Tag: Lifestyle

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Pandemic Pause (Part 3)

Facing a worldwide pandemic was scary, facing the ridiculous stock-piling crisis that followed it was scary but, when Boris Johnson told us cafes had to close and I was able to stop worrying about being a huge infection risk to my family, the relief was immense. I write this post very conscious of the awful time some people had in lockdown but, I think for a lot of people (including me), it was like someone had pressed pause on everything that had previously crammed into our days and we finally had space to breathe.

It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t smooth-sailing. Two weeks in and I had to move out of the place I was living. It wasn’t allowed, but I didn’t have a choice. I packed up my car and my dog and sneaked to my sister’s house in the night.

I then had to find a way to live harmoniously with the sister I’d not lived with since she was fifteen and her husband and their 5 month old son. I am so, so grateful they let me stay, and I’m eternally gifted with being there for my nephew’s first crawl, first steps, first hug and kiss, first words. And there were beautiful days of barbecues and baby cuddles and standing bare-footed in the kitchen preparing salads and marinades and me washing up while my sister dried. And then there were days when the baby had woken us all at 4am and no-one could get along and I felt like sisters just maybe shouldn’t live together.

I was sleeping in my brother-in-law’s study and, like so many others, he was now working from home so I had to make myself scarce in working hours. I put my notebooks and pens in a box and spent my days writing in the conservatory, sporadically interrupted by my sticky nephew bringing me toys and wanting to type on my laptop and my dog who panicked the baby would get all the attention and needed some reassuring fusses and my sister who needed some actual conversation.

In some ways, I’m very well designed for lockdown: an introvert with a time-consuming creative hobby that involves staying in the same place all day. But, like everyone, I struggled with the massive change my life had undergone.

I was saved by the aspects of my routine that couldn’t change. My nephew woke us up bright and early and my dog needed a walk morning and evening, I need coffee at 11am (fact) and my brother-in-law worked Monday to Friday which gave us all a residual sense of working time and weekend-relaxing time.

And my writing. My writing saved me even when I had neglected it for all this time. I suddenly had the time to write. Loads of it. More than I could even use. But I didn’t just jump out of bed every day, full of beans, and skip into the conservatory to type merrily all day.

Obviously.

But, with little else to fill my time, I tried to write every day and, with that level of perseverance, I did learn two essential lessons that I have carried with me as “normality” returns.

The first is my need for external accountability. The magical Caroline Donahue (check her out on Instagram @carodonahue because she’s great and her podcast is amazing) did something incredible during lockdown and reached out to anyone who needed it. She started running an Instagram live every weekday called the Quarantine Writers’ Retreat. Every day, by 3, I had to have words on the page. We’d set ourselves targets and share them with the group and, every day, we’d check in. I asked Caroline to hold me accountable and she really did, calling me out by name. We’d confess we’d actually spent the morning making cakes instead, or proudly show off our thousands of words, or sympathise when someone couldn’t find the headspace to create that day.

Because, with few demands on my time, I was realising I will always naturally prioritise the things other people expect of me. All this time at home and at work I had been cramming my days with everything I could do to help others at the expense of what I wanted to do and then feeling guilty when I hadn’t got my writing done again. I kept thinking if I changed jobs, if I worked fewer hours, if only I could protect my time from the demanding employer, then I’d get more writing done, only to find I filled it with cooking more elaborate dinners for whoever I lived with, taking my dog for longer walks, agreeing to meet more friends, for longer. In lockdown, I learned to harness this weakness and make it a strength. All I needed was someone who would expect me to write every day. If someone else expects it of me, I will do it.

The second thing I learned is how valuable it is to surround yourself with other writers. If you don’t have any writer friends in real life (and I didn’t really then), you can connect with people online (Instagram has a beautiful and supportive writing community) or take writing classes, or listen to writing podcasts or read books on writing. This is something I really invested my time in during lockdown and the effect of it is amazing. It makes you feel like you are working on writing like it’s your job, good old-fashioned career development. It’s also a powerful motivational tool. When you hear from other writers about what they’re doing, what works and doesn’t work for them, the goals they’ve hit and their achievements, the inspiration is strong.

It felt like a cheat at first. It felt like I was still not a real writer because I had to have someone else thinking of it for me, inspiring me, making me sit down and type, but then, when it worked, I thought, who cares if it’s a cheat?!

The challenge with both of these methods is being brave enough to go out to strangers and identify yourself as a writer, to tell people what you really want to achieve. That’s, I think, what prevented me from learning this sooner. The thought of saying it out-loud to someone, the thought of the potential for them to see me fail, was (and still is) utterly terrifying. But, the biggest thing lockdown did for me, was give me a taste of what it was to be a full-time writer. And I can’t forget that taste. I always knew I wanted it but now I know I can’t settle for anything else. And, having learned from the people who are living the life I want, I know what I need to do.

When I was struggling to protect my boundaries at work before lockdown, it was because I didn’t think I could justify prioritising my writing until I was a real writer. And what made a real writer? Why a publishing deal, a literary agent, book-signings and readings and festivals and book tours of course! All the things I couldn’t control. But the old adage applies: a real writer writes. And defends their writing time against everything else.

