Hi there! I’m Karen, and here at On the Outside I write about navigating life with my compass of curiosity, courage and connection, going via adventure and healing. I live amongst the south Welsh mountains, with a hoard of books, a garden full of foxgloves, goldfinches and a gang of sparrows, drinking tea. Basically, a hobbit. Wandering, not lost.

It is difficult to write when the feelings are too big, too all-consuming and life feels more like tripping from one thing to the next, in a bid to get many things done which all need to be done at the same time, and all require significant brain energy and enough soul energy that I finish a day drained and exhausted.

I find it difficult to write here specifically when it feels like I’m stealing words from writing the book that is begging to be written, when the guilt or the shame weighs my hands down, makes it easier to hide on the sofa with mindless TV, where the effort required is less but the guilt inevitably deepens.

And yet.

I can’t pour every word into that. I need something else.

You bring to this world things no one else can. So hold on.

– Charlie Mackesy

What I’m learning

The concept of time is a fluid thing, not a straight, rigid line. When things are enjoyable, we notice that time flies. When it’s painful or boring, time crawls to a stop. When I see the curve of a single step in a spiral staircase that has been sitting here for centuries, I imagine the pairs of feet that have used them, perhaps the sweeping skirts over soft slippers, or leather boots and clashing swords. Time folds and bends, two points meeting by virtue of my perception, of my imagination.

Wollemi nobilis. The Wollemi pine. Also known as the ‘dinosaur tree’, a close cousin of the monkey puzzle tree. A tree thought to have been extinct for millions of years was discovered in 1994 in a remote gorge in Australia by chance. It lives, although it remains critically endangered, and it is being recovered, propogated and sent across the world. A tree that was living 200 million years ago with the dinosaurs.

Perhaps this tree bends time around it, a piece of living history, as we imagine dinosaurs amongst the grove. Does it smell the same as the dinosaurs might have smelled it? Does it grow as tall as it once did, is the bark as rough as it grows now? Is it relieved without giant herbivores to attempt to eat it?

This is the thing I learned today. I don’t have a Wollemi pine (although we do have monkey puzzle trees), but we are trying to plant more trees in our desperately dry garden, in a bid to create more shade and shelter. Trees are magnificent things, aren’t they? I don’t know nearly enough about them!

Reading updates

Here are some of the reads/listens of my summer so far.

Currently reading

Orbital by Samantha Harvey. I haven’t quite started it, it’s our next book for bookclub, but it’s been on my TBR for a while!

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte Mcconaghy. My current listen. I’ve enjoyed listening to this one and think it makes it different from how I might have read it, as the narrators have Australian accents. It’s a good story, and has introduced me to lots things to research, including the Wollemi pine mentioned above.

Overstory by Richard Powers. This has been a bit of a harder read, but the language, the imagery, the short chapters of wonderful little stories - it’s beautiful.

What I’m writing

My current project is getting more air time, if only with people in conversation when I’m trying to be braver and say things like ‘I’m writing a novel’. When I explain the basic premise of it, which I’ve been working on lately, everyone is interested, and even if that’s them being nice, it feels good!

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to develop the story a bit more, making sure that, while I have an idea for a premise, there’s enough of the good stuff to make a decent story out of it. Some character development, some organising of notes, retrieving old ones. It’s been brilliant fun, which I hadn’t quite expected.

Writing has, of course, taken a back seat due to my Masters degree which, I’m really proud to say, I achieved a distinction in. I did not expect that, and it feels quite gratifying after the amount of time and energy I poured into it. I’m proud, but also very glad to see the back of it!

And that’s me, until next time. Hope you enjoyed a slightly different format, with a bit of learning and a bit of speculation and a tiny update.

K x

I can tell you that the idea of writing for ten solid minutes is terrifying and gratifying.

I can tell you that it’s currently rather warm in my house, but I’m grateful that I can at least have shelter. It smells of the fresh flowers that I just received and cut and put in a vase, to stand next to a single dead rose bud which I cut from a rose bush in our garden. I still love the colour of it in death.

I can tell you that my eyes ache, and I’m tired of screens, even though I’m sitting at one right now, typing for ten solid minutes, while my dinner cooks and the sun beats against the patio doors. I can’t even hear the birds. I can definietly tell you that my typing seems extra loud, maybe it’s the haste.

I can tell you that I just mispelled a word (and again) and almost went to edit it, but wanted to get as many words down as I could before ten minutes was up. It seems like it’s not a long time, then it seems like it’s forever, then all of a sudden, it’s done and dusted.

I can tell you that my novels are burning a hole in my skull right now. I am desperate to write my characters. Both of the main ones, but a lot of my fantasy one, Keelin, she’s romping around, demanding to be heard. She always has been that way. I’m not sure why, to be honest. She morphed from an old character who was very NOT that, who was quite happy to go along with things, and honestly, now, after many years of first dreaming her up, I don’t like her. But I like Keelin. She’s more fiery. Grounded, but fiery. She just wants a quiet life. I read an excerpt earlier today whilst going through old journals. I had written a scene where she found her father dead in an old house. The memories that came up looking at the laughter lines around his eyes. Then the fear. What had happened to her mother? It fascinated me because I had completely forgotten that I’d written this and yet here it was and I was enjoying reading it. Perhaps that’s the secret to persuading myself that, actually, I can write some halfway decent things!

I can tell you that I’m fascinated by random facts, like the fact the old version of chess was called chaturanga. As a person who practices yoga, that fascinates me, because that’s the pose I tend to struggle through from plank to upward facing dog, and it’s hard, and I love being able to do it, and I know when I haven’t been doing it because I feel it. I looked up what it meant and why a board game is also the name of a yoga pose, and it meant something along the lines of four corner standing, which I’ve totally just butchered and will look up after this to remember the real meaning. The pose is two hands and two feet on the floor. (I looked it up after my ten minutes - it means four limbs.)

I can tell you that I learned that from a video which informed me of the origin of the bishop and why it has the funky little hole in the ‘hat’. It wasn’t a bishop at all, it may have began life as an elephant. I find it incredible how things change over time.

I can tell you that it’s my second hen party this weekend and I’m excited [it was actually last weekend, I’ve deliberated far too long on posting some words here!]. And also nervous. I know it will be emotional [it was]. I honestly cannot believe that there are so many people turning up to celebrate me. Me. It astonishes me.

I can also tell you that I have entertained the idea of writing something for our wedding, and it makes me choke up and rethink my ideas. (Not for any other reason than that I feel my emotions intensely and I feel this love in every fibre of my soul.)

And that was 10 minutes.

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I’ve seen, so many times, how adding constraints can actually help unlock things. On goals, on writing exercises, on anything. Having a blank page, with endless choices, is paralysing. The ten minutes, ten minutes with a prompt of ‘what can you tell me?’ seems to unlock a lot.

And that’s it, for this week. I’m trying to get more into the groove of sharing the imperfect, sharing more, practicing more at being visible (thanks to Beth Kempton’s latest journal note on Visibility which unlocked an awful lot more vulnerabilities than I had anticipated!). Action brings confidence and I’m trying to act more before I feel ready to. Truthfully, there’s an awful lot more to unpack from the last week, but that will come when it’s ready.

I’m close to the end of a two-year journey, one I never really intended to embark on. A door opened when I was looking for any particular door, not that one specifically, and I stepped through. I’ve found myself pausing at points along this journey, wondering why the scenery looks so different from what I had imagined, why my companions are not people I would normally have chosen to share life with. At times, I’ve almost given up, turned back and called for an extraction because I was fed up, blistered and done.

The end was in sight though, not that far away. I could make it.

But last week, the location of the ending became clear. It was no longer likely to be just around that next corner. Now, it was revealed as much further away, off over the horizon, out of sight.

The blisters, the morals, the fatigue, all getting worse and now I have so much further to walk than I had come to believe.

I raged, threw my hat on the ground, screamed at the sky, cried to the wind. It was unfair. I was exhausted. How could I go on? How could I face finishing this? Where’s that damn extraction button?

Get me out of here.

In the old stories, it is women who make the world; why then shouldn’t we remake it? Women are the spinners, and the weavers; no matter how deeply we lose ourselves in the dark woods, we can always picture the shining thread of the river, far off in the distance. Women know how to find the way out of the woods; we have only to remember that we know it.

– Sharon Blackie, If Women Rose Rooted

I’ve lost sight of the river. It was on my right, this whole time, that shining silver thread, every step of the way. Occasionally, it went behind a hill, but I always knew it was there, singing in my heart, the constant thrum. I could have pointed to it with my eyes closed, like the tip of my finger was pulled towards it, an invisible thread connecting me to those waters. My soul river, my clarity, my self.

I lost sight of the river. I lost it in my heart, amongst the fear that pushed me forwards to the end of this journey, amongst the stress and the need to succeed, to finish. If I could only get to the end, if I could only do that, life would be better.

Maybe it will be. I’m still not at the end. Maybe it will all fall into place then.

But will I remember where the river is, by then? Will I have lost the song in my heart?

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I don’t necessarily have the answer. Have I been on a detour? Did I stray from the path I meant to take?

I don’t think I have. It would be easy to come to that conclusion, but I choose not to. I am exactly where I need to be right now. This particular journey is just a part of something bigger, something so big that I can never see the whole of it. I choose not to believe that I am wasting time. That way lies madness.

