Hello internet friends! I’ve not been on here for a minute, as I have had some personal issues to deal with… But I preach on my social media platforms about showing up as best we can whatever the weather. And the reason I speak to this notion is - I don’t think we should surrender to the sentiment that when life gets tough we must lose our connection with the muse. Getting creative, expressing our true selves, finding respite in a craft practice; all the beautiful life affirming aspects of living the creative life should not, in my opinion, be negated by the crunchier, denser, more difficult aspects of the human experience.

In fact, I truly believe that our art practice can be an active way of equipping ourselves to deal with the challenges of the world (at large and on a personal level), and not a guilty distraction or unnecessary luxury as we can so often, mistakenly, believe.

Creativity is renowned for its therapeutic benefits - as meditation, as a portal to the flow state, as a means of revelatory expression. It keeps us connected to our childlike curiosity, it speaks to the human condition - across all borders and divides - and it is, in my opinion, the most wholesome form of escapism from stress and overwhelm out there. It may be seen as slightly decadent or indulgent or even superfluous to requirements by some, but that, I believe, is simply because it is in fact SO inherent and imperative as to be weaved into the very fabric of our human experience, and therefore invisible to those who do not seek to see its true value.

Sometimes we can’t see the wood for the trees…

And sometimes, we just can’t see creativity for its necessary, healing and transformative nature.

Governments really don’t help with this pervasive narrative that the Arts are merely an afterthought. Reader, do you recall back in lockdown when the Tories put out ads encouraging professional creatives to ditch their years of painstaking craft practice and slip into a role in cybersecurity instead? Which was a pretty ironic stance to take on creativity, seeing as the main things that got people through the pandemic with their mental health (somewhat) intact were very much of a creative nature; reading, television, film, baking, art, crafts, gardening… And yet…

This feeling persists that if you prioritise creativity, you are not a full or serious person. There are more important things going on in the world, didn’t you know?!

This sentiment is mirrored from all angles - the sharply raised eyebrow of the careers advisor, the incredulous relative demanding to know ‘if you make an actual living from that??’, but perhaps most perniciously, the little voice inside our very own head questioning whether we should just be doing something a little more worthwhile…

I argue that the alternative to living a creative life is far, far worse than the perceived indulgence of it. What becomes of the world when its inhabitants stop singing? Stop dancing? Stop losing themselves in stories? When they no longer recognise their own flawed humanity within an ancient myth or a character from a television show? How would we make sense of our collective human experience? Do we even have a society at that stage?

So it’s never really been a question of whether we should be creative or not, but rather, can we afford the cost of living a life without self-expression?

*

Sadly, there will always be a lot crazy shit going on in the world. There will always be other things we could be doing - more practical, ‘socially acceptable’ things. There will always be noise and distractions and not quite enough time. Our to do lists endlessly refill and our responsibilities are like the ever multiplying Hydra - growing two more heads every time we cut through one.

There will always be something to feel guilty or worried about.

Which makes me conclude, that if it’s never the right time to get creative - then any imperfect time will do.

And the great thing is we don’t even have to have a result in mind when we create, we can do it simply for the sheer joy and experience of doing it. In fact, the more we lessen our expectations around creative outcomes, the better the work tends to actually be, ironically.

We can create for ourselves, for others, to earn a living, to heal our past, to let off steam, or just for the sake of creating. It is always a worthwhile endeavour.

So internet friends, that is my case for staying creative whatever the weather, especially in troubling social climates. Art is the best weapon against a challenging world. Don’t take the bait and let it fall to the bottom of the pile out of guilt, fear, or sheer panic. I truly believe the muse is our greatest ally when we navigate intense times personally, and collectively.

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If you would like to explore the importance of art & creativity further, I highly recommend checking these out:

• Aimee McNee’s TED Talk, where she goes deeper into the importance of creativity in the face of global meltdown.

• Stephen Pressfield’s book ‘The War of Art’

• Rick Rubin’s book ‘The Creative Act’

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It can be so easy to be seduced by an idea. A perfect, delicious, exciting idea can live rent-free in your noggin, away from the constraints and parameters of reality, where it remains whole and dopamine-inducingly perfect, and every time you think about it, you get a little ‘hit’… Ooh. How delicious.

But when it comes to actually fashioning said idea into an indisputable reality (not just a free-floating noggin nugget), that’s when things get real and we can often find ourselves at a loss - or just gravely disappointed by the disparity between the idea in our head and whatever is materialising on the canvas/paper/fretboard/computer screen etc.