I can’t control whether an agent or a publisher will like my work or see a place for me on their books. All I can control is how I use my time. Do I want to use my time working extra shifts, or do I want to use it working on my writing career by writing?

So, when “normal” life began to return, and I went back to full-time employment and all the demands that go with it, it was with the understanding that, if I don’t honour my time to write, no-one will. (And a bag of sneaky writing tricks to help me along the way!)

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Pandemic Pause (Part Two)

The country has gone into lockdown and the café I’m working in is still open.

One morning, I opened the café bright and early but my colleague was late. When she arrived, she told me she slept in because she’d had a rough couple of nights with a cough and a temperature. But, she said, “I feel fine now, I don’t think I was really ill, I think I’m just run down. I don’t think it’s the virus or anything. And, anyway, I can’t afford to go off sick – I only just earn enough to pay the rent as it is!”

Because that’s how it was for a lot of people. If your employer didn’t take the decision to furlough you, then you had to keep working. The idea of taking two weeks off work, “just in case,” meant you probably wouldn’t get sick pay (because, no doctor’s note) and you’d have lost half your monthly salary. There was no covid-testing then.  So, I do not condone the choice my colleague made at all, but I totally get the place the decision came from.

Ten minutes later, I was in the stock room when I heard shouting. I ran back to the bar to find my colleague passed out on the floor.

Ok, so for anyone who’s watched any zombie apocalypse films at all (and I’ve watched almost all of them!), this is always the kind of thing that happens when the virus first starts to hit. Now I was officially freaking out a little bit.

Over the next few days everyone called in sick. Within days, the only full-time members of staff still coming in were me and my manager and we were still operating 6.30-5. She asked Head Office if we could close but they said no. She told me I could go home if I wanted because, at that point, everyone was really scared for their families and I was living with my disabled mum and diabetic dad. But I could see her mental health was shot and I was concerned for her too. I couldn’t leave her working on her own during a pandemic.

“No, we’ll see this out together. Surely, they’ll have to let us close soon. Surely, the government will do something, they can’t be this unaware of people in non-essential, minimum-wage jobs!”

We were told to dramatically cut our stock. Stop ordering food. But, still, remain open. The only customers who came in now were the die-hard regulars and the pandemic-deniers. The people who would actively not wash their hands, or keep their distance, or stay home if they were sick, or respect our boundaries. The people who would lean across the bar (no screens then) and tell us face to face (no masks either) Coronavirus is a myth before touching everything in the shop (no hand sanitiser) and leaving us annoyed, frustrated and anxious.

The trouble was, even the people who cared about us, really didn’t help. My parents kept telling me I shouldn’t put up with it. “You should tell customers when they cross boundaries like that,” “You should tell Head Office you won’t put up with this treatment,” (my Dad wrote an anonymous, furious email to Head Office) but, when you’re emotionally wrung out already, the last thing you have the energy to do is engage in repeated verbal battles with opinionated adults, or stand up against the massive, faceless corporation that pays your wages.

And I guess that’s what I was starting to realise about protecting boundaries. I had decided my law career was getting in the way of my writing because it took up all my time and energy, so I walked away. But, what I hadn’t yet realised, is that changing your job, or even reducing your hours, is not enough. You still need the emotional fortitude to defend your choice against all the other demands on your time. At this moment, I was sure I wanted to be a writer more than anything but, whilst I couldn’t point to tangible evidence of its value (a publishing deal, an agent setting deadlines, any kind of income at all) I didn’t feel I could justify putting it ahead of the job that made me money, the team that depended on me, or the family and friends who wanted to spend time with me.

Then, at last, Boris Johnson made an announcement.

I was still in my uniform from work, leaning on my parents’ dining room table, the crumbs and grain of the wood pressing into my arms, when I heard the words I’d been longing to hear, “all cafés must close.”

The euphoric relief.

My work WhatsApp group went berserk. Head Office sent out an email explaining how we would be paid during furlough. At that point, we thought it might just be four weeks or so before normality returned but it didn’t matter.

In that moment, I felt like a kid leaving school for the summer holidays and the freedom stretched all the way to the horizon.

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Pandemic Pause (Part 1)

When I started my new job in the café, I was so grateful to have work, let alone a job that didn’t come home with me like law did, I didn’t even think of having to set boundaries. I was so sure that, from now on, my writing career was my absolute priority, but I hadn’t worked out yet how to defend that priority from the demands of the work that paid my salary.

The thing with café work is that it attracts teenagers looking for their first job, students looking to fill a gap year or a summer holiday, people who can spare a couple of days a week and just need to make some money. So, if you’re willing to work full time and you look like you’re here to stay, you rise fast.

Within a month, I had a promotion, a pay-rise and a strong and enjoyable place within the team. After three months, I had the prospect of becoming assistant manager to the manager I really liked, and a steady 40-45 hour working week that ate up all my time and energy. At best, I spent one day a week writing and, at worst, I didn’t write at all. Progress on my novel was slow and stuttering and I felt a constant sense of guilt for not prioritising it like I said I would and a growing imposter syndrome for having claimed my identity as a writer and then, almost immediately, almost entirely, stopping writing.

In my previous jobs I had worked through every lunchbreak, I’d worked overtime without pay, I’d worked nights and weekends for so long that I didn’t actually know how to stop. I couldn’t even feel the boundaries being crossed anymore so how was I supposed to defend them?