This has been the hardest part. Letting go of my indignation, allowing myself to look for the good instead of fixate on what I’m denied or what I’ve lost. It is the overdone metaphor of the sun coming out from behind the clouds. Suddenly, there was a clear note in the air, a sparkle in the distance, and I knew where the river was again. It was a sitting down on the bench by the path, letting myself breathe and take in the view.

It was remembering what was important to me. It’s hard not to remember that when you can hear the river’s song.

I knew I was trying to win a race where I had never truly wanted the prize. Expending the energy and the time on sprinting to an end I didn’t need to reach. It was remembering that life didn’t start when I reached that; life was here and now. This part of the journey, I don’t need to sprint it, I don’t even need to stop walking it, I just needed to step back far enough, to breathe deep enough, to remember it’s all part of the same story, just a different chapter.

It’s not easy, even so, and I still have blisters and miles to go. But I’m no longer trying to sprint, I’m no longer frustrated that the ending is much further away, or trying to order that extraction to get off this path. There’s some beautiful scenery to stroll past on my way, let’s just enjoy it.

All the while, I’m relearning the river’s song. Re-acquainting myself with how it looks and sounds and feels. I know the way out of these woods, and that’s one step at a time, remembering to savour it as I go.

It’s been a funny few weeks, somewhat chaotic and, dare I say, unstable but not in a bad way. More in the sort of way where the ground has shifted, necessarily, largely because my assignments are finished (excuse me while I continue celebrating). I’m awaiting the results of the final one, the result that says whether I’ve got my Masters finally or whether I’ve got to re-do the assignment (and promptly lose the will to live).

All of that extra time that I now have, I’m remembering what’s normal. What I want to be ‘normal’. Walks are weaving back into my life, and I’m re-learning how to see. I’m struggling a bit more with translating what I see into words, and then on to here, for others to read, but I’ll get there. There’s a fear, a self-doubt. I know, however, that it’s a lack of practice; the idea of action creates confidence.

The only way to make this easier is to actually do it.

We had a week of summer in the last month, then back into weeks of rain, the nice, steady rain that soaks everything. I can hear the relief of the garden: parched roots drinking deep, the new bird bath we got is refilling naturally, the lupin leaves collecting watery pearls which they scatter on the ground in the breeze. Occasionally, the rain shifts and becomes so heavy, the world outside of my office window turns silver.

The day begins, now, with a small world outside. A world huddling under a dome of low cloud, and by the mid-afternoon I can see the cloud trailing across the hills, gently pushed up and over the mountains, leaving behind bluer skies and a bigger world, one where the sun clearly shines on the hills in the far distance.

We return from walks, occasionally coming at our house from the back, from the crest the hill, instead of trudging up the hill (wondering who on earth would buy a house at the top of it). From this different angle, I notice the mountains, the sunset, and then the clouds looking so perfectly cloud-like, they look to be plucked from a Turner, or a Constable. Turning peach at the edges, softening to that beautiful muted blue, looking genuinely fluffy and textured. I wish I could capture it with my brain, to never forget this image, this moment of perfection.

Then I recall the ephemerality of things, how some of the beauty is in the fact it is, by its nature, temporary and therefore more easily valued, more valuable, more precious. There’s almost a beauty in the sadness I feel, knowing I cannot keep this moment. This is life. This. is. life.

Then we walk down the hill, and into our home, the sunset and the clouds an echo in my heart.

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Learning is one of those things I can never quite let go of.

Insatiably curious, that’s one trait most people would say I have. I’m always studying something new. Even having just finished what has been a truly gruelling Masters degree as part of my apprenticeship, I’ve already started some more ‘study’.

First on the list, reading the books I’ve wanted to read ‘properly’ for some time. If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie, that’s up first. I’m slowing down, taking time to follow trains of thought, threads of ideas, and other references. My notebook is filled with scribbles, questions and research trails. The book itself is now slowly filling with pencil annotations in the margins (yes, I’m one of those readers).

Meanwhile, I’m fighting the ‘must work hard’ mindset: the one that says I must rush to make dinner and then I can get two hours of study in, or that I mustn’t sit and read a novel, that’s a waste of time, and how very dare I go out on the weekend and actually enjoy my life.

Now, I’ve deliberately slowed down, remembering that I have time, I don’t have to keep trying to create it from hopes and dreams and ‘wishful thinking’.

And so I’ve been noticing more. A quote has re-surfaced in connection with a new idea I’ve just read, a question leads me to a journal entry I wrote months ago, a new article connects to an old book that lurks on my shelf. I’ve even had something connect back to my Masters studies (rewilding, if you want to know).

Then the question creeps in. What is this all for? The self-doubt, the self-judgement, rear their insidious heads and try to convince me they’re keeping me safe.

My answer: isn’t joy enough?

I pick up an old friend. The Way of the Fearless Writer, by Beth Kempton. Perhaps this will help unlock the words. Perhaps there’s an exercise I missed last time I worked through it, perhaps there’s something I didn’t see last time.

I went to skim through the first chapter, and got stuck. Frozen, staring at the words, knowing, knowing that this was right. Those specific words were written for me.

… somewhere between the inputs and the outputs we can influence there is a kind of mysterious alchemy that happens, and to suggest that we are in charge of that would be to give ourselves too much credit. This is there the trust comes in. And trust means being open to what might happen, without trying to force a particular result. [Emphasis added by me.]

Beth Kempton, The Way of the Fearless Writer

The truth of the last two years distilled into that single moment, into that word: trust. It seems dramatic to write it, to say that my apprenticeship, my degree, taught me to distrust. Seeing these words, ones I have already read, I know that I have lost my trust in my words. Every academic word I wrote, I couldn’t trust whether it was going to help me achieve the desired outcome or not.

What’s worse is that I should have been able to trust. But there was no telling what would happen, and no opportunity to learn along the way, believing I could get better as my course progressed. My only job was to survive, spend far too much time studying and sacrificing, and just get through it, controlling as much as I possibly could to ensure the outcome I wanted.

And so, now I must learn to trust again. To remember what I know in my heart, that writing is a medicine, and what might happen when I write has the potential to be wondrous.

This is where I’ve been trying to get to, where I couldn’t get to because I couldn’t give this, the writing, the words, I couldn’t give it the space it needed to breathe, to be. I lost my trust, but it can be regained, with practice, with time.

And I’m here for it.

In reading If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie, I find the following passage. I hear it on my drive to work one morning last week, and it lodges itself in my heart. Or perhaps it bloomed from within my heart, a seed planted long ago.

Women are spinners and weavers; we are the ones who spin the threads and weave them into meaning and pattern. Like silkworms, we create those threads out of our own substance, pulling the strong, fine fibres out of our own hears and wombs. It’s time to make some new threads; time to strengthen the frayed wild edges of our own being and then weave ourselves back into the fabric of our culture. Once we knew the patterns for weaving the world; we can piece them together again. Women can heal the Wasteland. We can remake the world. This is what women do. This is our work.

The loom, the threads, the patterns seem to have summoned me back. I feel it’s time to return to my weaving, the weaving of my story.

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Years ago, not too many but enough to have had a different title, a different job, different expectations for life, a phrase came to me in the most mystical and emotional experience I’ve ever had. This one appeared from deep within me, from a coaching session in which my coach took me through a visualisation exercise. Part of the exercise took me to meet my future self, the person I aspire to become. That self said a phrase to me that has stayed etched in my mind forever since, probably becoming my North Star, my guiding light.

Heart and soul

It probably seems like nothing to anyone else, perhaps. To me, it cracked something wide open inside me, and all the light came pouring out. That phrase, those three words, brought together what I had felt were disparate parts of myself: the logical, and the creative, the left-brain and the right-brain, the water and the fire. It allowed them not just to coexist but to recall that they are two parts of the same whole, not two entities.

It was healing in a way that I still don’t think I fully understand. I’m still learning.

I wove that phrase into this tapestry.

I needed guidance this week, drowing amongst academic books and papers, staring at spreadsheets and documents, trying to summon every ounce of confidence to keep me afloat when I feel my lectures barely taught me enough to swim.

I needed something beyond yet more goal setting and deadline pressures to guide my next steps. The words swirl, merge and tangle, and I need something else.

I reach for a new deck of cards, purchased when inhabiting a similar headspace during a different topic in my Masters degree. The Wild Unknown Archetype deck by Kim Krans. I bought them as an alternative to my usual tarot cards, something quick and simple to help me think, change perspective, disrupt the panic-fuelled race through the final days of my degree. It felt right: archetypes have also popped up in listening to If Women Rose Rooted, in therapy, even during a hen party - a message, quiet and persistent.

I’m tuning in. Will the words stop swirling? Will I remember to breathe before the next wave hits me?

I want to tell stories, to keep stories, to help others tell their own.

The end of the nightmare is in sight. This comes as a blessing, and a small curse. I know it’s not far, but I also can now make out all of the wonderful things waiting for me, if I can only get to the finish line.

The need to create, the desire to do things that are fulfilling and joyful and light, they are getting stronger every day. The need to connect to others, to return to a space where I can connect properly with others, it’s almost painful.

