Poetry – from Brightest Tapestry

Jul27

poetry brightest tapestry

Poetry

I’ve been writing poetry since I was a little girl, and since I have a book of poetry out there, which shares the same name as this Blog, I thought it time to share some of my work with you all. Is this not love? explores my own feelings about the fluidity of love that knows no containment, but rather seeks to exchange, grow and set free.

Is this not love?

 

I watched the crystal water

Tumbling down the bracken tended hill

And saw in it reinvention

Jouncing like unrestrained gypsy curls

That dance in the moon-lightened glow.

 

Born without form or face

The reincarnation of possibility

Constant as H2O, yet

Impossible to cling on to: un-held.

Lucent fluidity, falling through fingers.

 

I looked into droplet eyes

And felt the cascading laughter falling,

Wetness on drenched skin.

Changed moment by moment

Transformed into permanent novelty.

 

“Is this not love?” I gasped,

Breath stolen by the gelid flow.

This gorgeous cascading wonderment,

Fluent curveball trying to hold its course

Falls into giggling puddles in the misty grass.

 

Is this not love? This generous liquidity?

Reviving? Reforming? Eloquent flow

Of relentless reinvention.

Falling – all in a rush – into the arms

Of an ever changing landscape.

 

Is this not love? Is this not all my loving?

This love? This love? All my becoming…

Lucid fluidity falling through fingers?

Wetness on drenched skin?

And breath… breath… stolen…

 

From the book Brightest Tapestry: a decade of journeying in words, by Alison Campbell

Available from Alison Campbell via brightest.tapestry@gmail.com (£5 with free P&P)

If you enjoyed Is this not love? perhaps you would also like to read my FREE collection of poetry, which includes some previously unpublished material.

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When is life in a motorhome not life in a motorhome?

Jul26

life in a motorhome

What happened to the sabbatical year and life in a motorhome?

I embarked on life in a motorhome on the 4th January, 2016 (van day), and I can still remember the hope and anticipation that flooded my being as I climbed up into the cab, turned the key and put her into gear. Life that morning was full of possibility and the delicious potential that flows through the open door. I imagined, at that moment, that I was taking a year out. That by the end of that year I would have clarity and purpose and be ready to re-settle. As always, life had other ideas, and today, in the second half of the second year of what might yet turn out to be a sabbatical lifetime, I cannot yet see any future beyond what I am already doing. Life in a motorhome has evolved into life shared between the motorhome, house sitting (for income) and staying with friends.

life in a motorhome

vulnerability is strength

To a large extent, this is good, and I am enjoying the fluidity in my life and geography and work. However, not having a base, living in other people’s spaces and constantly moving around, brings it’s own difficulties. My body hurts most of the time, because I am always using my laptop on kitchen stools, armchairs and dining chairs and at tables that are too high or low. I lose sleep every time I change venue (remember that ‘first night in a strange place’ feeling?) and sometimes don’t sleep well for days. Food shopping – and trying to prevent waste – can be a nightmare; imagine having to move your whole kitchen, easily, wherever you go. Becoming vegan at the beginning of March only complicated things further, as both prepared and convenience foods are much harder to come by. Everything requires forethought, or I just end up eating crap!

Fluidity regarding working comes and goes, but I have felt enough of it to know that it’s a good thing for me. The dog business, has taken the bulk of the first half of 2017, with rapid growth, new contractors and having to let a couple of people go, all taking centre stage at times. It seems to have reached a stable status quo and is no longer requiring my full attention for the best part of every day. July is almost over and it’s wall to wall house sitting season (through until early October), but often house sitting enforces a scenario where I can do meaningful work towards an online future. So this may yet prove to be a fruitful period of growth.

I do have a period of 10 days mid-August, when I will be able to enjoy life in the motorhome again, along with Raffi, down at the farm. It’ll be a time of helping Janet out with farm work and catching up with gorgeous people like my Mum and Dad, Alison and Lloyd. It will be a clearing in the ‘house-sitting-jungle’, and no doubt much appreciated by that time.