Well, dear reader, this article is a guide for helping you along this frequently difficult process, and seeing your marvellous ideas through to the bitter end! And then, with enough practice, you can become a certified finisher, which is not only marvellous for the ol’ self-esteem, but it will propel any of you who currently struggle with this aspect of the creative process into a whole new bracket of reliability and consistency as a creator. HUZZAH!

Okay here we go:

JUST START

Just starting the thing sounds obvious right? Glaringly obvious, and yet, this can be the trickiest part of the whole process. Certainly it is the point at which all the sneaky little habits such as procrastination, distraction and avoidance can take hold. I consider starting a project to be an act of broaching new, untrodden territory - we are literally crossing over from one energetic realm into another, and I think that’s why it can feel so daunting. It involves a change of state on multiple levels (and as we know, our naughty noggins just loooove familiarity); we need to focus our mind, our energy, our literal bodies, within the time space reality, and tear ourselves away from the comfort of the bed/sofa/well-trodden routines that our nervous systems are so accustomed to.

Therefore, one of the biggest impediments to starting a new project is… that old chestnut… procrastination… Boooo hissss! Sometimes we know we’re doing it - we decide to hoover the whole house because that deadline is imminent… We have an inexplicable impulse to put our dvd and book collections into a very specific genre-coded order that only we can decipher… We simply must watch a thirty minute compilation video of ‘otters holding hands’ on YouTube before we sit down to work etc etc… This is pretty standard stuff and fairly innocuous in the grand scheme of things. I’d say the kind of procrastination that we really need to look out for, be vigilant about and actually pretty ruthless in our unearthing of, is the kind of procrastination which comes in a heavy guise. It’s the procrastination that is rooted in our subconscious, where we don’t even know we are ‘doing it’. It’s cheeky, it’s sneaky and it may just be the biggest obstacle holding you back from your full creative potential.

So how does this sneaky pattern show up in our lives? In ALL manner of ways unfortunately - overthinking, analysis paralysis, excessive rumination, co-dependency, people pleasing, prioritising others’ needs, unnecessary drama, crippling perfectionism, fear of out-shining those around you, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of commitment, drug addiction, love addiction, anything-other-than-starting-your-project addiction… I think you get the picture.

Although we may not be prone to all of these, there is usually at least one or two culprits busy at work in our unconscious at any one time. To put all this in simpler language and reframe slightly - often we are quite simply misspending our creative energy. Yup, it’s a thing - an actual psychological phenomenon. I even made a lil’ Instagram viddie about it:

So, once we’ve side-stepped distractions and procrastination, it really is about just showing up to do the job. Of course, blank page syndrome can hit us hard at this stage but remembering that - as I mentioned earlier, we are broaching unchartered territory when we materialise a new idea and it is TOTALLY NORMAL to feel daunted and anxious and self-doubting, and there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to let that bother you in the slightest - can help a great deal.

There are a few other tips ‘n’ tricks that can help at this stage - setting your environment up optimally, turning your phone off and parametering your time, for example. But ultimately, we are simply showing up for the task at hand, devoid of expectations and with our best foot forwards.

KEEP GOING

Okay, we’ve started - we have lift off and the project is underway. At this stage, we’re likely to encounter a host of new challenges aiming to take us off track; loss of momentum, fear of it not being good enough (this is a big one), loss of vision, imposter syndrome, overwhelm - to name but a few.

The thing to remember at this stage is, we’re not actually too much concerned with it being a world class piece of literature/music/visual art etc, we are much more concerned with it being completed. Keeping on going with a project, or an idea, is actually more of a physical act than an emotional one. Julia Cameron, the godmother of creativity, espouses in her book The Artist’s Way, that, as creatives, we are ‘taking care of the quantity, not the quality’ of the work. Readers, I am fully behind her in this sentiment. The more you can dismount your identity/ego from the work, the easier the ride and (rather ironically) the better the work will be over time.

Ultimately, we are prioritising iteration over perfection. Much like when building muscle in the gym, you wouldn’t just pick up one weight, very carefully lift it, and then stride out of the gym, proud as punch that your work was complete. No! It takes vast amounts of repetition to create the adequate components within your muscle tissue for gains to occur. And so it is with our craft. And in many ways this should come as a huge relief - you don’t need to get it perfect on the first go, you don’t need to be the next Basquiat/Bob Dylan/Margaret Attwood, you just need to show up consistently and act.