I want to tell stories, to keep stories…

That came from a conversation, a brief exchange of messages with my closest friend as we swirled past each other, both as busy as the other. Both craving connection, belonging, rootedness. Stories are part of who I am, of who we are as humans. Myths and fairy tales particularly have been with me from a very young age. I devoured mythology books, ones filled with Egyptian stories, or beautiful Mayan myths. I loved them so much, I can still see the bright colours, I can still see the sleepover where me and a friend whose name is long gone in my memory would read them to each other.

Perhaps this is why I write. This is why any of us creates. We want to tell our story. To remind ourselves we can change what story we’re writing. To remember that the end of a chapter is not the end of a book.

Honestly, I’m not really sure where this thread is going. I’m not sure what other threads it needs to connect to. But I see a glimmer of something. I see a possibility.

It’s exciting…

And so, I pulled a card from the Archetypes desk. The first card came in answer to my question that went something like ‘how the hell do I get through the next two weeks of this?’

That card was ‘The Self’, a card encouraging a witnessing of my ‘self’, to see me within this world, the me that is soul, not being. I don’t understand it entirely, but it helped me, for just a moment, to step back, breathe, and remember that I’m not actually drowning. I don’t understand exactly what it all means, but not every question needs an answer.

The wise self, the me who knows what it is to balance heart and soul, the me who feels so deeply the need to cultivate and pursue wisdom - that me is the one who remembers the threads that I’d forgotten how to weave have always been there. I remember that a different me wove them in to this story a long time ago, or maybe even just this week. I knew they’d resurface precisely when needed. I knew they were woven into the fabric of my story, glittering in the pattern, both guiding me and marking my path where I’ve stepped.

I am a creator, a weaver, a storyteller, a storykeeper.

And I am most certainly not drowning. (maybe, ask me in a week)

I don’t think I’m on the outside as much as I used to be.

But first, a tiny note on ‘columns’.

I found this post recently. It was like a tiny key that unlocked a tiny lock that I hadn’t even realised was there. Words needed to be shared. They needed to go from my mind full of academic logic and learnings, and be on the page in a creative form.

Write a column, it says. Write about your life, so you can reflect on it, learn about what you think about something, and record it. This is something I’ve said I wanted to do, time and again, and yet never stuck to, prey a small but persistent fear that no one in their right mind wants to read about my life…

But then, who’s reading anyway?

So, here’s a column-ish thing on life.

What’s this work-life balance thing we speak of?

In September 2024, I started a journey that I was excited to start, but I had no real idea of where I’d end up. It has been stressful, tear-inducing, anger-inspiring and I’m not totally sure I’d make the same choice, knowing what I know now.

But I did it, and I’m here, limping to the end of this marathon that is a postgraduate Masters degree in Rural Estate and Land Management, as part of an apprenticeship. I can’t say I’m not glad that I’ve done it. It’s a very peculiar mix of feelings. It’s been hellish. I have described it as something akin to someone throwing an entire jigsaw puzzle into a garden overgrown with brambles, telling me to complete the puzzle without ever showing me the picture on the box, and then setting the garden on fire.

However. I have managed to find some of those pieces. I can see the picture starting to come together. Suddenly, I can see what I’m meant to be doing and what this career is. I always knew the end of the pathway was to be a chartered surveyor, one of those job titles that almost everyone has heard of, but I didn’t really understand what it meant. Honestly, I thought I would be standing on the side of a road with one of those theodolite tripods and doing a tonne of maths.

Instead, I know an awful lot of random stuff about agriculture, land law and electricity.

In the peculiar way that life often works, I’ve landed in a job that, on paper, suits me very well. I can finally use my law degree in a practical way, I’ve loved learning more about the countryside I live in, and every day I’m solving puzzles: what’s the best legal mechanism to use here, what’s the best strategy for dealing with a landowner, how can I protect the environment best…

Unfortunately, my entry to this job, to this profession, was less than ideal, with a lot of confusion, unnecessary stress, resulting anger and frustration. I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting back to other jobs where I’ve been fortunate enough to feel supported, empowered and valued. Although things seem to be evening out a bit more now, as part of that giant, mysterious jigsaw puzzle, I’m not entirely sure that can be attributed to anything except my own understanding of what this job actually is. That has been the biggest peculiarity, one which took me over a year to figure out. The image in my head is absolutely not what I do. It’s part of the profession globally, but I wouldn’t know how to use a theodolite and never have reason to.

So I am almost at the end. About 3 weeks left of writing my final assignment on valuation of agricultural and land assets. A key skill within this profession, but not one that I will use with my current employer (which is true of multiple other modules I took too, but we’ll just ignore the time and energy I might have ‘wasted’ and say that I’ve learned a lot…). Then it’s just waiting for the results from my last few assignments to come in, to check I haven’t failed any, breath the biggest sigh of relief I’ve breathed since my law degree results in 2016 and then probably sleep for a week. Postgraduate studies are no joke, and I have hardly had enough time to get better at it, but I’m passing so far and hope to continue that because a piece of my soul might die if I have to resit any assignments.

My journey to a new job, a new degree and to chartership all started quite literally because I just wanted a new job and this programme said yes. I have hardly had time to reflect on it, to step back and think about it. Even writing these words now, here, I feel the benefit, more puzzle pieces fitting in, more connections being made. Perhaps you’ll hear more about it, perhaps I’ll get brave enough to reflect on the hardest parts of it, days of tears and the most brilliant white hot anger I’ve felt for a long time, perhaps I can find some peace with it all.

Still on the outside?

These words, all of them here in this corner of the world I call mine, have started from a sense of feeling on the outside of things for most of my life. It comes from having moved around about every 1-2 years as a child, I think, and I am particularly skilled at fitting in wherever I go. I even mimic accents unconsciously.

Where I live now, however, the work I’ve done over the last 8 years or so, that sense of unbelonging is fading. Much of it has been an internal journey, figuring out who I am, working to be OK with all of me, with an awful lot of setbacks and stumbles. I’ve been coasting for a while now, quite content and quite pleased with myself. But I know there’s more to do, as different insecurities have surfaced again, as work/study pressures made life feel harder. I can feel that work, like noticing a dark woods at the corner of the horizon, and I know it needs to be done.

(Side note: this is one of the reasons I advocate for long-term therapy, even in the good years, to support that noticing and that decision to work on that stuff. Perhaps something to talk about another time though, or you’ll be reading this post for days.)

Aside from the internal journey, my sense of belonging here in this place has deepened and started to solidify. Whilst I recognise more and more faces around town, more people now know me back without my other half at my side. That might seem like a small thing, but for someone who has never settled anywhere, it’s a massive thing. I see the changes in the streets around me as families move in or move out, as the teenagers walking past my kitchen patio doors grow up and change their hair from pink to turquoise (which I’m a fan of, it’s a gorgeous colour!), as that house gets renovated or that one loses their dog. I see the shops close and the new ones open, I hear the stories about why they do, I gather friends to go to pub quizzes to raise money for the woman who does my nails. I am part of the first book club I’ve ever been in, which is more a gathering of friends who happen to all read the same book at the same time, and we discuss it but mostly we discuss life and partners and work and stuff.

I feel like this town is part of me now, that I call it home for more reasons than that I settled here to be with my other half.

But I also feel like I am part of this town, in a small way, but in a way. Belonging, it seems to me, is multi-faceted, partly me feeling it and partly others feeling it.

And so, I feel less on the outside in any place I have ever lived. I’m still not quite part of the furniture, understandably so, but I’m in no rush, having no intentions to leave anytime soon.

(The work sense of ‘being on the outside’ is something different, and I’m working on that… being a non-agricultural person amongst a sea of agricultural people who all know each other is tough, but I’m finding my own way of being here.)

Well, that ‘column’ ended up significantly longer than I anticipated, and perhaps a sign that I need to write more words more often so the tidal wave doesn’t flood the place.

I’m curious, as ever, on your thoughts, particularly on that sense of belonging. And would you want to read more column-y type things? I will include more of my usual words soon, once I have brain space to return to more observational work.

In the meantime, take care my friends.

Karen x

It’s been a while since I started these with a note. I’m on some travels for work: so far, I’ve been on six trains and I’m in my second hotel room in two days (I don’t normally travel this much for work, it’s just a fluke this week, thankfully).

Trains are a good chance to journal and think, I find. Watching London become the Midlands. The sun rising over Birmingham. The country I call home flying past, the people compressed, distilled into a singular moment like this. I was journaling on my morning train yesterday, asking myself the question I ask in the second part of this note, then bullet pointing the answers, often uncovering more questions.

Questions, questions, it seems to be the theme of my life at the moment. Asking them, finding them, seeking them. Can I be comfortable without an answer? Without a clear line in the metaphorical shifting sand?

I’m reminded that coming to an answer once doesn’t mean we have learned that lesson and will never have to relearn it. It’s a practice: I will always need to learn and re-learn how to live this life, because it never stands still.

And why would I want it to?

Nature ebbs and flows. Seasons roll over us, into us, then away. It is always changing. Consistently changing. Those aren’t the same leaves on the trees as last spring, and they aren’t quite the same amber as they were last autumn. We speak of loving a season, which is our favourite, but is any autumn ever the same as any other? We rely on autumn to come around, but even that changes, getting later or wetter or dryer and colder. Predictable but nuanced. Control so desperately sought slips through our fingers as nature does what she does best: rebalances herself and carries on, whether we like it or not. Ebbs and flows.