I can say that the past few weeks have brought increasing clarity of direction, something that’s been missing since I abandoned the ‘coaching and support’ idea, for people running a pet care business. I’m currently working through Richard Moore’s excellent Eight Step Start Up course, which is proving incredibly useful and is amazing value. Money remains tight, but only because I am currently supplying the living costs of my youngest, as well as my own. I am, of course, always looking for a way to resolve this, without rendering him homeless.

life in a motorhome

The clarity of direction I mentioned, leads me to say that if you were to ask me what I do (implication = my main work), I would answer that I am a writer. This is a big jump forward for me. Especially since I have also realised that my unique selling point is ME! I recently completed an appraisal of my own passions, knowledge and strengths, over different phases of my life and a clear pattern emerged. For as long as I have had the ability to speak, write and read, I have loved words and engaged with them to grow, nurture, create and educate. I also have a strong history of personal development (long before I even knew what it was), and find it easy to expose my heart. These truths have proven to be deeply liberating, as I explore the patterns of the past, and see that the future is simply a continuation… a working the same threads into a new section of tapestry. May it be the brightest tapestry yet.

With love

Ali x

 

My authentic self – the fluidity of journeying

Jul24
authentic self

Ever the same, ever changing.

It’s fairly common these days to hear people speaking of cultivating and expressing their authentic self. I used to adhere to such a strong sense of self. Define myself according to how I saw, felt and experienced the person I call me. I saw myself as a type, a certainty, a ‘me’ who had emerged from captivity, grown, metamorphosed and flourished. A ‘self’ becoming strong, moving closer to completion. I felt like there was a finish line up ahead; a place (or time) when I would be done with journeying, beyond ‘becoming’. The past few years have gradually unravelled that inner worldview. Now I have a strong sense of fluidity.

The ‘self’ I was as a child, as a teenager, as a young mother, as a religious person or as a wife, is (even to me) unrecognisably me when held up to today’s internal mirror. Yes, like any animal, I have temperament and personality traits that remain consistent – though even these are modified by living. I am introverted, sociable, nurturing, optimistic and pathologically empathetic. Quick to feel rage, absurdly stressed by time pressure and, like a feisty car in reverse, able to go from 60 to zero when it comes to relaxing. I can relax for Britain! Almost instantaneously, with little effort and so deeply that sleep often comes to me in seconds.

But is that self? I can be all of those things across a spread of years that top half a century and yet manage to move from deeply insecure to scarily secure, religious zealot to atheist, apolitical to some strange chimaera; part liberal, part socialist, with an underbelly of green libertarianism. Promiscuous, to asexual, to experimental, to hopeful.

I feel fluid, and – for the first time in my life – I relish being undefined. Just as the life I choose today I may decide to relinquish tomorrow, so the ‘self’ I experience as ‘me’ today reserves all rights to be a different ‘me’ tomorrow. In so many ways the moment is all we ever really have. I don’t in any way wish to appear to be advocating flakiness or even flitting, butterfly-like from one pretty flower to the next. Simply that ‘self’ is not an inner being who ploughs our path through life, becoming ever stronger and less changeable with the passage of time.

So who – or what – then, is my authentic self? I think my only viable answer to that, has to be the ‘me’ that I (and others) are experiencing in the current moment, where that ‘me’ is real and unhidden. Authenticity can be no more than maintaining an honest self-narrative in the now. I am authentic when I am open, genuine and true to what it means to be me right here, right now. When I am holding the fluidity of my me-ness up in my hands while allowing you to watch it dripping through my fingers. An ocean is always wet. It is always water, which is always H2O – but from moment to moment it is experienced as consistent difference. Movement. Rise and fall. Ebb and flow.

authentic self

Constant re-invention.

And so, as Alanis would say (yes girl, always walking one step ahead):

“I have been running so sweaty my whole life

Urgent for a finish line

And I have been missing the rapture this whole time

Of being forever incomplete.”

(Incomplete/Flavours of Entanglement/Alanis Morisette)

Somehow this blog post seems out of step with the usual ‘diary-type’ writings on Brightest Tapestry, but hey ho – this is exactly the stuff that I needed to say today, and tomorrow I’ll try to come back and share some poetry and an update on the journey.

With love

Ali x

 

Uncertainty and the power of choice

Jun28
power of choice

Almouth beach

Isn’t it funny how life has its little jokes? After saying that the one thing I was decided upon last October, was continuing to live in the van, an internal electric circuit failed, and I was without a fridge, water pump (no running water) and auxiliary battery (lights). With no money to fix this, I limped through the winter, jumping between house sitting, the hospitality of longsuffering Pete and a parking spot behind my (rented-out) house, hooked up to the electricity there.