At the café, we would be short-staffed and my manager would ask if I could possibly work 6 days that week? Just as a one off? Yes, ok, I guess, it’s only one week. Then, on my one day off, someone would call in sick and no-one else could cover the shift. Well, ok then, I don’t want the team to struggle.

We stopped getting paid fifteen minutes after the café closed but that wasn’t nearly enough time to clean so, as the shift leader, I’d always end up sending the more junior staff members home when the pay stopped and I would stay late (and unpaid) to make sure the shop would be ready for whoever opened up the next morning (which might well be me). Bleary-eyed, I’d be behind the bar and ready to serve at 6.30am having only locked up the night before at 7.30pm. Days blurred into weeks and weeks into months and I would realise I hadn’t even opened my laptop. The demands of work were right out of control and I had no idea how to stop them.

Why had I left law again? So my job didn’t take over my life right? So I could prioritise writing right? Wasn’t that it? But when had I last written anything?

Eventually, I spoke to my manager and asked if I could go down to a four-day working week. She winced but I knew she would find a way of making it work if I insisted. This was important. I wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t important. But I also knew how much she struggled with the rotas each week. I compromised: “I’ll work all the long shifts – I’ll still do a 35 hour week, just condensed within four days.” But I knew I hadn’t timed this well, an experienced team member had just left and her replacement hadn’t even started yet, I hedged: “It doesn’t have to be right away. After the new person starts, after she’s been fully trained.” And so even my big, bold attempt at setting boundaries crumbled away. When the new person had settled in, someone else left and we were short-staffed again. OK, I thought, I’ll cut my hours when their replacement has been trained. But then someone else would leave and the cycle would go on.

Seven months passed and I felt as settled into the situation as if I had been doing it for years. Seven months and I was used to my 40-45 hour week on my feet. Seven months and I was depended on by the team. Seven months and my writing had ground to a halt.

I kept thinking I needed to get myself together, I needed to make a change that would mean I was writing regularly again but, then I’d think, a real writer wouldn’t be in this situation. A real writer would always make time to fit writing in every day, a real writer would always have the energy for it, a real writer wouldn’t sleep in on their one day off but would be up at dawn and tapping away on the keyboard. A real writer would bash out 500 words while her uniform went through the spin cycle. A real writer would say no to meeting her friend for a coffee, or walking with her sister, because she had to focus on the next chapter of her book. If I wasn’t able to do these things, maybe I just wasn’t a real writer.

But then something wildly unpredictable happened.

The pandemic hit.

I was in Germany when northern Italy went into lockdown. It was weird. A little bit scary. But mostly, a problem abroad right? I’d heard a bit about this virus in China but viruses happen all over the world all the time. It was curious it had spread to Italy, but nothing to worry about.

In the UK we have this islander’s viewpoint with no real sense of connection to any of our neighbours. So, when Italy went into lockdown, the Germans I was spending time with were talking of neighbours who had family there, friends who holidayed there, family who worked there but, to me, it all felt like a very distant curiosity. Things that happen in Europe don’t cross the English Channel. Fact.

The next day I happily hopped onto a train in Munich and travelled to Frankfurt, then Brussels, then London, then Gatwick, then home. There were moments when someone coughed and everyone looked at them suspiciously, but it was nothing serious, nothing to really worry about.

The next week two friends of mine had their civil partnership ceremony and I celebrated my 31st birthday. I was out for meals and drinks and then, suddenly, the virus had crossed the border. (Brought over by lackadaisical travellers like me, sorry!)

Pubs and restaurants closed, ceremonies were off, everyone seemed to be working from home or being furloughed (had anyone else in the UK ever even heard that word before!?) but cafés were still going. The government hadn’t specifically said they had to close. They said selling food was an essential service and there was to be no sitting in. So, Head Office gave a thumbs up, we sell toasties, we can do take-away only, we’re staying open!

Everyone was pretty scared, but it was only going to get scarier.

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5 Things My Dog Taught Me

We were at the park, and she was quite young, and everything there was more exciting than me. I called to her and she ignored me. The rabbit scent trails, the dropped food-scraps, the squirrels, the lost balls, the other park users, they were much too interesting to leave behind. I was having a bad week and I was tired and I had places to be and the last thing I needed was a stroppy dog wanting five more minutes’ play time when it was time to go home. I called her again and again and still, she didn’t come. Eventually, I found myself standing in the middle of a public space yelling at an animal until my throat hurt. (Who was the embarrassing one in this pairing anyway?)

After a while, I was too tired to shout anymore. I sat on a bench and put my head in my hands. “Come on, please be reasonable.” I moaned, “If you could just stop doing this and come here, I can stop shouting at you and we can enjoy the rest of our walk home.” (She has a very advanced vocabulary). I looked up and there she was, sitting on the grass in front of me, and it hit me.

Everything is better when you speak with love and compassion. That means being patient, not losing your temper, and giving praise when someone tried even if they failed. (And talk to yourself that way too)

How many times in your life have you felt like approaching the furious, screaming lady? And how much more likely would you be to approach the calm, patient parent?

