightbulb Principle Of Change
What I am learning, acutely, about change is that it happens glacially over time. Obviously, we don’t want it to happen like this. We want to stand on top of a mountain under a beam of sunlight and shout “I Have Changed” and for that to be all it takes. We want the change of the films we grew up with, where the impossible situation resolves itself and the boy realises he loves her five minutes before the end.
Goals, Intentions and Word Of The Year 2021
This new year is different. This new year there is not the clean break to “start again” that other years have. Of course this is always the case; the ticking over of a digit at the end of the year denotes nothing but our human need to control and measure time. Usually we manage to kid ourselves that the ticking over is meaningful, that it can birth us anew into a whole different world – but this year, with ongoing lockdowns and vaccine rollouts and continuing deaths around the world, it is harder to feel the change in the air.
End Of Year Thoughts 2020
For the last three years I have published an End Of Year Review here. They have always been some of my favourite things to read and my favourite things to write – a chance to share everything that happened behind the scenes that made up the whole year. This year, however, is a little different. This year there are too many untied loose ends, too many still misplaced hopes and too much not processed that it just isn’t the right time to share my usual warts and all review. I did think, though, that I would share some end of year thoughts for 2020 that are arising as I reflect on the changes that I have been making – and I actually think this has worked out better than usual.
Your Big Picture Is In Your Every Day
Do you ever write something and think, “huh, that’s good, I should probably take that on board myself”? I like to think of these moments as your soul, while it wrestles with all your conditioning, throwing a line of rope out to you in the hopes you’ll see it and start pulling. When you’re daydreaming and think, “Wow, that was profound” or explaining something to someone and realise “I never actually looked at it like that before.” These are all little nuggets trying to bring your attention to the knowing and truth inside of you.
The Unexpected Magic Of Low Expectations
I have always had high expectations for myself. That was something I never expected to change. I have always been planning my high achievement, whether that was ordering university prospectuses when I was 14 or setting a goal to make £100k in 2020.
Experiments in Time Management: Turning Off The TV
I’ve spoken about the effects of neglecting your phone on your productivity before, but this week I’ve been practising ignoring another technological intrusion: the television. At the risk of sounding like a pearl-clutching commentator from the 1990s lamenting that TV is ‘desensitising the children’, I have to admit that it has desensitised me. But let me start somewhere at the beginning.
How I Got Into Tarot & Use It In My Business
Every time I post a tarot spread on my Stories, as well as a flurry of unfollows (!) I always get questions about what I’m using and how. Tarot is a tool I use daily as part of my year of being Powerful, with everything from morning intentions to big decision making, but just a little over a year ago it was something I would have never even entertained the prospect of. So today, I thought I would share how and why I got into tarot, how I use it in my business and the resources I use.
Goals, Mindsets and Word of the Year for 2020
Here is the second part of my end of year ritual, moving on from the review of the old year by taking those insights and turning them into positive changes or actions for the new one. (By the way, if you’ve not yet read my review of 2019 this post will be more enriched by the detail in there!).
2019 Year Review: The ‘Difficult Second Album’ Year
Sometime around October the thought struck me: “boy, my year in review is going to be quite an epic this year.” My year bounced from burn out to heartbreak to bereavement; I made £20k less than I did last year; I spent a lot of the year not trusting myself, not committing to decisions and flip-flopping over every little thing.
Loneliness and the Lies We Tell
When we first told the family we were moving away, my mum told me “you’ll be lonely”. And of course, from that point on, I was adamant I wouldn’t be.
The Work/Life Graph
I’ve been thinking a lot about balance lately, and trying to figure out how to inject more living into my life. I love my work a little too much, so much so that it has become more or less all I think about, talk about and do with my days.
Postcards From Bruges, A Slow Travel Guide
We got the train to Bruges, an affair infinitely more civilised than air travel. Although the Eurostar trains are sleek are modern, there is still a hint of the golden age of travel in the air as, laden with luggage, you saunter along the platform toward your cross-continental journey (this is not the ‘stick your elbows out to get a seat’ train travel we’re used to on the West Coast mainline).
2018 Year Review: The Crazy First Full Year In Business
2018 was a big year for Simple & Season by anyone’s standards. I made the equivalent of my old salary…and then doubled it. I won the Blogosphere Business Influencer of the Year award.
On Being Brave In Your Work
In the middle of June I went to the Blogtacular conference in London, an opportunity to go listen to some talks and meet some online chums. As always, in the break after sessions people ask what talk you’ve just been to and whether it was any good.
5 Simple Living Shifts For Summer
What kind of a season is summer? With it's endless, cloudless days, sticky drips of ice cream and overhead buzz and flutter of transient birds and insects? It's a season, to me, of both rest and projects. After a spring of 'hustle' and growth there is now space and opportunity to enjoy the fruits of that labour, while this same space reinvigorates inspiration and creativity and brings new ideas to the fore.
How To Plan Your Own Micro-Adventures - with Victorinox*
[Sponsored content] Over the last month I’ve been undertaking a series of micro-adventures as part of Victorinox’s Modern Pathfinder campaign, and you know what? It’s been one big realisation for me about this whole simple living thing. I’ve written before about how I always feel like I need to be doing more in order to be slow living ‘properly’, and this is something I find very difficult to shake.
A 'Follow Your Curiosity' Weekend Getaway
How I’ve been agonising about the first line of this post! How to communicate in a pithy hook of a sentence the magnitude of a weekend spent in deep conversation and contemplation, following creative curiosity and changing my whole approach and understanding of my work. On this weekend I learned so much about myself and how my past is still affecting my present, and took away some really life-transforming lessons.
Why Is Slow Living So Hard To Write About?
It’s been quite a while since I’ve written anything lifestyle-y here (and completely ignoring my own advice about balancing content in the process). Over the last few months I’ve found it really hard to come up with ideas for writing about slow living. When I’m talking about marketing I’ve got it down; I know exactly what I want to say, what people want to hear and how I can provide value.
8 Easy Ways To Boost Your Soup - with Centrepoint's The Big Broth*
How many times have you looked at a bowl of soup and thought that it’s actually going to save your life? Perhaps when you’ve been poorly and through the piles of tissues and cloud of germs a loved one emerges carrying a bowl of steaming nourishment.