I note here, that I speak as though I have the power of choice. However, often I am still just deciding between available options. I have big things to fix (beyond the van) before I can genuinely say that I am living the life I choose.

So long as I was on hook up, I could run lighting and heaters but water had to be poured from a 5 litre bottle, which was a struggle while trying to keep everything clean. Imagine your hands at their dirtiest, then having to manhandle a heavy water bottle in order to pour water out to clean them. The same water bottle you would later use to fill the kettle or wash the dishes. Far from ideal.

Winter made being fridgeless bearable, but with pleasantly mild weather, nothing lasted long and I found myself throwing food away – something I had more or less eliminated from my life over the preceding year. Van living certainly took a downhill turn.

With the loss of van time, came a loss of space for writing, which resulted in shelved plans, zero blog posts and an avalanche of frustration. The power of choice deserted me and I often felt pushed into a decision by the practicalities of the situation. During this fallow period, I addressed the ongoing issue of the dog business. November brought the likelihood of an influx of new clients as another local dog walker made us her top recommendation to her clients, when she moved out of the area. I took on two new contractors, and decided to build the business up until we were ‘full’ again, but by April we were over capacity again so I repeated the process.

Now we are a team of 11, and there I have decided to rest. We currently have capacity in the system, so are still taking on new clients, and of course there is a natural fall off when people change jobs or move away, but realistically, it’s big enough. Small enough to be manageable and to maintain standards, while big enough to accommodate any request our clients can throw at us. And today – typing this as I look out over a wild, grey Northumbrian coastline – I have proof that it can function in a practical sense, without my physical presence. And that is all I need.

power of choice

Adorable pup

There have been so many shifts over the months since I last wrote. Perhaps the biggest, is that I have a small, exuberant, expressive, somewhat hairy companion on my travels. Raffi – a cross poodle/pug – is in the house (or the van, or the pub, or wherever I happen to be). We are good mates, who enrich and irritate each other in rotation, but for the most part we are very glad to share our lives. I also became Nana, to an unexpected trio of puppies, from a lovely little dog called Solar, whom Imogen rehomed. Astrid, Lily and Otter became such a big part of life for us all for a while.

My heart finally let go of Pete and we have fallen into an easy, fluid friendship. I’m not sure when or how it happened but sometime around April I noticed changes, most notably the capacity of my heart to look at someone else and feel a flicker of interest. That said, I am far from looking for relationship. I’m still very much in the process of building my own life, and love will come when there is room and capacity to embrace it.

Perhaps the biggest shift of all is the tragic death of my ex-husband, aged just 54. He died after a rapid decline, courtesy of the bitch that is Motor Neurone Disease, on Monday 26th June. We were together for 25 years and have three children, and although the ‘ex’ bit has cushioned me to some degree, this is the first time I have lost anyone whom I have shared any depth of living and loving with. My sadness is primarily for him, for his loss of life, especially at a time when he had the potential for the greatest happiness. Watching our children suffer in their own individual ways is a visceral ache, as is contemplating how it must be for his mum and dad.

But I will end with the certainty that life is cyclical. That ebb and flow are as natural to us, as to the waves hitting our shoreline. That I am fortuitous to genuinely know the power of choice. That struggle often gives way to our greatest gains, and that goodness and kindness always remain at the heart of what it means to be human.

With love

Alison x

 

 

 

The Life I Choose – female, 55 and living in a van.

Oct22
The life I choose

View of the farm over the valley. Janet and Rachel work the strip of land between the treeline and the houses. Theirs is the one white house.

Oh! Suddenly, it’s the 22nd of October, and I am just shy of being 5 sixths of my way through this ‘sabbatical year’. The life I choose is still something I live day by day, without a clear vision for my future. I thought it was time to take stock, and to update you on the unfolding of this life. Then, as always, where to begin? The Summer proved impossibly busy and expensive on the Caravan Club sites I had been using, so I went to spend a bit of time on Janet (my sister) and Rachel’s small holding. This involved parking up in their farm yard, and attaching to an external hook up point to

life I chooose

Wooden drum set in Plessey Woods, Northumbria

the house electricity. Plus I used their utility wash room, to empty my motor-home toilet cassette. This turned out to be a perfect arrangement for me, as I could write in the van for many hours, without interruption,  while being free from the distractions that inevitably surround you on a camp site. I also had people I love and trust close by, in case the need for help arose. In return, I paid a nominal amount for electricity and did odd jobs around the house.