The improbable rainbow, appearing when I need it most, a glimmer in the window I might otherwise have missed racing past, living life; a reminder that there is wondrous beauty in the world, and only I can see that exact rainbow because of how the light prisms and fractures, turning clear into brilliant colours. My rainbow.

The softest clouds blown up the valley reach the face of the mountains and stop, flowing up and up, higher and higher, banking like a towering snowdrift so white, so soft. They lift and drift onwards to smother the mountains, to cover them, turned peachy blue in the sunrise, the last of the sky to awaken to this morning.

The flash of movement that catches my eye from my desk. In the hydrangea bush amongst the naked branches. There, a longtail tit, I think. Am I right? My work forgotten, I leave my desk, step closer and watch him rattle around the branches, twisting and turning so improbably quick, I can’t see the motion. I try for a photo, he’s so small. Then there are two. They’re on the black alder, in the lilac, on the acer. Bright, bright joy in tiny winged form.

They’re gone. In an explosive flutter. I seek a better word, surely there must be something more creative to describe how they flutter and dance?

Nature ebbs and flows, around me, in me. I have a lot of questions, and I’m learning to be OK without the answers.

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Que sais-je?

What do I know?

This is the question Michel de Montaigne asked himself when he sat down to write the first written ‘essays’. His subject of his essays: himself.

Humans, as changeable as nature around us, the seasons we go through never the same. Each joy tastes slightly different, each grief a distinct song hummed in the night. The moment of clarity is our unique, glimmering rainbow. The new feeling that appears with a new experience is the tiniest bird capturing everyone ounce of our attention, a tiny explosion of life. Something worth stopping for, worth looking at, not to know but simply to feel.

What do I feel?

I couldn’t tell you why I write. I couldn’t accurately describe the need I feel to put pen to paper, or the joy I feel in crafting whole images and emotions from lines on a page. It doesn’t matter to me that they are read by someone else. Not always. There is an entirely exquisite dissonance between the need to put words down and knowing what they need to be. How do I become a writer? This is not the question. How do I write?

How do I write what I know?

This is the question the answer to which feels like I’m trying to catch my breath, quite literally, grasping at the air before me, wondering when someone will give me the map to help me navigate this. There’s something here, something so close I can feel it on my skin, but I don’t know what it is. I can’t shape it into letters, I can’t knead it into a word, then another and another until it’s a sentence.

How do I write what I know, when I don’t know it yet?

Perhaps it’s the simplest answer. Keep writing words. Any words. Sidestep the direct question, answer the one adjacent to it, then the next and the next until the shape of the thing, edged in imaginings and curiosities, begins to appear. Seek the questions out, tilt your head to one side for a new angle, stare in wonder at the tiny bird in the naked hydrangea and allow that thought to connect to the question about where the map was stashed all this time, or the one about how no autumn is ever the same as the next, just as my rainbow is not your rainbow.

Keep. Asking. Questions.

And write.

Que sais-je.

The skill has faded, gone with the practice that was put aside to favour other ‘more important’ things. Things that took me from embracing the writer label to stepping back into the realm of ‘aspiring writer’.

I’m stuck with questions, wondering what path to take, what direction I want to walk in. Do I write about this, or that? Do I write at all? Would anyone care? I’ve been waylaid, caught in a current that has taken me from the one I thought I’d drift on for a long time to come.

Which isn’t to say it’s a bad thing. It’s just different.

My studies have re-commenced for the second and final year of my postgraduate degree. The relief over the summer, three months of no assignments or lectures, was a weight off my shoulders. I took the opportunity to progress a novel I’ve been toying with for a few years. I leaned into learning: how to create characters, how to loosely plot, how to be OK with not having it all set out perfectly. How to be OK with the imperfect words I produced.

Now, the dilemma. How do I balance the studies and the writing, and all the other things that I hold inside that are bursting to get out? How do I go from considering the value of the tea ceremony in writing practice to the story of the HMS Endurance; or from the exquisite beauty of the raindrops hanging from the bare branches of our acer tree to the Roman legal doctrine of jus spatiandi?

Most importantly, how do I do all of this without becoming unbearably inward-looking and fall into much ‘navel-gazing’?

Flicking back through my journal, I stop on a day last week when the words flowed easily, unencumbered by the stress of needing to produce an output. There were incomplete sentences, scribbles where my brain went to fast for my pen, questions hanging unanswered. Bullet points, ideas, lamentations, so many uses of the word ‘I’ that, reading back, I became uncomfortable.

The question marks draw my eye. And a single word underneath a thought about a book I’d seen: but.

Then nothing. What was I thinking then? What was I going to say about this book? About my desire to have the book and read it? About how it inspired me?

So says Oliver Burkeman. This was the prompt that unlocked the door in my head that felt impossible to open. Do not, for the love of all things, try to write about what I think other people will find interesting.

But isn’t that the most difficult part of being a writer, and wanting to produce something for others to read? At some point, surely, we must consider the audience?

Burkeman argues that:

“trying to pursue what others might deem interesting or impressive doesn’t seem to lead to feeling interested in it yourself; but pursuing what interests you does seem to evoke the interest of others.”

This is a famous writer and author, whose books and philosophies on life I happen to agree with wholeheartedly. And yet, my inner judge reminds me that my interests are wildly different and varied, and how do you capture an audience that doesn’t know if you’re writing about historical events or the natural world or poetry?

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So I’d like to experiment, because I can’t say my audience is large enough to warrant the level of anxiety I find myself at when considering what to write here.

My journal is now filled with bullet points of ‘things that interest me’. Pages and pages. Everything from why we should pursue wisdom to the etymology of words, from the problem with individualism to Celtic myths, from the concept of mise en place to why I love to eat in the top restaurants, from how to properly craft essays to how law is all about language.

All things that interest me. All things that feel achievable. I can follow my curiosity, go wandering over the mountains and spend hours wondering why that river is in that particular valley, not the other one, and take too many photos of the rainbows that appear.

I still don’t have the answer to the word ‘but’ about that book. And I don’t have the answers to a great many other questions I have asked myself lately. When will I be brave enough to send these words out into the world? Why do I care so much that they are ‘perfect’? What does that even mean?

Perhaps the point, which is one I have re-learned time and again, is not that all questions need answers, but that I have the questions and try to answer them. It’s OK not to know and be certain. It’s OK to live in a question mark. Not all the time, and not with everything, but in some ways, some times.

So here I am, not know what to write, not knowing if I’m brave enough. I’ll just find out as I go.

Thanks, as ever, for reading. If you have thoughts on ‘interesting’ or encouraging myself to show up here and share my writing more, I’d love to hear them! I know I’m not alone in it as a writer/aspiring writer.

K x

I’m trying something a smidge different—and there’s a reason why. It started with a spark of inspiration from an author, and ended with some dead peonies…

I’m one of those ‘thinkers’. The ones who think about it, journal about it, talk about it — and rarely get around to doing it.

There’s an author on YouTube, Christy Anne Jones, whose videos I stumbled across just these last few weeks. That’s where it started. A vlog all about the books she’s writing. I’ve been inspired — the book I’ve been writing/thinking about has now appeared on some more pages, more bullet points, more scribbles, more arrows connecting this character to that one, that idea to that conflict.

Then I sit at my desk, where I work my day job, and the blocks all appear.

Nobody wants to read my words, nobody wants to know that I’m a writer struggling to think like an author.

I’m on the roundabout, and I can’t get off. My academic writing, the deadlines, they steal the joy. I’m forcing myself into spaces and shapes I don’t really want to occupy. Instead of writing and flowing and learning through my words, I come to the page and can write nothing besides what I’m doing, the pocket fluff of my brain. The poetry is taking a siesta. The walking trips, sources of inspiration, are on a hiatus. The proverbial well has certainly lowered, alarmingly so.

But it’s not quite dry.

How do I write again?

How do I turn up here, where I get such joy in connecting with other writers, with readers, in a meaningful way?

How do I re-balance my world towards writing, remembering that this simple act of putting words to page is the best medicine I can take, to remedy the joy sucked out by deadlines, loneliness and a disconnected work life?

How do I simply write?

I re-discovered this post today. On opening my Substack to write this very post, I spotted this…

It smacked me in the face, to be perfectly candid.

There was a time I knew how to write when I didn’t know what to write or how to.

I can learn that again. Surely?

It starts with a tiny spark of inspiration. Something simple discovered when I’m tired of trying to force the words and the characters and the plot.

It continues into my journal, scrawled across the page in excitement.

Not enough space there, not enough room. I’m stuck again, I shift again, the words flow.

Every day, words are put on paper, if only a scribble in my pocket notebook.

Should I share them? The ways I created a character from watching a commuter stop to take a photo of the mountain from my usual writing spot at my kitchen table. The way I learn through trying that way to start the story, and hate it, so it starts somewhere else. Or the way I decided (and was pushed) to finally, finally, submit some of my well-shaped poems to magazines, knowing full well I shouldn’t get my hopes up but they’re up there anyway because that’s what being a writer is, and this is the path I’m on, and this is the path I am loving.

I’m learning. I’m writing.

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P.S. Do you know how excited I was to realise that, by using something as simple as a pocket notebook, I’ve brought writing into my life every single day? Simple things, right?

I’m having a wander into sharing some new words with you, unsure of whether I’ll enjoy it or not. More on this below, but if you can, take some time to let me know what you thought!

