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 Messages In Disappointment
At the end of April, I felt pretty indestructible. I was fitter than I had ever been in my life, climbing mountains with ease and following the daily yoga practice I’d aimed for for years. I’d just turned 30 and had made my list – and as part of that list I’d booked a guided trip to do the Welsh 3000s at the end of June. I was excited to start training, and excited for a summer working through my list and being out in the green hills and woods.
Life Lessons From The Mountainside
You may have noticed that I spent much of January and February up a hillside. I walked every day that it wasn’t completely pouring with rain. I studied the map and walked every route from the front door at least twice. I started January with a bit of a pant going up a slope, and ended February 783m up a mountain.
Guilt and Balance: Breaking The Productivity Addiction
When I was going through the responses to my annual survey, I began to see the same struggle coming up over and over again: guilt. More specifically, guilt about not being productive enough, whilst simultaneously not taking time for oneself: “I WANT more balance, but I always seem to feel guilty when I’m not at my desk”. Over and over, in different words and in different ways people were chastising themselves for not working more, doing more, achieving more – and not being more balanced.
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.
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.
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.
5 Simple Living Shifts For Spring
Spring is the season that brings promise. More than any other it feels pregnant with opportunity and promise both in life and work, and for me, it’s the time where I feel that my energy and that of the world around me are most in sync.
Winter In The Mountains
When we first moved to Snowdonia, I’d only really experienced it in summer. And we’d always been really lucky; the odd gloomy day but more often than not roaring sunshine, the sea sparkling turquoise and the white beaches giving the Bahamas a run for their money.