With everything working so positively for all concerned, I changed my living pattern to involve travelling to the farm whenever I was free from the need to be in Newcastle for a week or more. As I have honed and refined the business, these expeditions to the Yorkshire countryside have become longer. It seems I can also ‘mind the farm’ (5 chickens, 35 sheep, 2 cats and 3 dogs) when Janet and Rachel are away. I’ve enjoyed the hands on farm work, though it’s not a life that I would necessarily choose for myself full-time. I love the peace, the really close proximity to nature, and the connection both with ‘family’ and ‘earth’. The hours of solitude to think and write is also perfect for me right now, and I have enough ‘busy’ when I am in Newcastle to stop me from feeling like I have opted out of living in the real world entirely.

The life I choose

The week Rosie joined me on the farm,

The dog care business is now primarily a walking business, and I gave the the girls who were already boarding for me, my boarding clients, apart form the few I am still happy to house sit for. I’m currently in the middle of a longish spell of sitting, and after a busy couple of weeks am now in the relaxed company of two horizontal retrievers in a lovely environment. My hopes for getting something more than dog care achieved, are on the rise!

The months since May, when Pete removed the possibility of relationship from our table, have been a time akin to grieving for me. I had truly hoped that we would overcome the ills of his past life enough to share a present, because the present we shared was – for me – well, I was happy… It’s hard to describe the coming to someone after years of relational disconnect and the internal turmoil and constraint that, that imposes, and feeling not only love, but ‘home’ and not only home, but ‘freedom’ in the face of them. It’s hard to find that you are not enough, even though you knew from the beginning that your were fighting monsters in pursuit of possibility. It’s hard to let go of that kind of love with one hand, while holding onto friendship with the other. It’s hard to miss someone when they are sitting in the

The life I choose

My daughter, Imogen beach combing on the beautiful Island of Tiree

same room. But perhaps the hardest thing of all for me, is the difficulty I have in believing that this depth of connection, this social compatibility (I’m so complex in that regard), this quality of relating, is hiding just around the corner in another possibility. I want the companionship of partnering… but I not yet ready or able to hope. The farm has been sanctuary, and finding this place of safety is helping me heal. Baby steps.

I should say that throughout it all, Pete – whose name means the rock – has been kind, steady and inclusive. I believe that he wants a successful, ongoing, meaningful friendship as much as I do.

With all that in mind and heart, I have turned my attention to myself, and am enjoying a journey of discovery in that regard. The life I choose right now includes working to lose weight, get fit, stay healthy, practice mindfulness, reconnect with my sensuality and with the earth. I have no idea of my future, or the life I will choose. But I know that wherever this journey takes me, I will be there. I want to be the best me I can, in order to be able to grab life by the throat – without limiting myself through things I can do something about. I have, for too long, been ‘unhappy’ with my size and shape, so now is the time to determine my own long-term well-being. It’s not really that I mind looking curvy, it’s that I want to be physically able, strong and flexible.

Living in a small space is easier if you don’t have to squeeze yourself through the available gaps, and there is a lot of climbing and stretching and reaching because the storage space is mainly overhead. Plus I noticed a marked improvement in the chronic hip pain I experience at times, after doing only a couple of sessions of yoga a few weeks ago. So I have subscribed to an online workout video programme for beginners, that mixes cardio, strength, balance and core strength, in 30 minutes sessions

that you do daily. The trainer is right up my street and it feels like a good fit. having it online means I have reduced the obstacles to doing it to almost zero. Giving me a fighting chance of success. Once it gets to be routine to do it, I’ll plan some extra yoga sessions too.

The life I choose

A day in Huddersfield at the Rat and Ratchet

I’ve been on a pretty clean diet for a few weeks now. Started off with just Purition shakes, and have since added in vegetables, a little fruit, eggs and beans. Am off caffeine, dairy, gluten and alcohol and feeling great. Eventually my heart will catch up, and when it does I want to be ready for the next adventure. For now I’ve made one easy, clear decision, and in that regard this is the life I choose. I intend to stay in the van for the foreseeable future. I do feel as though I have become more productive as the year has progressed, but there is so much as yet undone…

7 weeks of “that was harsh”

Jun28
life i choose

About half of the lovely flock at Janet and Rachel’s. Soothing.