Here’s someone far more successful and influential than me explaining this concept:

Okay, we need to revisit the pesky presence of procrastination, because although it arguably tends to be most prone at the very start and end of a project, it can also creep back in during these middle stages too (oh how it does sneak upon us!). How I like to deal with this, myself, is looking at it as a cost/gain equation. This helps me immeasurably when my energy is being syphoned in a misguided direction.

For example - I feel a bit sad, maybe I should just lay down, watch House of Cards with some chocolate, and postpone my work ‘til later? OR I feel a bit sad, maybe I should make progress on my blog post/business/whatever is at hand, and that would make me feel much better and I can celebrate with a treat thereafter.

The thing about chasing immediate gain is that we will pay a cost for it later. Whereas, if we pay the cost upfront, we have a nice juicy gain to look forward to later. In short, learning how to navigate the NOW and LATER in your life is the ultimate access-key to building the life, and indeed the identity, that you truly crave. NOW is a magical portal, my friends, we must endeavour not to squander it!

FINISH THAT MOTHERF*CKER

Now we come to the final, triumphant, yet frequently terrifying, stage; FINISHING.

One of my favourite writers, Elizabeth Gilbert, has a great thing that she says in interviews - if a writer comes to her and says ‘my novel isn’t working I am going to start a different project instead’, her reply is always ‘you should do that, but only if you have a history of finishing things’. And by this she means - if you are already a certified finisher, then it’s pretty safe to trust your instincts on abandoning or shelving a project. If, however, you haven’t yet perfected the skill of finishing big projects, then your number one priority is training your finishing muscle.

But why does finishing feel so hard? So final and decisive? Well, because we are killing off all of the other options that the piece might have been. It is a valiant act of commitment. We step away from the safety of untapped potential and stake our flag in the ground… choose which hill to die on… put our skin firmly in the game. It can feel scary!

BUT it’s how we move forwards and build a cumulative repertoire of work. It’s how we develop our skills and grow, it’s how we create momentum and flow in our practice… and create the space necessary to move onto the next, and then the next, and then the next project.

Fuck preciousness and fragile perfectionism and indecision, let’s take our shot, give the thing a bloody good go, learn from it and move onto the next. We haven’t got unlimited time on this crazy little planet, so let’s make every effort count.

And if you don’t believe me, then take a look at one of the all time genius artists, Prince, and how he created his work:

Great clip hey?! It’s taken from a video from the makeartnotcontent YouTube channel, you can watch the whole thing here.

So, my friends, those are my three steps for seeing a project or idea through to completion. I hope it was helpful in some way. Let me know if you have finished a project recently (whoop whoop!) and I can celebrate with you in the comments:

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Some great books to help with motivation and productivity:

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Art of Focus by Dan Koe

We Need Your Art by Aimee McNee

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1. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

I’m starting this list with my all time favourite book on creativity - The Artist’s Way. It is an absolute stonker. It’s more of a workbook than straightforward non-fiction, and the self-guided, 12 week course runs deep, inquisitive taproots into the formative development of the artist’s self-concept - including detailed exploration of blocks, inhibitions and creative impediments (which, unchecked, can easily mount in all of us over time). That said, you can dip in and out of it and handpick your favourite tools if you don’t wish to work through methodically or with time constraints.

I think any artist (of any medium) would benefit from reading it, but it is particularly aimed at blocked or disenchanted creatives, and in this sense the book acts as a kind of creative rehabilitation program for anyone wishing to get their mojo back, or find it in the first place, or, indeed, for those aiming to deepen their existent practise and broach new levels.

2. The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga.

As a lifelong people-pleaser and someone who until recently had absolutely ZERO ability to say ‘no’ to people.. this book had me at the title. It’s very different from your standard ‘self-help’ book; it presents as a kind of Zen fable crossed with a Socratic style dialogue and at first I found the writing style quite strange, too plain and almost (dare I say it) boring. As the book progressed, I was of course eating my words because it’s an incredibly deep and nuanced philosophical text which calls the reader to boldly challenge their conceptions around self-determination, sovereignty and exactly how we metabolise and ‘hold onto’ trauma (and the role it unconsciously plays in our psychological make-up). It runs incredibly deep and I found the whole text to be confronting and refreshing in equal measure.