I, of course, still lose my temper and forget this lesson sometimes. But, from that day on, I have tried hard to remember that speaking gently gets a better, quicker response than yelling. It works with small children too. And with yourself.

When I drag my reluctant body out of bed in the morning and force myself to run. And when that run is a fiasco from start to finish (the desire to vomit, the dripping sweat, the point where you’re running up the hill and an old lady with a walking stick casually overtakes you). Those are the times where I could find fault, I could think I should be doing better, but I try not to. I try to feel proud that I made it out to run at all and pushed myself to do more than I thought I could. (Before I collapse onto the floor and pant for half an hour.)

And that’s the other thing I’ve learned:

Nature makes us better. Get outside, every day, no matter what.

Even if it’s pouring with rain. Even if it’s so icy cold it makes your sinuses sting (anyone else get that?). I have never regretted the time I have spent outside in nature, but I have regretted the times I didn’t go out. Even if it was just so Daisy could stick her nose into a hedge. Because that’s her thing. Every morning we walk past the same hedge. Every morning she puts her face into the same gaps, the same rabbit holes, she carefully inspects every piece of litter thrown from passing cars, she gets excited whenever the same sheep or rabbit or neighbourhood cat moves through the branches and makes the leaves shake. Every day this hedge is fascinating. Her tail alters weather systems with the amount it wags and her ears practically vibrate with the sounds they are pricking for. This is the excitement and fascination I would like to approach life with, even if it’s the same hedge I walked past yesterday and every day for the last 9 years.

Because everything is interesting. Take your time. Enjoy the view. Smell the air. Be curious.

And this is something I’ve explored a lot so far on this blog.

Life is not about survival: give time to the things that make your life worth living. You are in control of how you spend your time – choose well.

I was running late. Anyone who knows me IRL will know I’m always running late. The thing is, no matter how much of your life you spend being late, you never really get used to it. At least, I don’t. I hate being late for things; the anxiety and stress it causes sucks. But, I’m just not very good at not being late. Especially when I don’t really want to be wherever it is I’m going. Which was the case that morning. Being late for work would be an uncomfortable experience for everyone (most of all me) but being at work at all was so unpleasant my body seemed to resist the experience at every step of my morning routine.

But now, I was finally ready to go, finally running for the door. And there she was, on the door mat with her big soppy spaniel eyes looking dejectedly at me.

“Oh no Dais, I don’t have time for this!”

And she rolled onto her back and put her little rabbity paws in the air and waited for me to rub her white fluffy belly.

And I thought: what would I wish I had done more of in life when I’m on my death bed?

Because there is no chance I will ever wish I had been more punctual for work. But there is every chance that I would wish I had given more time to connect with the people I love. Whether that’s going for coffee with a friend or babysitting my nephew or rubbing my dog’s belly.

So I rubbed her belly. And she was comforted. And I was very late to work. And, well, we all know how that worked out don’t we?!

But that’s the thing about dogs, they never hesitate before asking for something they want. They never think that it might be better not to ask in case the answer’s no and they have to face rejection. Daisy asked for a belly rub as soon as the thought struck her. Every day, hundreds of times a day, she asks for what she wants. And sometimes the answer is no. But it doesn’t deter her from asking the next time she feels a need. But humans are so frightened of rejection that it often stops us asking, or taking a risk. And it’s not an irrational fear, rejection hurts. But isn’t it worth an occasional rejection for the number of times we might get the thing we’ve asked for?

Fear can unnecessarily stop you having great adventures.

My dog is an anxious little beast. The first time she ever saw a rabbit, she jumped out of her feathery skin and ran behind my legs. She won’t step into water unless she knows she can keep her paws on the bottom. She won’t walk over bridges or up staircases if they have gaps in them (even tiny, tiny gaps that an ant wouldn’t fall through). And she won’t trust a bridge if it’s not at least twice her width (which makes the hundreds of planks over streams we encounter impassable). She doesn’t like the sound of the metal sticks my Mum uses to walk with, or the wheels of her mobility scooter, and she jumps whenever a branch brushes her unexpectedly from behind, or a feather falls through the air in front of her nose. (Oddly though, she’s hard as nails when it comes to loud bangs like fireworks, thunder and gunshots…)

It is my dearest wish that I could one day take her on my paddleboard but, to do that, I’d have to spend a long time helping her over her fear of water (the feel of it, the movement of it and the sound of it) and then get her used to the concept of floating things (she seems to think anything that floats is witchcraft to be barked at and avoided at all costs). But think of the wonderful adventures we could have if she wasn’t afraid of everything!

And then I think about the times I’ve been afraid. Afraid of publishing a blog post for over a decade. Afraid of telling people I wanted to be a writer. Afraid of being single. Afraid of allowing myself the vulnerability of falling in love. Afraid of travelling abroad. Afraid of asking to reduce my hours at work so I could focus on writing. Even afraid of admitting that I’m afraid sometimes.

And how are these fears any more rational than Daisy’s? How many times have they been justified? And how many adventures and opportunities have I missed out on because I was too afraid to even test the water?

So, in nine years, I’ve taught her to understand me (mostly) and how to live alongside me. And she has taught me so, so much more about what it is to live a happy life, and maintain loving, functional relationships and how to provide more than a creature’s basic needs (including my own).