London is a city I love and am enchanted by. History, life, innovation leaks out everywhere, unstoppered by any attempt to direct it or stop it. It enchants me, but I am always grateful to return home to my land of rainbows and mountains.

I took a walk to find a bookshop while my dearest had a meeting (hybrid working life!). I stumbled into what I think of as ‘real’ London. The London that isn’t somewhere the tourists typically end up and, if they do, they wander about looking very lost and confused. Strolling through the quieter residential streets, I found myself doing my favourite thing when wandering.

I looked up.

I found Georgian style houses with grand windows, most of them apartments, but some stoically holding on to their grand house status. I stumbled past private gardens encased in cast iron fences, accessed by modern key fobs held only by residents. London Plane trees towered above, sheltering the streets, textured and coloured bark so iconic of this area.

Around the corner, the trees fell away, replaced by entire ‘hedges’ of star jasmine. I felt a little like I was swimming through the scent, it was so thick. Beyond, a queue of parents waiting to collect their children from the school, high red-brick walls echoing with delighted screams of play and life. Teslas and Ferraris merge from avenues with cyclists and delivery drivers, past idling private ambulances and daydreaming pedestrians.

The main streets were busy with other walkers, going to or from work or shops, some laden with bags, others on their phones. I felt alone in my mission, and my joy of unexpected discovery. A stranger in a sea of strangers. Passing diners on the pavements outside cafes, students discussing their last lecture or book, and tourists wondering where the museums are.

Midway through my mission, I found this rampant campanula. A snowdrift of purple at the base of the walls of the house, reaching towards the pavement, clustering around plant pots and mingling, chatting with the bright daisies. It refuses to be put down. It lives, it grows, whether you want it to or not.

Creating Creativity

Now, to the topic of the moment, about which I have many, many thoughts, but no real conclusions.

AI is everywhere right now. I’ve read a few things lately that prompted some reflection and thinking.

My main takeaway so far, leaving aside other larger concerns such as whether AI will go full Skynet on us, is that using AI for some things bypasses the point of producing those things.

For example, inevitably, AI is used to write the things we might read. Some words might look like human but somehow lack something that makes them feel human, a point explored in this piece by Will Storr.

Then, I stumbled across Dr Lily Dunn’s piece on AI and creativity, which caused a reaction in me that I reflected on in the below note. Perhaps I’d framed my question wrong: this wasn’t about whether we should be using AI or not, it was about whether we want to write, or not.

To use AI to write something creative is, for me, missing the point. I am distinguishing between writing creativity and writing, say, an email in work which has a different purpose and is transactional in nature.

In writing creatively, the point is not the output; the point is the journey, the putting of words from mind (heart) to paper. In short, the transformation. The experience which simply cannot be had without going through it.

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Those words are important. They are growth and learning. They are ideas to be kept, ideas to be forgotten. They are emotions made tangible and real; memories to be stored carefully, stumbled upon years later accidentally, smiling under the wave of emotion that washes over, the years that return. They are secrets we wish we could lose, but are too scared to let them slip through our fingers. We slip them into a box to forget, until the day we can read them again without the tightening in our chests that might be shame.

It reminds me of reading a book…

Clubs and friendships

A book club is a simple thing. A group of people read a specified book and come together at an agreed time to discuss the book, usually around specific questions or themes. Despite being an avid reader, I have never been a part of one.

Until now, anyway.

There’s a particular sense of joy from being part of a group of people that have been friends for years and years and yet include a newcomer in their shared stories, their inner jokes. There’s a joy that comes from suddenly feeling the puzzle pieces slot into place, forming the picture I didn’t know I was creating. Friendships, connections and mutual joys are all particularly precious to a person who has always felt an outsider.

As the newcomer who hadn’t had time to read the book in question, I chose to ask the questions (ironically generated from AI). Slowly, slowly, as each person gave their thoughts and ideas in response, I got to know them. One hadn’t had time to read the books either (I was grateful), one hated that particular character, one thought the wife hadn’t ever returned from the mission, one related to the eldest sibling trying to mother the rest.

I learned about a book through the eyes of other people. I wonder what I’ll see in the book when I come to read it? Will I like the same characters, see the same metaphors, feel the same emotions as they did?

Or, I could ask AI to generate a synopsis for me, save myself the time and the worry…

…in the same way I could ask it to write for me…

…and miss out on all the precious things that come from reading a story, the learning, the emotional strings plucked, the ideas that spring up, the real people I suddenly understand better because I understand a character that reminds me of them.

I learn about myself in the reading. I learn about myself in the thinking and the sharing of my ideas, forming them into words to speak or write and send out into the world, to a book club of new friends or a Substack letter with readers.

Isn’t it amazing what happens when we have an experience ourselves instead of giving it to a computer to do?

Returning, revising

I could have asked AI to write this post for me.

I could have asked it to give me things you can learn from a book club, or what I might see and hear wandering around South Kensington on a quiet Thursday afternoon.

Instead, I have written and revised this post over several days. It hasn’t flowed sometimes, and other times words poured out. When I read them again, I decided they didn’t need to be there. I cut them, put them on the compost heap of ideas, and grew some more.

Writing is medicine. Not the noun, but the verb, the thing that I do is the medicine that I need. Perhaps the words go on to become the medicine for the reader, perhaps not.

In the midst of considering AI and it’s place in this written world, I considered why I subscribe and pay for some Substacks here. More importantly, I reflected on which ones I read time and again: these are the ones with authors I’ve connected with, as people. The ones who write the most human of things in the most human of ways, sometimes rambling, sometimes messy but always real.

So I will continue as I have always done. Writing each word myself, living through my life and my experiences, wandering and looking and breathing and being. Because nothing can do that for me, not really. Sometimes it’s slow, sometimes painful, but always real.

Thank you for reading and following my ramblings, my musings. I did think about breaking this up into a few posts, since I am trying to make a more concerted effort to be writing here more regularly again. What I realised, though, is that I needed to change what I was writing, and that I needed, sometimes, to give the messy, not just the images or the edited.

I would absolutely love to know what you thought of this, a longer piece than I’ve written for a long time, and a slight side step from what I have been writing in the past. I am still working things out, still trying to figure out who I am as a writer.

But isn’t that the point?

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The words aren't coming easily here. Like trying to look at that shape you can see at the corner of your eye, but when you look, it's moved. Was it ever there?

Or maybe it's like wading through mud. Sticking, hoping, tiring, hopeless. My goal—a beautifully written piece that perfectly conveys what I want to say (what even is that?) gets further away. Life is running away, grain by grain, through the hourglass. Can I catch it in my words? Can I hold the beginnings and the endings in a single breath? Are they even mine to hold on to? I'm treading water.

Here's a beginning I can pick up. The beginning of a story. The loose end of a piece of glittering thread that leads I don't know where. I've picked it up again, holding it lightly, afraid it might slip away. I'm digging out the old papers, the scribbled notes, the sparks, and ideas. Packing them into my bag, with my notepad and pen. Picking up this thread, I tighten my grip and pull. One step at a time, I move forwards. Hopeful.

A beginning. A small one, but a beginning is just a single step after all.

Let me be your guide here.

Look over there. Do you see the mountains circling us, crowding in? They're breathing smoke from great, green lungs. The dragons are sleeping.

Here, down this street, past the walls shrouded with clematis and peonies, squeeze past the thorny roses reaching for your clothes. We cross the first river where it enters the meadows, tumbling past the stone circle. Follow me now, it dives there beneath the road – hurry! Let's not lose it!

Now see, it re-emerges right there, running unnoticed between garage and hotel, hemmed in by broken bricks bursting with green life, a perfect playground where no human walks, populated entirely by a chattering gang of yellow wagtails. Stand here a moment with me, and watch them dart about, golden flashes so swift and bright. They love that little rock there, that's where they dance and jive to their own music. You can forget yourself here; forget the traffic and the town, forget whatever errand brought you this way.

Stand with me, and breathe. Stand with me, in quiet, tiny awe.

Dandelion seeds drift, caught on the slightest of air currents. Impossibly fragile, they seem, at the whim of the world.

They find their space and settle. They drive long roots into the ground in the place they wish to bloom. They resist, resist – springing up in improbable places. Quietly growing, quietly living, determined.

I had too many childhood homes to say I have a childhood home. There is no ageing parent turning my old room into a den, or a craft room, or a grandchild's room. Many of them are lost in the grains of my timeline, anchored only by memory.

That house was the one with the pine rack, painted royal blue, to hold my toys and books. It was the same home where I read stories aloud to friends, acting out a particular line to raucous laughter, while we lay on blankets on dried, summer grass. We rode our bikes down steep streets, diving into woods huge and mysterious to me then, hunting for that particular tree to climb, the one that no one else could. Building a lifelong friendship, one afternoon, one story, one adventure at a time.

Does someone else now climb those same trees, swing on those swings and wonder what would happen if they went all the way around? Do they dare their friends to get closer to the haunted museum—run! I saw something!—or play barefoot in the streets in a rainstorm?

The other house, that was one down the street so quiet, I could lie in the road and stargaze, dreaming of eternal space. The first I remember was filled with daring adventures through a tropical jungle. Another one held me while I sang along to songs I still know word for word.