It’s been a while! I haven’t written here because I didn’t quite know how to say what needs to be said, but now it’s time.  The past 7 weeks have been some of the most unrelentingly harsh that I can recall for a long while. It would take forever to recall the detail of that statement, so I’ll try a list… neat… sanitised… minimal. Take what you can from it  – a potted history – and then move forward with me; it’s really a summary to reflect on in times to come – not a weight of words to anchor me into the present mire. Actually, in writing this, now, this moment, I don’t feel defeated. But my head feels like I don’t own it anymore; full of uninvited guests and marbles being shaken in a little cotton bag. I can’t think. Writing is like wading through treacle. I can’t settle.

Yet somehow here I am, words dripping onto the page as reluctant fingers peck at QWERTY letters. Keys. To locked doors.

So less than eight weeks ago, I didn’t know that I would own these experiences:

  1. Pete’s mum died.
  2. Rosie moved to a new home.
  3. The love of my life, who’s tried so very hard to overcome so much and feel able to love me, admitted defeat. Still friends. Lost hope.
  4. My laptop broke. Imogen to the rescue with trusty old Snappy Lappy.
  5. Downloaded a system update to my phone and spent 3 days without a working phone, hours of completely useless tech support, plus an unnecessary factory reset and all the extra work that that entails. Stephen to the rescue with a “just press this button”.
  6. My ‘hotspot’ – how I get my internet in the van – stopped working. Stephen to the rescue.
  7. Walked a dog, who attacked another dog (badly) and ended up paying £330 vet bill and a dog (the ‘aggressor’ – who was pushed into a reaction by an overly ‘friendly’ off-lead dog jumping in his face) being put to sleep.
  8. Walked with Janet and Rachel through the last days of Mirri’s life, just a week after they had to say goodbye to Jake.
  9. My email stopped sending email. Fiona helped sort that one.
  10. A computer virus at 1.30 am. Stephen to the rescue.
  11. Sent van in for an MOT and service: timing belt, water pump, auxiliary belt and 1 rear brake cylinder all needed replaced. £680
  12. A few days later, on Janet’s smallholding in rural Yorkshire, van wouldn’t start. Called RAC as non-member (and joined) £120
  13. Back in Newcastle – fitting new starter motor, when final (integral) bolt sheared off while being tightened. £74 RAC to the rescue. £0 (yay!)
  14. Garage repair and new starter motor. £144. Pete to the rescue (loan).
  15. Two days later Joe’s car showing loss of oil pressure, and significant engine noise. Garage advised against repair in view of cost versus the worth of the car and the irreversible damage already done to engine.
  16. Bought new car for Joe, so that he can work and keep a roof over his head.  £600 (Chris to rescue – paid rent early to cover this until I could get the money together).
  17. The EU referendum result confirmed as leave. Feeling something I can only describe as grief.
  18. Jeremy Corbyn, the only politician around who I feel offers an honest agenda of social democracy, is scapegoated.

And when I see it all exposed like that I think two things…

How strong I must be to just press on with life through all of that (I feel so insignificant and powerless much of the time) and how clearly I am not alone. I want to thank all of my family and wonderful friends who stand beside me through everything. I know my own strength relies on my connection with you.

So to now, and how to shake the malaise that comes from not having a peaceful centre? To free my head from the chatter of marbles and to find focus again? I thought this would be a good first step. To put it all onto the page, let it all live on the outside of me. Begin to let it go…

 

 

 

 

Essentialism, priorities and a potted history

Apr24
The life I choose

Delightful Poppy, my last holiday house-sit dog.

It’s been way too long between posts, but rest assured that I have been fashioning a path through some rather overgrown torrain. It’s beginning to settle in my heart, that living the life I choose, is not so much choosing a life I want and then living it, but rather choosing the life I want, moment by moment. At the beginning of April I finally ran out of house-sits, and managed to book a – 3 nights on site, 2 nights off site – rolling plan for the following few weeks, only to find that I needed to be in Newcastle for longer periods, to cover staffing problems. I cancelled the site entirely last week and have had to cut my stay down to only two nights for the whole of next week too. This push back towards house-living meant taking a look at my internet access, since Pete doesn’t have Wifi, and uses his phone to tether his laptop. Not wanting to use up all his data allowance, I have now subscribed to the same arrangement, but with Three’s new 30GB hotspot package, so my internet issues are completely behind me (I hope!)

