Learning to trust the tide

and something cool for July

I don’t know when I realised I wasn’t suited to a ‘job’ as such, but early experience in a workplace was formative for me. After a few brilliant and exciting years at everyone’s favourite running magazine Runner’s World I got a new job within Hearst (the publishing company). It was a ‘promotion’ in the sense of more money and a more impressive title, and I distinctly remember wearing a blazer and putting my high-vis trainers to one side. This woman called Tina interviewed me. All I can think of is Tina Fey but it wasn’t her, but it was a Tina with an impressive career. Like she’d work at the kind of women’s mags that help you understand the Devil Wears Prada is based on reality. But anyway she liked me and gave me the job and I was one step closer to being a powerful career woman. Did you hear when I said I had a blazer and I’m not showing off when I say it was from COS.

Only I quickly realised all the things I loved about my other job weren’t really about the work. Here were the things: wearing high vis trainers to work, prancing around talking to people and going out to buy snacks for the end of the desks, after work drinks!, having fun on Outlook, going to the kitchen to make tea, all the free stuff and traces of glamour like press trips and parties with Usain Bolt, when my boss let me write a personal article. Suddenly I was on a different floor with no friends, just my lovely intern called Emily. I loved having an intern and interviewing people for the position and the blazer and the suggestion of importance, but after a couple of weeks the novelty of walking up and down in smarter outfits wore a bit thin.

I quickly realised my job was *pointless* and made up by the company to tick a box, but ultimately completely irrelevant. No one had the time to help us and everyone else was jaded by longer in the industry. My lunchtime yoga classes were on the other hand THRIVING. When I sent out the google sheet on Monday, the spaces were filled within minutes, honestly it was like Glastonbury tickets. I charged £5 for the classes and peole paid me cash. I taught two a week and put the cash in a shoe box and it didn’t take long to get to £1000 of £5 notes, enough for a girl like me to think, I could make a job out of this. So I quit! My mum said she had no worries about me going freelance on account of my being relentless. I somehow wangled a role with ELLE magazine writing their fitness content for £1000 a month and between that and the in company yoga classes, I knew I could make it work. I hired a dance studio in Haggerston for a weekly class and made a friend at Spotify who got me a gig there and well everything kind of snowballed and before I knew it I’d quit ELLE to teach yoga full time. Something I’d now recommend to NO ONE but not the point of this story.

The point of this story is that I realised my working and productivity style was different to other peoples quite early on. Now I am actually very far from lazy, but I’m really good at doing fucking nothing. I have no guilt at how much tv I am able to watch or how many rests I need after doing a task. Believe in this shit or not, but finding out I was a projector in Human Design in recent years made a lot of sense to me. We can only work a few hours a day! By law it appears. So what I’m saying is I’ve learnt some stuff about the ocean.

It is bigger than just I can’t work for loads of hours a day, there are also the on versus off rhythms I’ve learned. Go go go, sell sell sell, works in short bursts and then I have to give it rest. Having good ideas isn’t an endless production cycle. What I’m talking about AGAIN is the fallow. We have to have the fallow. The annoying thing is the word fallow feels romantic. It feels like that book we loved but never finished, Wintering. Like making jars of preserved fruit and pickles and sweeping behind the sofa and painting skirting boards and popping another pan of fruit on the hob to make jam. It feels delicious. But in my experience it isn’t. I haven’t managed to sort out the dire mess of my wardrobe for a really long time even though I’ve had the time to do it.

Feeling stuck sometimes involves feeling stuck. ICK! And often the world mirrors the stuckness and people don’t seem to be asking you if you might like some work when you feel this way. I’m sorry, it’s energetics ok! But the one comforting truth I know is, Spring will come (Smith Gerrard), things will flow again, it will change. Your specific internal and creatve rhythm is yours. It can’t be measured against someone else’s perceived creative output. But what you can do I think is cultivate stuff gently.

I feel like I am on the cusp of recommending a Deliciously Ella recipe but number one, I would never, I’ve just always felt kind of against her. And number two, it’s our own versions of clearing out the closet. So writing a 10 page business plan isn’t the way to get out of a fallow period, but I think sitting by a window in the morning to write some pages in your notebook when you wake up starts to move the dial. Or coming back to things that make you feel something. OR, feeling something at all. Walking on the stepper in the gym with a song that makes you want to write something down. All of it is connected and that’s the whole point.

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This feeling is why I decided with two days to spare to make a space for next month. Come back to life again,July. This gentle, steady, accountability for you to write and see how doing that infiltrates your life.

All you need to join is a new refill pad and a pen you like writing with.

I will send all members a daily prompt/question/idea to a WhatsApp group and we will make a small time to write each day.

You can use the group to share in or support your accountability.

Morning pages or an evening diary entry.

There will be a cumulative effect of doing this, like going to gym.

There are going to be two live classes on Zoom (Tuesday 14th July, 7-8pm and Tuesday 29th July 7-8pm). The first about unlocking feeling and words, the second to help you move forwards with whatever you need support moving on, it might be a creative endeavour, personal project or something else. These classes will also be available as recordings for those who can’t attend live.

This month is about pouring energy and consistent time into yourself and seeing what comes from that. I know it’s hard even when it’s all you want to do.

Join us. Full price £99 or concession price £49 available, whatever works for you.

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There are also two places left in Writing is Medicine starting next Monday and running for 3 healing and invigorating months.