What have you learned from the animals around you?

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While the Light Lasts

I was sitting cross-legged on the sleeping bag on my air bed, my spaniel snoozing fitfully beside me. Neither of us had slept well for days. The air bed was too squashy, the forest floor beneath it too sloped, the woods around us filled with unfamiliar night-time noises so, if I slept through them, Daisy woke me in her uncertainty. And, to top it all off, it had rained for three days. Everything was damp. Damp and muddy.

So, that afternoon, while the warmth of the day crept into our forest home, she slept and I listened to the drips from the branches above onto canvas and tried to check my emails on my phone.

There was beauty here. Deep green light filtered through the tree canopy and made the earthy pine needle scent rise off the spongey forest floor. And, last night, there had been a lull in the constant rainfall. Enough of a lull to light the carefully protected firewood and sit by the flames and let the night fall around my shoulders.

And, the day before, I had taken a pilgrimage to the home of one of my heroes: Agatha Christie. A talented, insanely prolific writer who also lived the fullest life. If you doubt what I’m saying here, look it up, she did everything and wrote hundreds of books too.

I took a boat down the river to her boathouse. To the green slope up to her home. To its creamy yellow walls and valley view. And, afterwards, when my clothes were hanging off me with rain, and Daisy’s fur had become slick to her skin, a café in the nearby town welcomed us both and gave Daisy treats and let us sit and steam until we’d dried and one of the staff even leant me his phone charger so I could re-awaken my dead mobile.

So, you see, there was beauty and memories and inspiration and companionship and generosity and kindness. Just as in the last six months of my life there had been beauty and encouragement and inspiration and adventure. But I was struggling too.

After taking six months out of work to pursue writing, my life would never be the same again. I would never be the same again. But, here I was at the end of that time and I had a book, and hope, and new courage and a collection of amazing, terrifying experiences, and a gaping overdraft and no savings left and no job.

Because that’s the truth of it sometimes. You can pursue your dreams, you can give your time to what you love, but you still need to make money, you still need to support yourself, and you still need to go outside even when it’s raining.

So, I sit on my lumpy sleeping bag beside my tired dog under damp canvas and I summon all the data I can to check my emails because, before I came here, I saw a sign in a shop window: staff wanted. Before I came here, I put together a CV and sent it over.

And then it comes through. Can I come in for an interview?

Because, although it’s not the dream to work for a chain of coffee shops in your thirties while living with your parents (it’s really, really not) sometimes you need to go out in the rain to do what you love.

P.S “While the Light Lasts” is a short story by Agatha Christie and, I think, one of the best things she wrote. Read it if you can.

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The Black Forest Adventure

So far, this blog has been about doing big scary things. I have abandoned my law career for six months of voluntary unemployment in order to actively pursuing my writing career. But, doing the big scary things made me wonder about the small ones too. I suddenly started thinking of all those things I had said I’d like to do, or to try, and chickened out, or made excuses about why I couldn’t do them even though I’d like to. I started exploring the option of actually just doing them. After all, what’s the worst that could happen? I signed up for evening classes, I took up running and ran a 10km mud run and I began to dream of even more challenging adventures. I had always wanted to travel but, growing up in a family where our annual holiday was always under canvas and always within the UK, it seemed a daunting prospect; too daunting until now.

In May, I booked a seat on a cheap flight and set off, alone, for the first time. I wasn’t brave enough to go totally solo yet so I met my sister in Germany and, together, we disappeared into the woods for a two day hike. 28 miles over the first, third and fourth highest peaks in the Black Forest.

The closest I had ever come to this was a three day hike with my Dad on the South Downs when I was in primary school and my sister had never even come that close. Between us we had two broken pairs of boots, one borrowed map, one cheap rucksack, and one no-longer-waterproof raincoat (my sister bought one on sale the morning we set off so we eventually had one each).

We knew we wanted to mostly stick to the WestWeg path and we had made a booking at a guest house on top of the Stübenwasen for that night and that was the sum total of our knowledge setting out.

So, inexperienced and ill-equipped, bellies full of creamy, cheesey käsespätzle, we set off, climbing up the slopes through the pines.

The first day, we had to cover 16 miles and climb the highest peak: Feldberg. Our trail wound past chocolatey-red squirrels and flat stones piled up in precarious stacks and lonely houses with the chalk markings of Epiphany scrawled above their doors. We walked fast because we had no idea how long the walk would take us and, the further we walked, the more dangerous nightfall in the forest felt.

Eventually we made it to Feldsee; a circular, glacial lake like a thumbprint pressed into the side of the mountain. On almost all sides the crystal water reflects layers of pines towering over it up the dazzlingly steep sides of the Feldberg. And, above the trees, rises the pointed, snowy peak of the mountain itself. Everything we had seen so far had been beautiful but it was worth the march through it to get to this point. It is everything you hope to discover on a Black Forest adventure.

After lingering in the lustre of Feldsee for a while, we curved around the shore of the lake and into the forest once more, zigzagging up the side of the mountain. Trees had fallen across the way and rockfalls had made the route invisible in some places but we scrambled our narrow path up, trying to ignore the perpetual drop beside us down to the milky-blue water below.