It’s also an undeniably popular and well-loved book; it’s been a fixture on the Sunday Times Bestsellers List and sold over 10 million copies.

3. Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner

This book is a hidden gem and, second to The Artists Way, my favourite book about freeing yourself and developing creatively. Full transparency - it is written by brilliant Jazz musician and improviser, Kenny Werner, and it concentrates specifically on the craft of music and improvisation. That said, I believe it to be relevant to artists from any background or medium because it is written from, and penetrates to, such a deep, elemental level. It’s about connecting back to a primordial creative impulse and shedding learnt patterns of fear, overthinking and, well, just getting in your own damn way when creating.

Ultimately this book aims to distill the artist’s soul from the ego, and it does a bloody good job of it too. It comes with a CD of meditations, to help the reader absorb the lessons right into the unconscious plane of functioning.

4. Slowing Down to the Speed of Life by Richard Carlson

Well, this book does exactly what to says on the tin. If you think too much or don’t feel fully present in your life, or perhaps struggle with overwhelm or burn-out, then pick this bad boy up, you won’t be disappointed. It is written by the author of another great book, Stop Thinking and Start Living, (I also recommend this book for the fellow over-thinkers out there…), and it basically helps you to centre and ground yourself back into the present moment and enjoy life more, rather than getting swept up in mental patterns and unnecessary stress and self-avoidance.

5. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Oh my gawd, I’m obsessed with Elizabeth Gilbert and I think she might be my spirit animal.

For anyone who is not familiar with Gilbert, she is both a fiction and non-fiction writer. She catapulted to renown with her soul searching memoir ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, but has also written numerous other books, but I think where I love her the absolute most is when she is writing and talking about creativity. So, if you haven’t already watched her famous TEDX talk about creative energy, here is the link, my friend: watch here.

Big Magic is all of the good stuff in her TEDX talk, augmented. It’s a beautifully balanced marriage of esoteric philosophy & mystical thinking, along with practical get-the-bloody-job-done discipline advice.

6. Mastery by Robert Greene

Okay, so this brilliant book is basically a massive nerdfest from start to finish. Robert Greene has studied the habits and processes of the most prolific and developed minds of past and present centuries and distilled all of his learnings down into this tome of a book.

If you are interested in the nitty gritty process of creativity and craft mastery, then strap in my friend. Much like the aforementioned The Artist’s Way, this book can be delved into according to your point of interest; it is DENSE and doesn’t need to be read chronologically cover to cover, unless of course you are a person of great stamina, in which case, I salute you.

Robert Greene does insane levels of research for his books and the granular detail he provides is invaluable. (He is the king of the nerds, all hail the king of the nerds!)

7. On Connection by Kae Tempest

“Creativity is any act of love. Any act of making. … It takes creativity to dress well... To parent. To paint a windowsill. To give someone you love your full attention”. -from On Connection

Kae Tempest takes a heartfelt approach to all of their work and this book about connection is no different. If you don’t already know, they are a multi-disciplined writer, poet, rapper, musician, playwright, novelist & general legend. Tempest is one of my all time fave artists, and truth be told, I think the sun shines out of their bottom. I went through a phase of listening/reading/watching every single piece of work/concert recording/interview that they have ever done and I can solemnly say they have never put a piece of work out into the world that isn’t astonishingly good and original. Now, this book certainly isn’t their most in-depth piece of work - it’s slight, at only 140 pages - but nonetheless it’s indicative of Tempest’s refreshing and heartfelt perspective on, not just how we connect to art and creativity but, how we engage with life, and each other, on a deeply felt level.

8. The One Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan

This book cuts straight through the noise, the nonsense, and the persistent overwhelm inherent in modern day living. It’s oriented towards a productivity mindset, so it’s less about creativity per se (although still very relevant to anyone looking to optimise their creative process) and more to do with efficacy, output and impact. It is a great tool if you are prone to procrastination or indecisiveness, or you work hard but without the needle moving much.

If you like this book, you’ll also like "Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time" by Brian Tracy.

9. 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

Okay so, here’s the second Robert Greene book on this list. The 48 Laws of Power will single-handedly rid you of your naivety and make you a more worldly and discerning individual. It’s written from the perspective of what to do if you want to be an all-powerful force within human society at any cost, so unless you’re an actual sociopath, the best way to read it is with a discerning mind. There are smart and savvy pieces of advice for navigating power dynamics such as ‘never outshine the master’, and there are bonkers pieces of advice such as ‘get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit’, which should be taken more as a warning of the extent of other people’s unbounded ambition and lack of ethics. Either way, all the ‘laws’ in this book can open your eyes to human behaviour and dynamism, and provide a valuable social navigating tool.

10. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

This is an autobiographical self-development book and Mark Manson is a funny, cool dude. It’s peppered with self-effacing and amusing anecdotes, but don’t let that dissuade you from the fact this book is extremely catalytic, and in places very moving. I just love any sort of book that ‘wakes me up from my slumber’ and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck does just that.

Manson brought the book to life in an accompanying Netflix show which is pretty much the same content as the book, except (as you might imagine) more vibrant and immediate. It’s definitely worth checking out both, especially if you ever feel distracted, stagnant or directionless in your life - the experience is akin to feeling sleepy and then dunking your head in a bucket of icy water.

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So those are my top 10 fave books on creativity & self-development! I hope you found the list helpful. Let me know in the comments if you have read any of them, and if so what you think. And feel free to drop any suggestions for great non-fiction books that weren’t on the list - I’d love to hear from you.

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In 2023, I had a pretty sizeable existential crisis.

It started when an old friend passed away. A gorgeous soul, Joe, whom everyone adored. He was someone I knew from my past life as an actor. A group of us used to host a tent at Secret Garden Party where punters could come and have their own funerals (our tag line was ‘putting the fun back into FUNeral’, naturally). We were initially a circle of old pals from drama school, but soon we invited some worthy stragglers to join the fold. One of whom was Joe.

Joe was THE ultimate good time guy - someone who could ingest a truly inordinate amount of recreational substances and still be standing, making everyone cups of tea, the next morning. He had a wicked sense of humour - as soon as he entered the vicinity people would be heaving and gagging with laughter. And when he wasn’t gleefully inducing hysteria, he’d be loudly declaring how much fun he was having, how beautiful and kind all the people were around him - truly heartfelt sentiments that would normally render someone into an absolute cringe merchant - but, with Joe, felt easeful and authentic, and spoke to how well he seemed to be able to just be in the present moment with the people around him; how effortlessly he made everyone feel seen and valued.

It was such a shock, then, when I received the gently-voiced phone call from a mutual friend.

*

Over 200 people came to Joe’s funeral, the crowd bursting through the door and out into the garden. He was only 40 and a simply beautiful human being.

I was sad that he was no longer here, that it had happened suddenly without goodbyes, but most of all, (here we go Harriet, make it all about yourself…) I felt deeply perturbed by the fact someone so close to my own age… (that’s the ticket…) someone only half way through their life, who was so well loved and seemed to be getting things right, had disappeared in such an unprecedented manner.

I recognised, sharply, that there was no protection for any of us. No prize nor punishment for living the best life nor getting things ‘right’, just an unspecified quota of time to make the most of what we’ve got, whilst we’ve got it.

At this stage the crisis hadn’t fully kicked off, but I started to feel vulnerable in a way I hadn’t experienced before - some unrecognisable feeling bubbling up from my centre and popping on my surface with a jolt.

A few weeks later one of my favourite writers, Martin Amis, died and this had an inflammatory effect on what I was slowly beginning to recognise as burgeoning existential anxiety.

*

I had read my first Amis books when I was a tender young thing - beached on the sofa after my A Level exams, contemplating my steps forward in life. I was very much at the starting line of adulthood back then, with life stretched out luxuriantly before me. The world (well, the south east of England..) was at my feet, and time (that awkward early naughties period, when Britney and low-rise jeans were still fashionable) was in my hands. I gobbled up Amis’s books and loved his writing; it felt audacious and exploratory - much like my attitude to life at that point… Like anything was possible.

Hearing that Amis had died, that a figurative ‘changing of the guard’ was occurring, had startled me into re-evaluating where I was in my life now, and what, exactly, I deemed myself to have achieved since those heady, halcyon days in my late teens.

I found myself having an overwrought response to the news; sobbing on the carpet, smart phone in hand, scrolling through the black and white photos and online eulogies, as a slurry of tears and snot cascaded down my face.

I was upset, far too upset quite frankly. Martin Amis had died. But so too, it seemed, had an aspect of my youth and sense of worldly possibility.

Dear reader, I think it was safe to say that the crisis was now fully underway.