I have drifted, landing here and there, moulded by winds and tides, shaped into who I have become. Each home and adventure, each day and choice, how life different might have been if I had not lived in that room, or forged a friendship with that friend. Now, I am rooted and from here, I reflect, appreciating the movement, the shaping, the creation of the person I am. I am the product of my life. I am the outcome of each home, adventure, day. I am rooted, and here, I belong.

The words aren't still. They were never meant to be. They were meant to dance across the page, twirling with the wagtails, darting between that childhood memory and this dream. The words aren't always meant to be easy. Sometimes they are hard, the toughest of clays to shape, the most elusive of creatures to spot.

Then I remember to breathe and write anyway, even if I only catch a glimpse of the tail, or a shadow of the shape I intended. I breathe, and I write, and I learn.

After all, I am the product of my time.

Enjoyed this? Try these…

The Outsider has a new label. The Apprentice. She saw a room, dark and filled with books, and boiling bottles of luminous potions, scrolls heap on the floor. Chaos.

Amongst it, a Mentor. A someone with more knowledge, more experience, someone who can impart wisdom to her, within her long journey to becoming a not-an-Apprentice. Someone to make order of the chaos. She will learn to alchemise, to take disparate knowledge, to sprinkle it, to pour it into a bubbling pot, and create something that is more than the sum of its parts. Something of knowledge, flavoured with confidence, self-assurance, curiosity and that particular feeling that comes from becoming an Expert.

Instead, the Apprentice finds herself alone in the room, with shelves creaking under the weight of questions that she doesn't know she should ask yet, surrounded by shadows of doubt. There is no presence to guide to the right bookshelf, or to caution her against mixing that method with that particular potion. No one to reassure her or fend off the doubts.

She is alone, the Lonely Apprentice, questioning an empty room.

So she goes seeking, determined to be proactive, wondering if that will be the key that brings the Mentor to the room. She steps out into the world, unsure of direction, picking any path that appears. She speaks to other Masters, she asks questions, she tries to absorb the learning. She takes notes, scribbles in her book, collects the puzzle pieces, all the time wondering when the picture will become clear. But when she returns to the room, she finds the pieces are for different puzzles, bringing new questions and no answers.

The Apprentice scribbles, faster and faster, and more questions emerge from the answers she thought she had. She goes seeking, once again, through the shelves, through the corners and mysteries, asking more questions. She finds only chaos, shadows and doubt.

Perhaps it is me, she wonders. Perhaps she is destined to be here: on the outside, desperately trying to find a way in.

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"All books start with an unanswerable question" reads the chapter heading of multiple chapters in Maggie Smith's You Could Make This Place Beautiful.

What, then, is my question? If I were to take my life, to craft a book from it, what is my question? Would it be embossed on a leather spine, shining on creaking bookshelves, or slipped between the pages to be whispered in shadows, a litany of self-assurance?

It changes. It warps and wefts and becomes something else entirely. Perhaps it started with am I good enough and trails into how can I be worthy.

The problem, I have found, is that I have spent my life trying to answer the unanswerable, without realising that it isn't the question to be asking at all.

If I wasn't to write about the beauty of the world here, the exquisite details of nature, my wonderful land of rainbows, what would I write on? I wonder this, fretting that if I were not to include the blushing curve of the single blooming rose in my garden, then would anyone want to read what I write?

In the corner of my eye, I see and recall the title I chose for my little corner of the world. From the Outside (Looking In). I am reminded that I am a writer, here to observe the fragility of the rose, shedding its petals to the soil already, and the fragility of the experience we call life. I am reminded that writing is medicine. I think through my pen and paper, I place my life into words and capture it.

The question I am seeking the answer to (probably as fruitlessly as the Apprentice) is how to write my soul when I must instead write my mind? When I must take knowledge and research and craft it into an assignment that is soulless? When I must do a creative thing that feels very uncreative? The world of my poetry, of my roses and rainbows, feels distant.

Some days, it bubbles to the surface, when I put pen to paper and focus on what I hear, on what I smell and see. Those are the days when exhaustion and overwhelm haven't driven me into a hiding place of mindlessness. Those are the days when mindfulness is my haven. I ride this cycle of each, swinging between please let me sleep so I no longer think to isn't this world a beautiful thing, sometimes in the same day, the same hour, exhausted by this in itself.

The page, then, is my room of books and potions. I must find the confidence, the way of being here that the Apprentice cannot. Perhaps if I can do that, in my writing, in mastering the cycle of mindful and mindless, in overcoming the tensions, perhaps I can help the Lonely Apprentice. Perhaps she can learn that sometimes the most illuminating potion is simply ink on paper, and the most powerful alchemy is the transmutation of experience into words.

If you enjoyed this, here are some more you might enjoy…

The river breathes. Long, deep inhales highlighted by smaller hitches of waves as the exhale prepares itself and flows inexorably out and out and out. White crests on green depths tickle and slap the bellies of gondolas. Seagulls abandon the water for bread crusts tossed skywards and sardines left momentarily unsupervised on plain plates by unwary tourists. Looming above, the refrain of trams rattling through the sky on the steel bridge, the harmony of the words I don't know, and the bass rhythm of feet. A single guitarist sets up, breaks through the din of living, and sings the songs to make my foot tap and bob in the sun. A moment of simplicity, of calm, of living a perfectly orchestrated cliché on the banks of the Douro, the river that shapes the city.

Rain pours and the city clings to the sides of the river valley, caught out in the same deluge as me. I huddle under the flimsy umbrella bought hastily from a tourist shop, the kind that sell blue tile fridge magnets announcing 'Porto'. We turn up the hill and water tumbles down over broken cobbles and paving stones. The curious faces of locals peer from small red doors, smoking and wondering at this new river flowing past their restaurant. Inside, cosy lighting and painted walls beckon. The rivers—all of them—shape this city.

There is music in these streets. We turn back down the hill to the river. The rain has stopped, the sky stretching wide above the open plaza. My feet are still wet. The streets close in, the sky hemmed in by terracotta tiles, and we enter the maze. A cello starts playing on the plaza high above, and the sound follows us impossibly far and clear, down steep steps and around tight corners. I dance over pooled water, sidestep over a pigeon carcass crushed into cobbles, and twirl around damp walls, defiant clusters of weeds at the base bursting into life. We step down past windows on the top floor of a house, wondering what it is to live here, to thrive here, so different it is to our mountains and open fields. Tamed plants cluster by the narrow wooden doors of homes, flags hang in windows, and tiny shops find a space here on tight corners and crossroads. Above, church bells toll, wildly off-key, impossibly beautiful; beneath it all, the river hums and sings, carving the stone, kneading the life.

Another storm gathers on the edge of the city, the buildings darkened too soon. It spills over the horizon, it spills over us. It darkens the world, then passes on, into the sunset and is cast in liquid gold above the bridge, pouring over the hills to the Douro Valley. The windows and glazed tiles of the city glitter and then there it is, the paintbrush sweep of jewels bridging the river, glimmering impossibly bright against the steel dark. The rainbows of my homeland are here, different, the same. It shimmers, silken wet, and the next storm head makes itself known on the horizon, darkening the river, fading the rainbow bridge, over this river, this spine of the city.

Here, I am entangled in the scents: the sweetness of those pastel de natas; the rankness of bins clustered behind innumerable restaurants and bars; the faint undercurrent of salty sea air; the dusty dryness of pavement baked between the rain. I breathe it in, sometimes more and sometimes less. Behind me, the old stones of a glorious monastery, standing tall and proud above the city; and before me, the crumbled bricks, shattered roof tiles and splintered doors of houses long abandoned to dead memories and living nature. Who lived there, I wonder, overshadowed by these walls, hemmed in on all sides by more life, more people, tethered eternally between the river far below and the cliff. The river shaping the city; still?

There is art in this city; and beauty; and the raw ugliness of what it means to live and live, despite it all. The city is perpetually held, reflected in the river. It might lean over the steep hills, held in watery contemplation, wondering at its past and perhaps its future. All of life is here, the full spectrum dancing over the waters like the rainbows, like the bridges, jostling against each other, twisting through the sky with the pigeons and gulls. It is tangled in the flickering lights of the streets; the wine cellar bars where the smoke of decades past seems to linger still; the symphony of languages mixing among the food market. The simple, silent flow of the river in the night captures and holds the diamond twinkles of the city. Does the city peer in, wondering? Or does it go on, living, no matter what you think? The city and the river, forever and inextricably intertwined.

Rather than go on about how busy life is, I’ll instead share snippets from my writing. That has been continuing, albeit to a lesser extent than I was enjoying this time last year. I had a delightful wander through my journal, and found so many things I know I can craft into something to share with you. This feeling, in itself, was a delight - I’ve never gone back through journals, before now.

I hope you enjoy, and I will endeavour to be back soon, in between researching farming systems (my current course of study is agricultural management). 

7 Jan 2025

This was from a prompt from the Winter Writing Sanctuary which expanded into my journal and, when I wrote the snippet out here, it became a poem instead of a story.

I found a new world on the fence post in the horse field 
that winter. Jagged mountains of dainty ice crystals  
in a miniature landscape. Towering cliffs and shattered stones 
where tiny intrepid explorers might tread. 
What do they seek? 
The glittering diamonds, the treasure within 
the ice. They race the rising sun, or go home 
with only wet moss, and thirst for the next adventure. 