At last, we came out into the snowy open and, weary now, approached the wooden veranda of the café on the way to the Feldberg’s summit. It was closed. Windows shuttered and door locked. We flopped down onto one of the wooden benches outside and anxiously stretched out the map to check our route.

There was a young man nearby chain-smoking and building a handrail out of thin silver birch trunks with their silvery skins still intact. After a moment he approached and asked if we would like something to eat. We said we would, but the café was closed. He held up a key and smiled, “what would you like?”

We sat with chips and hot chocolates and slices of apfelkuchen wrapped up for the journey and the sun came out from behind the clouds and gleamed off the snow and warmed our arms and faces. It was a glorious moment but we could see the sun was getting lower in the sky and we still had miles to go.

We now walked at the highest point of the forest and the views were stunning. We crunched through snow along the top of the world, looking across the valleys gilded with the light of golden hour and counting seven layers of blue mountains in the distance. The wonder of what we had seen so far filled us and we still had more to see: a golden statue of Jesus on the cross rising from the mountain-top, a capercaillie performing to his would-be mate at the edge of the tree-line and the sound of his cane-dropping call. Then, eventually, we rounded a corner and saw the welcoming wooden face of our guest house.

Not a moment too soon either. By the time we had deposited our rucksack in our room beneath the eaves and settled at the table in the bar with cups of hot black tea, night had fallen over the mountain and rain began to beat the earth outside and the roof above.

We fell asleep that night with the rain as our soundtrack, content with hot showers and clean sheets and tired legs.

The next morning, we enjoyed a classic German breakfast: boiled eggs, an array of bread rolls, cheese and cream cheese and jams and Nutella and apple puree and muesli. I love the simplicity and the variety in a German breakfast buffet and, for me, breakfast is an elastic feast – best stretched out for as long as possible. But, there was more of the world to see, so we packed our one bag and set off again.

It had rained all night and streams ran down the mountains and cut across our path. The mountains sat in cloud and, all day, we walked with only the ghosts of trees and the soft drips through leaves onto the scented pine needle floor for company.

It became eery. In some places, the pristine trees gave way to the venting ground for angry giants; trees split half way up, bark shreds hanging down like streamers, some fallen into others and some hanging two or three feet from the ground.

At one point were curving up a mountain on a logging track, a rockface rising up to our left and a severe drop through the trees on our right. Suddenly, a roaring sound like the wind rushed upon us from behind. We turned and the dazzling headlights of a logging truck burst through the mist as it tore, full speed towards us. We flattened ourselves against the rockface just in time and it blazed on up the track and out of sight, unaware we were ever there.

Our isolation continued all day. Even the café we planned to stop at for lunch was closed and, when we detoured a kilometre off the trail to another one we came up against more bolted doors and shuttered windows. We sat, a little demoralised, on a small bench and ate the heart-shaped shortbread biscuits we had in our rucksack instead.

Going on through the mist we sang songs to distract us from the ache in our feet and in our stomachs and dreamed of the strudel and the cable car that awaited us at the top of the Belchen – our final mountain to climb. And, as it turned out, our steepest climb yet.

The path criss-crossed tightly all the way up. Fallen trees and huge root networks, as well as the swollen streams and waterfalls that had developed overnight, meant we had to scramble our way up using our hands now as well as our feet.

Eventually, the path stopped rising and, instead, curved round what seemed to be a plateau.

“Are we at the top?” My sister asked but I didn’t know. Visibility had been limited to no more than two metres all day and I couldn’t tell if we were even on the right mountain, let alone at the top. We moved along the trail, the white blankness of our surroundings unnerving now we couldn’t even discern the trunks of trees or hear any streams crossing our path or trickling beside us. We were two lone explorers and we didn’t even know what we were exploring. It started to press in on us that we hadn’t seen a single other human being all day. (Unless you count the one driving the truck that nearly ran us down but neither of us really saw them.)

Suddenly, out of the wet white air, loomed a huge man-made structure: a smooth curved metal zephyr-thing hanging still, and silent, in the space in front of us. It was like coming across an abandoned building on an alien planet. The cable cars. And they weren’t running. The restaurant we found behind them also had its lights out and door locked.

Still, at least we knew we had made it to the right place. We had reached our final summit.

Now, we just had no choice but to walk down the other side.

As we walked it began to rain hard. We were both tired now. It had been an adventure for sure but, when we finally reached a road at the bottom of the mountain, we stopped the first bus that came and got gratefully aboard without even knowing where it was going.

We sank into the bus seats and looked through steamy windows at the views we had been walking over all day on our path in the clouds. They were beautiful. Wide valleys of sweeping grass slopes, white-walled buildings with pointed red-tiled roofs, sandy brown cows with doleful eyes and bells around their necks.

The bus reached a train station and we stumbled on seizing legs onto the platform and the first train we saw. We meandered our way home on three more trains and, eventually, supermarket pizzas in hand, walked the last road to our base camp.

We had done it. We had pushed ourselves physically and emotionally further than we imagined we could go and it had worked. My feet hurt, my brain hurt, my back hurt and my stomach clawed at itself in hunger but, honestly, I couldn’t stop grinning. Even at the top of the Belchen facing disappointment and isolation and uncertainty I couldn’t help but feel elated.

If I could rise to this challenge as ill-equipped and inexperienced as I was, maybe I could do anything.