Having finished the book on Essentialism and considered my own need to at least be aware of my priorities, I feel much clearer about the importance of noticing when work begins to encroach on the rest of life. I broke life down into the following priority categories:

  • Self,
  • Family (in which I include Pete),
  • Friends,
  • Work (Custom Canine Care),
  • Writing (which I am not calling work at the moment, because it is life-living and creative).

For most of the past four or five years, work has very much been the cuckoo that threw everyone else out of the nest, and then fed freely on my time, only to become enormous. A lot of my thoughts so far this year have centred on practical solutions to the problem of freeing myself from the day to day demands of the business. I want to keep Custom Canine Care running, not least because it provides a number of people, who are very dear to me, with work. But I do want my own contribution to become less, so that I can focus on other things. A couple of weeks ago, we had a staff meeting (the result of re-prioritising my co-workers in the business) to discuss this further and came up with a number of new ways forward. Typically, it has been the two weeks following on from this, that I’ve been needed to cover holidays and more recently, the death of Joe’s car. So as always – plans remain fluid, and sometimes work still needs to be prioritised!

brightest tapestry tattoo

My wolf print in snow tatoo

In respect of the other categories, I have finally set on a course of slow, steady weight losss, returning in the end to the high fat, low carb model, and that’s all going well, at a rate of about 1lb a week. I think it’s been so slow, because I have had a knee injury (now nearly healed) and haven’t been able too walk much without severe pain. I have also gained a tattoo! I went to a local tattooist, who Pete has used before, and who just happened to be across the road from the last house-sit that I did at the end of March. It’s on my upper right arm and is a wolf paw print. It felt odd for a while, but now feels like a part of me. A few people have asked me how it felt to get it done. The closest sensation I can liken it to is a kind of rasping across your skin – much as I imagine it would feel to run a metal file over the area in little back and forward strokes. It wasn’t so much really pain, as a kind of irritating soreness – but very hard to accurately explain.

brightest tapestry essentialism

Pete at the cheese and cider festival, The Brandling Villa

Prioritising family is a work in progress, though since Mum had the heart surgery in March, and I spent some time with both my lovely sisters (Fiona and Janet), I have definately felt more intertwined with their lives. I have moved all my website hosting over to Fiona’s long-standing hosting and web-maintenance business, and most of the sites are fully functional and beginning to flourish. Custom Canine Care (now a dog info-blog) and my old rat breeding site, now relaunched as The Scuttling Gourmet, have both had loads of time an attention, and are now starting to generate interest and subscribers. I managed to publish my first eBook from The Scuttling Gourmet series, and although it has some formatting issues, I did it and have sold around 15 copies in the past week, since it was released. I’m going to iron out the formatting problems as I prepare the second one, and then go back and revise the first one too. I have 7 planned in the series, plus two others on different aspects of rat life. So much has been happening in Janet’s life too, especially with the birthing of so many lovely lambs at her smallholding, and I have followed the stories avidly on Facebook. Pete and I have spent loads of time together, and have enjoyed various walks, pub visits, a cheese festival, a vintage fair (bought a great tie dyed velvety jacket) and a meal at Weatherspoons (on the back of an aborted attempt to go and see a live band at The Head of Steam). We’ve been a bit constrained because of my knee’s inability to walk far, or at any speed. There’s a lot of day to day stuff and Game of Thrones watching in between!

Imogen’s helped me along the road to spending time with family, by arranging a couple of get togethers for me and all three offspring (so good to have them all in Newcastle for a time). She’s cooked us some lovely food – and this coming week we get to play with her new Virtual Reality headset. I’m acutely aware, that despite all of this, I haven’t had much contact with Mum and Dad since she went home from hospital a few weeks back, and I need to prioritise them too. I managed a lovely evening with Lloyd while I was house sitting at Mak and Fern’s a couple of weeks ago, and he was up for the NERS show. We had a much needed catch up and enjoyed a chinese takeaway together. I’ve also made the first moves towards meeting up with a group of rattie friends from the south of England in the Summer. It’s good to record these things, not least because then you can hold me accountable, but also because it serves to help me realise that I am actually doing something about the principles I am re-learning.

Writing has been all I knew it would be. It excites me to learn new things and I am revelling in the progress the sites are making. I have learned so much, and have so far still to go, but I can see it beginning to come together – at least for the business site and the rat site. I have also been working on a new business site called Running a Pet Services Business, which is live, but I have yet to launch. This is a support and training site for people who are involved in pet care businesses. So that will be next to give wings!