25 Nov 24

I am fortunate to co-host a poetry group on LWS, and in November, we did some activities together around wintery things, like words and images. The activities were shorter than usual, and we finished with a free-write session, from which some of the most beautiful poetry poured. I wish I could go back and hear it again.

Since I can't, here is my humble offering, since the frost is lingering on our grass and in the shadows.

I inhabit the frosted morning
Sheltering in the crackle
Glimmering in the kiss of winter. 
I am the whisper of
	marcescent leaves
	frost-hags descending
	frost flowers blooming.
Apricity warms my skin. 
I melt
I melt
I pool and puddle
Hold the moon in my body
Ever-changing.
Every change
Caught in crystal cobwebs
Dancing in clouded breath.
I fall
I fall
Into icy leaf mounds
Into darkest nights.
Apricity warms
my heart. 
I am winter
I am spring
I am all. 

I had a whale of a time with the words we played with in this session. They call came from the Winter Dictionary, by Paul Anthony Jones, which is a beautiful book.

22 Nov 24

I am blushed clouds in a blue winter sky.

I am a bright beacon, a window caught in the sunrise, a rising star.

I am fingerprints on my phone screen.

I am the old door, discarded in the front garden.

I am a lone bird flying overhead, joined by a buddy, a comrade, a foe.

I am what I see, what I notice. I see that star rising among the snowy fields. I soar the skies, not alone. I lie in the cold, discarded but staring up at the blushing clouds in the winter sky.

This is my morning. I notice. I breathe. I feel.

Being in a moment, inhabiting it, breathing it, this is my meditation. My medicine. I had forgotten that.

That's all for today. I hope you've enjoyed this little wander back through time with me. It's been a nice reflection for me, to go back through my journals. It has reminded me that it doesn't matter how far away I might end up from my writing, the desk, the journal, the pen, they're always there, waiting for when I return.

Take good care, friends.

K x

I am learning, absorbed in the depths of learning and growing and stretching, reaching my fingertips to the furthest reaches of my comfort zone, discovering my mental limits. I’m reminding myself to not just seek balance, but to create balance. To take my medicine before I need it: to write in small gaps of time, bridging the space between mental output and mental creativity; to create with my hands; to step into nature and inhale the cold depths of the winter air, tasting the frosty morning on my tongue.

Sometimes, it’s enough to simply be. No more ‘ing’.

Growth is uncomfortable and tiring and necessary. It takes far more energy than sitting still, trying not to be seen. Am I ready to be seen?

In a new job, there is much to learn, and yet the hardest lesson I am learning is how not to fit in. I have come too far, worked too hard, learned too much to want to blend in now. I found myself a little ashamed at telling my new colleagues about the high score I achieved in an assignment that exhausted me in the writing. I didn’t want to appear boastful, or make them feel less. I shrank away for a fraction of a second, then remembered - this isn’t a competition, I didn’t steal this result or deny anyone else. I worked for it. I achieved it.

My self-pride blossomed, albeit tentatively. I proudly announced my result. Because I am proud.

I am unlearning how to fit in, how to blend, how to inhabit the shadows. Amongst all that I learn, I am discarding the lessons of my shy childhood, and remembering it’s OK to want to do well.

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Things are currently very intense with the new job, and a lot of my mind is taken up with learning an incredible amount of new stuff. Lately, I have been more conscious about creating opportunities to write, to administer my medicine, to create space. It’s hard, fatigue has often won, but grace is fast becoming my word for this season. Learning a new job, a new company, and studying for a postgraduate degree at the same time is taxing, to say the very least. I’m sad I’m not here more often, but self-care is a must.

However, I have dearly missed my writing here, my readers, the other writers that I follow and who delight me with their words. My reading list here has certainly become minimal, simply from lacking time and mental capacity. ’s Musings by Mika and ’s Notes from a Town Hermit are my go-to’s, and, of course, ’s SoulCircle on her SoulStack. These are pretty much the ones keeping me sane and inspired with their words, their support and their general presence in this world.

I have poetry still flowing, but snippets and snatches, ideas and notions that barely have a shape. They’ll come. They’ll come.

Thank you, as ever, for reading, for spending time with me in this space. Keep looking for the learning, the balance, the wren hiding amongst the leaves, the sparkle of frost in a winter morning. (Note to self, practice what I preach…)

K x

This is part of Sparkle on Substack Essay Club. This is essay 17/24. Go here to read more about it!

I’m also really excited to say that I had a poem published in an anthology in the last few weeks. I’ve put it and the details below.

The mountains are wearing woolly hats this morning. The clouds cluster overhead, so I can see only the feet of the hills, only the trees, until there’s a gap and I see the hill beyond the mountains. Fields and hedgerows and drystone walls crossing each other, defiantly uneven.

The black cat from down the street prowls past on her morning hunt. Cats, who can stroll anywhere, under anything, bending to no rules, and yet this one uses our garden pathway. She doesn’t notice me sitting here. I don’t feature in her plans for the morning.

Sometimes, I can sit here and forget I’m in a town, surrounded by people and life. When I see the white bird, probably a seagull, burst from the trees by the castle, soar a quick loop before diving back into the canopy, like he’s been flung into the sky on a string, then I can forget. Or when the gang of sparrows serenades me from the uncut grass of our front lawn. Or when the red kites circle and dance above. I see past the red tile roofs, the scaffolding, the tarmac, the contained gardens and walls. I see only the robin and the wren in the twiggy bush, the squirrel tight-roping down the phone lines, the heron silently gliding by.

Then a car rolls past and the spell breaks. But not for long. This is my world. I choose what I focus on, what I see.

This poem was published in the London Writers’ Salon 2024 anthology Writing in Community. It’s the first piece of writing of mine that I’ve seen in print, and I’m beyond excited. Reading it back, I’d change some bits of it, but the purpose of submitting wasn’t perfection - it was experience, practice and saying yes.

Lessons from Wisteria

You were a gift to my dearest. 
From my heart to his in the earliest days. 

Early spring, days growing longer, 
the sun in the sky longer. 
I bury my face in your amethyst petals 
to breathe deep the life, the spring,
to soothe my heart and ground my soul
in everything that you are.

Bees fill their buckets and hives 
with your life and heart. 
Ants make home amongst your roots
and daisies cluster in your shade,
you, a part of the whole. 

Purple petals drop
into snow drifts on the cracked stones
in the spring storms. 
Green tendrils search and reach 
to the twine, to the wall,
to your olive tree neighbour. 

In my hand, I hold your beginning and end,
blades to cut and faith you'll grow
despite it all. 
In my heart, I wonder
at your audacity to grow
despite the hurt. 

With knowing in my soul,
I cut and I shape.  
You are reduced and you live
and thrive and blossom.
Despite it all. 

You were a gift to my dearest. 
As you grow, so do we.
- K May

A huge thank you to and editorial team for the anthology. It’s a wonderful platform for writers, and many of them were like me, having never seen their words in print before. You can see the LWS website here, grab the e-book here, and the hardcopy here. And no, I’m not getting a commission or affiliate money.

Thanks again for reading. I’m having one of ‘those’ weeks, catching up with myself after 4 weeks of being here, there and everywhere with the new job and studies. I’m now into 2 focussed weeks of writing an assignment. It’s been a while, but it’s sort of like riding a bike. I think. To top everything off, I’m fighting a cold off and it’s sapping my energy! Putting pen to paper feels like a lot, but somehow, I walk away from my writing feeling uplifted. Writing really is medicine.

Have a beautiful week

K x

Now, sitting at my kitchen table, the market hall has vanished. The clouds have risen from the forests and clustered over the streets, between the houses and chimneys. Commuters hurry past, heads down, to the trains. Dogs trot past, humans in tow, the world ignored. The mountains are gone, swallowed into anonymity.

Are they still there if I can’t see them?

I’m being challenged right now, pulled in directions that I chose, feeling left behind and disconnected. I have missed those mountains and their cloudy shrouds. I have missed the sparrows huddled in the hedgerows. I miss sinking into my ocean space, the silence of the world’s heartbeat, felt in my bones.

Is it still there if I can’t see it?

Like the looming face of the mountain, the ocean space exists, without my attention or demand. The silence is always there. The mountain stands.

The mountain in my soul is where I am called to, not the ocean. Not the empty depths, but the life-filled world. Silent and above it, I watch, I remember. A new view. A new space. A silence filled with birdsong and life, with heartbeat I can feel through my feet, with breath that inhabits my soul.

I return, step by step, descending closer to the world. It becomes more real. Less real. I have travelled and stood still. I return with a new view, a new silence in my soul. I am not behind, or separate, or messing up. I am connected, I am precisely where I need to be. I have all I need, deep within. I am strong and capable already, and I will learn and grow - and yet stay rooted to my silence, in my silence.

These words will never run out.

Hi friends, and thanks for reading.

Things are, as I said, a little challenging at the moment, with work and studies. Managing my time and energy is becoming an interesting exercise, as work is currently taking me away from home for a few nights a week. It will ease off, but for now, I’m trying to remember to reconnect to my silences, to myself. Being away from home means even eating healthy food can be a challenge, so I’m tackling one thing at a time.

This was my journaling this morning, reminding myself that, while I might not go there as much, to the space in my soul where the words seem to pour forth from, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It has always been there. It always will be. I just have to go there.