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The Writing Experiment (Part 3/3)

September

It had all been gearing up to this. This was the moment that would decide my future: was I cut out to be a writer, or had I just wasted a decent law career, six months of work and thirty years of dreaming?

I know that sounds dramatic. But that is how it felt; packing up my car with all my most flamboyant clothes and earrings (because that’s how writers dress isn’t it?) and hundreds of notebooks and pens ready to learn everything I could from the real writers at the festival. I had my coffee and my playlist for the road and I set out to York.

The agents had my submissions, they would have read them by now, already formed their opinions, they were ready to tell me: success, or failure.

I walked into my meeting with Agent One undecided if I would be able to speak or if I would just vomit on the desk in front of her. I refrained from vomiting. She was nice. She loved my style and prose but wasn’t blown away. Ok. Well, she didn’t laugh at me or tell me to give it up, but she wasn’t that reassuring either.

Later that day another agent read my work and gave me feedback. This was a bonus chance – an opportunistic moment for unplanned feedback. After talking to Agent Two I went back to my room to have a secret cry. She was lovely but she really didn’t get my book. Said she didn’t see how my idea was unique. It was not for her.

I hyperventilated my way into meeting with Agent Three. She sat across from me and beamed. She loved, loved, loved my first three chapters and my soul swooped high above the room on the lake where we sat.

But, she said, she wouldn’t have got past my synopsis if I was submitting under normal circumstances because it didn’t show why my novel was unique. My soul hit the floor hard.

Then she said the dreaded words, the words that tipped me so easily into my worst nightmare, the thing everyone talks about at writing festivals but I never worried about because I would make sure it never happened to me,

“I didn’t really get any sense of a unique selling point from your synopsis but I feel like there is one judging by your first three chapters. I wondered if you could explain to me now what makes your story unique?

What’s your elevator pitch?”

The elevator pitch. Quite possibly the worst three words an introverted novelist can hear. The succinct and perfect one sentence hook for your 100,000 word novel. The thing I have never, never ever, managed to satisfactorily create.

And now my whole success depended on it.

I opened my mouth – as dry as my hands were wet – and words came out. Words that felt like silt at the bottom of a stagnant pond. I stuttered out my sludgey pitch and waited, heart forcing its way out of my throat, for her blank stare and disappointed judgement.

“Wow!” She said, “well, if that had been in your synopsis I would have requested your full manuscript today. Is the novel finished?”

“erm, not quite,” I said, wondering if she had heard something different to what I had said, “but nearly,”

“Well, when you do finish it, please send it over to me. And, the beauty is, you don’t need to pitch it to me again because you already have!”

When I regained the feeling in my legs I walked back to my room.

I walked into that room a different person to when I had left it that morning. I walked back into that room as a writer. A writer with a plan. A non-linear, completely insane plan. But now, I realised, I was totally on board with that. My insane, non-linear plan so far had been a wild ride and I’d take the lows for the highs any day.

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The Writing Experiment (Part 2/3)

I took six months out of work to focus on my writing career and I thought it would change my writing forever. Mostly though, it changed me. I kept a diary throughout the six month experiment and I’ve compiled the highlights (and lowlights) so you can see how it all panned out.

30th March (Day 1)

Today I wrote a list. A list of things I was 100% certain I wanted. That’s 100% certain. No room for doubt or outside influence or expectation. (Try it, it’s surprisingly hard.)

My list had two entries:

  1. I want to live with my dog.
  2. I want to write.

April

I had absolutely no routine this month. I went to bed at 1 or 2 in the morning, slept late into the day, wrote sporadically and, overall, had a prevalent sense of failure and anxiety. I started this experiment desperate to escape from the life that was making me miserable but it seemed the misery was still in me and the need for escape was still very much running through my veins.

May

Something had to change to make my take this more seriously. I started actively nurturing my creative side: joined two new writing groups, spent a whole day at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre watching the history plays and I began to explore poetry – a previously highly neglected form of creativity for me.

My writing became more routine. I began to average 1,000 words a day.

I sated my need for escape by planning an adventure: my biggest yet. My first flight on my own, followed by a two-day hike through the Black Forest. I will write a post about that adventure soon. It was utterly terrifying, intensely hard and absolutely amazing.

In the airport before my flight I wrote:

“I feel full like I’m truly satisfied. I feel pregnant with possibilities. I feel open; acutely observant and expansive. For the first time in years: years and years, I feel wild.”

June

Something about risk-taking had got me hooked and I spent a lot of time riding my motorbike this month – a relatively new and frightening activity!

One afternoon I rode to my sister’s house and the journey shook me up so much, I almost chickened out and asked for a lift home. I left her house when it was dark. I put on my gear and started my bike and set off into the night. As I pulled out of her drive, there was a rumble of thunder. Within minutes I was riding through the most dramatic lightning storm I’ve ever seen.

Jagged forks of light struck the ground and strange spirals and circles of lightning popped into the darkness above me. But, somehow, riding through the lightning, I reached the eye of the storm of my own fear. The situation had become so intense I no longer felt afraid. I rode through the darkness and light, hearing the crackle of raindrops on my visor as if they couldn’t touch me, feeling completely calm. I was filled, instead, with wonder at how amazing and beautiful it all was.