The life I choose – essentialism

Mar23
The view from the public footpath just outside the Caravan Club site at Old Hartley.

The view from the public footpath just outside the Caravan Club site at Old Hartley.

So much has happened since I last wrote and I apologise for the ‘gap’. One thing that is clear to me, is that I have a huge amount to learn this year about “the life I choose”. After a run of house-sits, punctuated by my gorgeous mother having open heart surgery (she’s recovering with the grit and determination that I know runs through my own veins), I find myself again re-evaluating just what it is that I am doing here. The short answer would have to be – too much! I set off on this year of significance, in order to free myself from the tyranny of constant, frenetic, busyness, yet three months in I found myself trapped again in that treadmill feeling, and “the life I choose” felt like a distant, ethereal thing. Unable to even define it, I felt ill-equipped either to take hold of it or to make it happen. Yet here I am: A new day, a new caravan site, looking out onto the vastness of the North Sea and taking the next baby steps towards understanding what “the life I choose” really means. Perhaps just as importantly, beginning to see what it will cost me.

I heard something very challenging yesterday; that the word priority was for many centuries of usage, only singular. That it was used to mean the single most important thing. Then, sometime over the past 200 or so years, as our lives developed an ever increasing pace, it was pluralised. The competing demands of many aspects of our lives had become too complex and clamorous to contain a single priority. However, it strikes me gut deep, that the human being is not capable of prioritising many things. That believing we have many priorities, leads only to the tyranny of the urgent. A place I have lived for many years. What I mean is that unless we are honest about our priorities and reduce them down towards a list of one, we will not live the life we choose, but rather we will do whatever makes the loudest (or most uncomfortable) demands on us at any given time.

For the past 5 years I have prioritised my business, Custom Canine Care, over everything else. Perhaps initially that was essential to make it happen, but for at least the last couple of years I have allowed it to become something that has demanded priority, rather than me giving priority to it as a conscious choice. It shouted the loudest and most urgently. I feel that it’s important to note that in my heart, the business is not my priority. My children, family, close friends and Pete (who fits into at least two of those categories!) would all trump the business. So would my health and well being. That they haven’t been prioritised in any practical sense was more about them demanding less than about me wanting to give less. This year, is in many regards about breaking that cycle – and it’s hard. Only yesterday, I had to say “no” a longstanding client, who I care about a great deal. It was painful…

I am currently listening to a book called Essentialism, by Greg McKeown and am finding it to be one of those “right place, right time” books for me. He teaches that the pursuit of less is more likely to enable us to achieve more of the stuff that is important to us. I began this year with so many things that I wanted to achieve/begin/work on. If I continue to do things as I have over the past 3 months, I’ll achieve very few of them. Time to take a close look at what I want to prioritise and what I need to let go of to achieve that.

I feel that there are five main areas of my life that I should look at to determine priority.

  • Self (health and wellbeing)
  • Relationship
  • Family
  • Friends
  • Work

Each of these areas of life represents myriads of hopes, desires and challenges for growth. Things I would like to do, make happen, experience and learn. Over the next few days I plan to drill down into them and discover true priorities, and if I can… one priority for each that will take my focus until it’s done. Will let you know how I get on.

Life between house sits and my first E-book

Mar2

Today I am back at the Durham Grange campsite and it’s cold, wet and quite windy. I did my monthly sit at Mak and Fern’s house last weekend, during which, I managed to get a large area of the inside of the van propely cleaned out. Pete dropped over on the Sunday and fixed the waste water drainage pipe, which had started leaking for the second time. The pipe dropped onto the road during a journey last Summer, resulting in the terminal tap having to be removed, as the friction from the road had worn a large hole in the pipe above it. After this episode, we removed the tap, shortened the pipe (to get rid of the hole) and I’ve been using it as an open pipe and just draining it continuously into a bucket ever since. Until last week, when it began leaking from the other end of the pipe, where it attatches to the van. So Pete took the whole thing off and attached a new length of waste pipe, then added back in the old tap to make it fully functional again. Yay! One less bucket to carry around!