So this was my reminder to myself, to stop worrying that the words I have will run out, that I won’t be able to write here. They will never run out. The mountains still exist behind the clouds. The ocean depths still exist beyond my sight. When I am ready, I will go there again.

Have a beautiful week and weekend.

K x

This is part of ’s Sparkle on Substack Essay Club. This is essay 16/24. Go here to read more about it!

I saw the sunrise that same morning. Not the sun itself. She spilled across the sky, a paint splash, a brush of colour against my skin. Blush and pink, the gold of summer wheat fields, amber turned liquid and shining. She used clouds like veils, concealed behind vaporous smudges of twilight and mountain-blue. She was dignified, demure. We aren’t brave enough to look on her face.

Riding a train, only a few moments later, the sky was now drained of colour. She has wiped the canvas clean, clearing the stage for her sunset performance later.

From a starlit sky held in the shining orbs of a tawny owl to the sunrise dance of the sun, my heart was peaceful. My body was tired, my mind still not fully awake. But my heart remembered the sharp moment of recognition, making eye contact with the owl, seeing into those eyes and beyond.

What little miracles will I see today? Will I remember to look for them?

Hi there, and thanks, as ever, for reading this little snapshot of life.

As you may know from other posts, life is quite busy for me right now. The new job is going well, but it has thrown my routine out, mostly because I’m travelling more. I always forget how much I love my morning routine and how much it helps bring the words out of me. I’ve also felt like I’m behind on many things and have worked hard to try to let go of that feeling. I’m not ‘behind’ at all because I’m not racing anyone, not really.

However, something I reflected on in journaling this week is the idea that we try to learn to do something, like manage emotions better or even be more accepting of who we are. Then one day we think we’ve cracked it and that’s it, we’re set for life. My experience, so far, is that that is far from the truth. Like any muscle, we must exercise it. But it also relies on the idea that if we encounter similar situations, we’ll handle it the same way - which forgets one key fact of life: the situation might be the same but we are not.

I’m trying to remember this myself right now. I’m trying to navigate this momentous change in my life with my favourite things: curiosity, creativity and connection. It’s a really exciting time and I feel like I’ve landed on my feet, but I know I need to take the time to do things that fill my soul, like writing, spending time in my own company and being outside.

I keep reminding myself: this whole living life thing is a practice. Not a destination.

So, I’ll keep looking for those miracles. I’ll keep my notebook and pen close. And I’ll remember to connect with myself just as much as I connect with others.

Have a beautiful day and thank you again for taking time to read

K x

Enjoyed this? Fancy reading some more of my words?

Hi there! I’ve had a few new folks subscribing lately, coming from recommendations, so here’s a little bit about who I am and what I write/do! I’ve put some of my top pieces at the bottom, so check those out if you’d like to know a bit more about what I do.

Firstly, and most importantly, welcome to On the Outside. I am beyond thrilled to have new readers! Here at On the Outside I write about navigating life with my compass of curiosity, courage and connection, going via adventure and healing. I live amongst the south Welsh mountains, with a hoard of books, a garden full of foxgloves and goldfinches, drinking tea. Basically, a hobbit. Wandering, not lost.

If you aren’t already, subscribe to join me on this journey through the truth and beauty of the uncertain and the unknown. With copious amounts of tea.

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Here I sit, feet hanging over the ledge, the sound of quiet birdsong drifting through my window. Behind me, the known, the lived, the quantifiable. Ahead, in front and beyond, the mysterious, my path leading away.

What is it to be here, poised on the edge of the unknown? At my fingertips, I have the choice: to be anxious and worried about all the unknowns of this path; or, to be excited and curious about all the unknowns of this same path.

I choose curiosity.

Am I anxious? Of course. We prefer predictable. Predictable is safer. It’s easier. Writing and reflecting on this moment, the moment I set off on a totally new path, I thought of Peter Pan. Despite the recklessness, there was always a wonderful sense of fun and adventure. A sense of seeing what’s around the corner just for the hell of it, knowing it could be delightful - or it could be crocodiles.

And so, I will remain a hobbit. Grounded in my love for my mountains, my books (and my tea), but filled with excitement and curiosity about where this road goes.

To be here, sitting on this ledge, is both an end and a beginning. Held in one moment, at the bottom of a long exhale, my heartbeat a quiet backdrop to the evening birdsong, I am ending and I am beginning.

The road goes ever ever on.

If you’ve seen some other pieces, you’ll know I’m making a huge change to my life, starting 2nd Sept, which may mean less time to devote to writing. I’ve been absent lately, resting between my last job finishing and this one starting. It was a much-needed rest, one made up less of downtime and more of decluttering, organising and tidying up. Out with the old, and in with the new.

Tomorrow, I start my new adventure, and this writing, this space, will be my grounding space. My mountains and my books and my tea. And here. Thank you for reading and for bearing with me while I navigate this change, this adventure.

Because the roads really do go ever ever on.

K x

Want to read some more? Check these out.

I felt I was reaching through the curtains of time, some heavy velvet, others a wispy cloth barely there. The layers of life folded and creased together until my present day lay alongside his childhood, almost a century ago.

Is this what writing is? A form of time travel? A way to remember things that we had forgotten had even had a shape in our minds and hearts? I travelled back to farms, watched children being born who I know now as adults, I walked roads I’ve never been on, getting to know a man who I will never again speak to, never again get to ask questions of.

And all the while, I travelled back to the month my father passed, seeing the shape of memories long forgotten, tiny details I didn’t even know were there. Tears flowed, for my father, for the grandfather, for the ones left behind who told me the stories, took me to the places and introduced me to the people. Who shed their tears in the telling, whose grief was a tangible creature, demanding attention. We laughed often, though. The memories deserved that. We needed that.

And so, my own words have been sourced and shaped this week by things external to myself, by what I can see and hear and touch. The words from my heart, shaped in my mind, have all gone into creating a tribute for a life lived to the fullest. Grounding myself in the senses has been the greatest medicine, the best healer, showing tiny details of the world around me each day, while everything beneath the surface roiled and swelled and flowed, the great ocean of my internal world.

I’ll share some of those snippets, some of the poetry I managed to write before the eulogy beckoned. I reminded myself often, this last week, to flow, to do what felt right at that moment, to cry, to find solace in simple things, to remember how beautiful the world is. Perhaps you need this reminder, too.

Out of mind, out of heart

To get out of my head and my heart, I’ve been using an exercise shared by in this post. It’s been tremendous lately, profound in a way I totally didn’t expect. Here are some snippets from what I’ve noticed. I love doing this exercise. I highly recommend it!

14th Aug
I am dried dandelion heads, wet with rain
I am my hair, trailing across my bare arms
I am the notebook cover pressing down against my fingertip
I am smudges, blue and grey, in the sky
I am the corner of the teabag sticking up from my tea.

11th Aug
I am swollen hands in the heat
I am a pile of discarded clothes on the chest of drawers
I am the damp, hot smell of a summer evening
I am the bright orb of the setting sun
I am the empty blue sky above.

10th Aug
I am a quiet house
I am the hollow sound of my pen writing on these pages
I am the blue trouser leg hanging over the side of the laundry basket
I am outside glimpsed between the blinds
I am aching neck muscles

9th Aug
I used to be skin brushing against paper
I used to be the black alder tree, flapping about
I used to be the taste on my tongue
I used to be the feathery seedheads caught in the cobwebs
I used to be the detritus gathered against the bin. 

8th Aug
Now I am hazy clouds, making the world toned down
Now I am the thin, cheap ribbon of this notebook
Now I am hydrangea flowers, wilted shut
Now I am the hollow, wooden sound of my mug on the table
Now I am the music passing by in a car.

Tiny poems

has been running her seasonal poetry 'challenge’ (that’s a strong word, it’s more inspirational than that!) and I managed to do a few days before my words left me. Here are some.

Layer 
Day 7 of #tinysummerpoem

What sits beneath my skin
Beneath the masks and layers,
Ready to be exposed? 
What will you see first? 
Will you look closer? 
See beyond my words, my actions,
See through to the weave and weft,
The deep scars, towering peaks
And gentle slopes that are the
Landscape of my soul. 
We are all layers. 
Will you look deeply,
Beyond? 

Sit
Day 3 of #tinysummerpoem

May I sit? 
Can I ask a question? 
I've a few I've been saving. 
Was it that place where that happened? 
Or the other place? 
I thought it was that year,
Mum thought it was this year. 
Was that brother there,
Or was I even there? 
Have I painted a picture in my head
From stories and words and ideas. 
Let's sit a moment longer. 
This gentle breeze, this mountainside,
This sunset and warmth, 
It reminds me of you, 
The days I'm trying to remember. 
The questions I have to ask. 
The ones you'll never again answer. 

Light
Day 1 of #tinysummerpoem

The light is fading
A glorious paintbox spilled across the sky
Colouring the night before it dies
A last breath of defiance
Of creativity and courage
Of beauty and hope 
In the face of a darkness. 
Remember it ends. 
The shadows fade. 
The light returns. 
The paintbox is opened 
And we start anew each day
Each sunrise
Each sunset. 
What will you paint? 
The scarlet of your road rage
The indigo of your deepest secrets
The vibrant grass green of your brightest hopes
The steady gold of your heart, your love. 
I will take my brush
And paint
All
The
Light
In my heart

This is part of ’s Sparkle on Substack Essay Club. This is essay 15/24. Go here to read more about it!