I felt a powerful desire to capture it: all of the madness and beauty and my writing began to reflect this new approach to fear and beauty and freedom.

This month changed me: I never wanted to go back to life how it had been before this. Not now I knew how it felt to live life in pursuit of what I truly loved.

July

This was perhaps the hardest month I have ever experienced. It came right out of nowhere and blind-sided me. I felt intense anxiety and extreme vulnerability. I kept writing, just the same, but I had never felt more inadequate. I was 30 years old, single, unemployed, living with my parents, and had no linear plan for any aspect of my life. What’s more, my adventuring had rinsed through my savings faster than I had anticipated and I was now officially in my overdraft.

One afternoon I found myself riding to the small white chapel on a hill – the place a lot of my family are buried. It was a blistering day, well above thirty degrees, and the crickets sang loud in the long sand-coloured grass as I climbed the hill.

I sat on a bench in the tree-shade and looked at the grave of my grandfather: he spent his whole life running a farm and his family of 10 and preaching at the local church – giving his time to what mattered to him. And, a few stones down, my great aunt, who ran a health-food shop before that was even a thing, and got into politics so she could give the voiceless a voice, and poured all her energy into charity and helping anyone she saw being overlooked. I had never felt so low and so worthless.

But, when I picked myself up off that bench, walked back down the hill and rode the winding back-lanes home, I had somehow come to know deep in the core of myself that, no matter how low I felt, I could and would finish this novel.

That sense of capability in my writing, that determination, is something I had never felt certain of before.

And that sense of determination meant that, when my sister wanted to come home from Germany at the end of the month, I drove out to get her. A road-trip that marked the end of my engine stalling, and the start of moving forward no matter what.

August

One morning I rolled out of bed, groggy as hell, threw on some not-that-clean-actually clothes and wandered out to walk my dog in the park. I walked around like a shell of a woman and thought about how sorry for myself I felt. And then it happened: a strange sense of bubbling emotion deep down in the pit of my stomach, building up and up until it covered my chest and rose to my throat making me want to laugh.

Somehow, I had reached an emotional rock bottom and I felt an undeniable, effervescent joy at everything life had to offer. Now I knew I was on the right path. I knew it with the same physicality and certainty that I knew my feet were on the ground.

But, my time on this writing experiment was nearly up. Next month was judgement time: would the agents tell me I had spent my time well, or would they laugh me out of the room and tell me to go back to lawyering?

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The Writing Experiment (Part 1/3)

Finding the Wild Path

I am upstairs in the café in Debenhams during my lunchbreak, desperately working on the novel I hope will save me from the life that is making me miserable.

I don’t always get to take my break, I don’t always have a free evening, I often work weekends but, when I do get fifteen or twenty minutes spare, I work on my novel like I never have before.

 Like my life depends on it.

I sit in the hard armchair in my counsellor’s office looking for someone to tell me how to live. I know that’s not what counsellors are for but I’m desperate. We have talked about writing, we have talked about my law career, and then he says,

“What do you think would happen if you were to write full time?”

He may as well have asked the armchair for all the answer I’ll give him. I stare at him blankly. If writing full time was an option, doesn’t he think I would have taken it?

So, he says into the silence, “what would happen if you just did it for a set period of time? Say, six months?”

And then the reasoning begins – the justifications for staying in the life I can’t bear: I couldn’t! Imagine telling Mum and Dad! I might live with my parents but I still pay rent, I still have a car to run and a phone bill to pay. I’m saving to get my own place too.

And I can’t give up my job, I’d never be able to justify it to a future employer – they’d think I was weird, unreliable, flakey. I would ruin my future and deplete my savings and I’d have to stay unemployed and living with my parents forever.

And what if I did? What if I gave up work for six months to write and realised I couldn’t do it? Couldn’t finish a novel, or my writing was terrible. And how would I know? How could there possibly be some kind of quality control in place to test if the six months had been wasted or a success?

But I’m driving home and I can’t get his questions out of my head. My mind is racing miles away from the roads, my muscles feel alive with potential. I feel like I’ve just been given access to a parallel world. And, for the first time in years, there’s a bubble of hope and excitement inflating in my chest.

By the time I’m home all I can think is, if I don’t do it now, when I have the most security and the least responsibility, when would I?

For weeks I make my secret plans. I sit in court taking notes, I draft letters to clients, I drive to and from the police station and, all the time, I’m wondering how I could make it work. The bubble of excitement in my chest is unpoppable and, the more I think of the life I could have, the bigger it grows.

I think I would be more insane not to take the risk. Writing has been the longest activity of my life, my constant source of absorption, my life-long companion. And I had savings, I could use those for rent and petrol and bills.

A six month window would put Mum and Dad’s minds at ease – it would just be an experiment that way – a small intermission from real life. And, if I started now, that gave me six months before The Festival of Writing in York. The Festival offers the chance to put your work in front of literary agents for feedback; that was that quality control I was looking for. It all came together perfectly.

I presented the idea to my parents (who were mercifully accepting and probably imagined this was the start of my breakdown) and used my last pay cheque to buy a ticket to the Festival. At the end of March I was officially unemployed and my six month writing experiment began.

I was taking the gamble at last.