Written in 2015 during the first week of stepping away, when habit proved louder than intention.
The last eight days were something of a revelation.
On my birthday, I decided to step away from almost all personal social media for a year. I knew how that would sound. I had made similar declarations before, usually framed as resolutions that dissolved quietly and without consequence. This time felt different, largely because I was tired of hearing myself repeat them.
Written in 2015.
Written at a moment when narrowing my life felt less like loss and more like relief.
Today is my forty-seventh birthday.
For months, I had been taking a long and sometimes uncomfortable look at my life. Becoming a stay-at-home parent had shifted my understanding of what mattered and what did not. It forced a reckoning with how I was spending my time, my energy, and my attention.
What came into focus was simple, even if acting on it was not.
Written in 2015.
A new film had just been released, based on a book I had not read.
That was normal for me. I love films, and for years I had been content to let adaptations stand in for the books they were based on. Watching was easier. Faster. Convenient.
Written in 2015.
It has been nearly a month since I last sat down to write.
The summer took over, in the best possible way. I spent as much time as I could with my son, making the most of what felt like the last summer before childhood began to change. Museums, hills, mines, the sea, and lengthy gaming sessions. It mattered.
Written in 2015.
Opinionated people are those who announce their views repeatedly, without being asked.
An opinion, offered once, is usually harmless. When it becomes habitual, it turns into noise.
Written in 2014.
βWhere do you want to meet?β That seems to be the standard question when I arrange to see someone I have not seen for a while.
I do not mind choosing the place. What tends to follow, though, is that I end up organising the whole thing. Time, date, and even how the other person is getting there.
Written in 2014.
I have spent much of my life caring too much about what other people think. About whether I am offending someone. About whether I am being judged. Over time, that habit became exhausting, and worse than that, it made me cautious in places where I should have been clearer.
This is the point where something shifted.
Written in 2018.
It is a strange thing, that feeling of being snowed under.
What strikes me now is how much of that pressure is self-imposed. I am doing a lot. I have started writing again for a motorsport website. I do not get paid for it, but it puts my work in front of a large audience.
Alongside that, I take on bits of design work. I volunteer as a webmaster and club secretary for a motorcycle club. I also volunteer with my sonβs football team. I am competent at all of it, but none of it pays.
That is the tension. If I take a full-time job, I lose the time I need to write. Writing is what I enjoy most. Writing for free feels like a way in, a way to improve, a way to open doors. What appeals to me most is that it can be done from anywhere.
I know I will have to work something out.
Looking back, this reads less like confusion and more like the early stages of choosing a direction.
Written in 2018.
We will soon be taking a long overdue holiday.
We are not leaving the country. Nothing extravagant. Just getting away from it all for a week.
My laptop died a few weeks back. I replaced it with a desktop and a dual monitor setup, which means it will not be coming on holiday with us. That feels like a good thing.
I have decided to leave everything behind except my smartphone. It will be on Do Not Disturb for the duration, whenever it gets switched on at all. I have also bought a book and intend to start it and finish it while we are away.
I truly intend to be off-grid for the first time in a long, long time.
Stepping away like this no longer feels like an experiment, just a necessary reset.
Written in 2018.
My son is in France on a school trip, his first time abroad without us.
He is having a great time. I am finding it harder than I expected.
Whenever I am away, I know that he misses me terribly. Now I am getting a taste of that feeling myself.
He comes home this evening. The last time I saw him was in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and it already feels like weeks ago. I cannot wait to see him and to hear about his adventures.
Over the coming months, I will be travelling to race tracks to cover various championships. I will go, do my work, and come straight back home again.
Home is where the heart is. My family means everything to me, especially when love makes absence feel this loud.