I can’t believe how quickly time is passing. With one sixth of my year behind me, I came to realise how little I had achieved towards my writing goals. I am not unrealistic and I know that a year will only make a small dent in all that I want to fulfil, but at the very least I would like to

  • get a Scuttling Gourmet blog based website up and running in place of the current Shunamite Rats site and create some Rat Diet E-books on there.
  • start a blog based website on the subject of setting up and running a dog service business, along with creating some short E-books on the subject.
  • write some poetry.
  • develop this blog.
  • maintain the dog blog and Custom Canine Care site.

Today I spent preparing a section of the Scuttling Gourmet for publication as an E-book, essentially un-formatting text and correcting irrelevant references to other pages and chapters. I have the whole chapter done, and now just need to reformat headings and the like to make them compatible with a Kindle reader. Then I will publish Rat Diet – feeding for longevity, well-being and in old age on Amazon. I have spent some time in past weeks, reading through the whole publishing process and it doesn’t seem beyond me. Watch this space. Of course, I’ll have to employ someone from fiver to create a cover.

Tomorrow, I’m picking up Imogen from her place of work near Durham and we are heading over to Thursby to visit Mum and Dad, before the big op. It will be lovely to have some social “time out”. March is essentially house-sit-month. Not ideal to be doing three or four in a row, but I guess that’s how it will roll at times. Next time I find myself on a site – 22nd March – I’ll be staying North West of Newcastle near St Mary’s lighthouse at the Old Hartley site. I’m looking forward to having more choice, as all the sites open after the Winter break. Being by the sea, and in an area with some gorgeous walks might lead to Old Hartley being one of my favourites.

Mobile homes, diet and having people who embiggen you

Feb16
Archy (left) and Lucy (right) practicing synchronised sleeping.

Archy (left) and Lucy (right) practicing synchronised sleeping.

This week is a house sit week. I have a few longer house sits coming up and these pose their own adjustments and challenges. I like living in someone else’s home… it kind of feels like being in a hotel or guest house. There is no sense of possession or responsibility beyond looking after the items I use and cleaning up at the end. This brings me a different sense of freedom to being in the van and allows me to think more deeply about concepts like “ownership” and “home”. My charges here are Archy and Lucy, two wonderful cross-staffies, who  I have known for about four years. They are great company; calm, loving, gregarious (Lucy), soulful (Archy), and it’s a pleasure sharing house space with them.

The challenges of any living space for me these days are:

  • can I sleep comfortably?
  • can I work at the computer comfortably?
  • can I easily brew a cup of tea?
  • can I cook?

I have found that as a general rule, almost anywhere that I find myself, I can do three out of four!

Okay – here goes – I feel fat! Despite generous comments from my elder son, last week, that I actually look “average”, I feel too large for my me-ness at the moment. Last year – from Summer through to early Autumn I followed some wacky diets and lost around two stone. From late Autumn through to the beginning of this year I managed to regain about a stone and a half. Ouch! The net result (apart from being about 7 lbs lighter for my trouble) has been a determined effort to make a lifestyle choice that will carry me on into the future, with the intention of very gradually losing weight until I do feel right for me. Then maintaining that position.  Having been on pretty much every diet known to mankind – and a few more besides – I thought a lot about which one had principles that I could live with in the long term. I do like the Atkins/Paleo/very low carb  approach, but being primarily a vegetarian, with a passion for real ale and craft beer, these diets as a way of life would be hard and restrictive. The principles of Slimming World feel like a much better fit, for a long term way of eating beyond “a diet”. So I am currently building up a repertoire of low Syn recipes, along with a list of things that are compatible with both the SW philosophy and life on the hoof. I am so often de-railed by not being in a place or position to cook something when I am hungry. Having a well supplied snack box handy can make all the difference.

Earlier today I was on You Tube listening to some readings on the Button Poetry channel and I came across a poem called Too Big by Beck Cooper. It made me cry (of course) and I was completely blown away by the last line which was:

“Find a lover who wants you to take up space.”

Utterly wonderful, not least because *I* want *me* to take up space. Feeling fat is a very different thing to being told by someone else that you are too big. Big is good… powerful, strong, immense, considerable, tremendous. Taking up (your) space in this world is good. No-one else can fill your space, because your contribution is uniquely your own, I am grateful that I have found a lover who can not only support my own desire to carry less weight, but who concurrently wants me to take up more space. Indeed, Pete is someone who opens up the space in front of me by sowing space-seeds as he moves through life. I have friends and relations who do this too. Auspicious indeed. I hope I can give that gift to other too.