*

I spun out badly. I felt as though a whirling dervish had taken up residence within my skull and I teetered on the cusp of a suffocating panic attack for days on end.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how carefree I had felt back in my youth, how tremendously potent and enchanting the promise of adult life had been. How I had taken it for granted - that things would just work out in my favour, that life decisions would be made and executed with ease, that somehow the elements of my existence would come together and provide an adequate and acceptable result.

Yet, when I compared these (let’s face it, quite unfounded) notions with where I was in my life now, my stomach dropped and lurched, and I realised with a cold sweat that I was, let’s say, a country mile away from where I had initially presumed I would end up in life.

Indeed, here I was, on the wrong side of 35; muddled, lonely and insolvent - my circumstances resembling absolutely NONE of the features that my naive adolescent mind had so presumptuously forecast… reader, the math of my life just wasn’t mathing.

*

But how had I let this happen?? I had ideas, good ideas, about what my life should look like and yet all this time I’d been patiently waiting for something. It’s just, now that I came to look at it, I couldn’t for the life of me think what that thing actually was…

It hadn’t bothered me that throughout my 20s I was disoriented and prone to flagrant escapism; it’s socially acceptable (maybe even endearing) to be directionless and a little bit wafty during those years. You have great skin, minimal life experience and an inexplicable notion of your own significance - not managing to make clear and cohesive steps forward in life is completely on-brand (prudent, even - to use one’s 20s as a period of mistake-making and data collection).

But was it a great look in the run up to middle age, I wondered?

I saw that the good grace in my life was diminishing rapidly and knew it was time to confront myself. Because, in the sleepless throes of this quite chilling crisis, I realised that for years I had been keeping things nicely ticking along, so that I constantly felt a sense of imminent potential… but had failed to take the plunge to actually move towards it.

Reader, I had held out on my life… only to find life holding out on me.

*

I began to recognise an unhealthy and fruitless pattern within myself: I had an addiction to remaining in a state of pure potential. It kept me feeling safe, unscathed… and brimming with promise.

Living in this perpetual place of dreamy potential but never actualising it had served, unconsciously, as a protection against my own perceived inadequacies - it meant I could inhabit a realm of idealism, never having to look myself, or reality, fully in the eye and never having to experience the consequences of putting myself out into the world. Because to conceptualise an idea is far cleaner and more convenient than facing the realities of bringing it to fruition - which inevitably involves mistakes, potential failure, a surrendering of control and perhaps the most scary and ever-looming of all my fears… taking RISK.

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The risk of things not working out, the risk of people not liking me, the risk of an idea not being as ‘good’ in reality as in my mind, the risk of exposure… embarrassment… uncertainty… And the risk that it might not be the right choice, that there might be something better, bigger, more suited, more shiny out there - yes, I couldn’t possibly risk making myself unavailable by embarking on the wrong path now could I???

So I coped by keeping my options open and holding out for the very best.

But ironically, the more I staved off taking a decisive risk, the more that became the biggest risk of them all. I felt like the ‘eternal bachelor’ who resolutely refuses to marry his loyal, sweet girlfriend on the off chance that Emily Ratajkowski might randomly call him and want to go out… only to eventually find himself all alone, with his options and time dwindling away for good.

Yes, it seems that failing to make a decision about your life is a whole decision in itself. And continuing to keep your options open past a certain point, basically leaves you… with none.

So I decided to get realistic, to say ‘no’ to a range of potential avenues and instead act on one specific path; knowing full well that the whole thing might not work, would inevitably be hard, that I might embarrass myself and not know what to expect, but regardless, whatever happened, committed action would move me forwards and provide the crucial experiential information I needed to forge a way forward. But most of all, dear reader, it meant that I would be on the field partaking in life rather than sitting on the side lines, hedging my bets whilst dreaming of a ‘perfect future’ that I was silently refusing to bring into existence.

I got to business about doing things differently.

*

On the outside, I was by all accounts… having a midlife crisis. As evidenced by my partaking in an array of classic tropes -

I went on a string of lonely dates with burly, disinterested men in their 20s (all at least a decade younger than me).

I embarked on a kind of frenzied navel-gazing marathon which involved completely exhausting the self-help section in my local library and running the YouTube algorithm for videos on ‘How to find your unique purpose’ well and truly into the ground.

And I wrote some extraordinarily pensive and rather morose poetry that will never ever see the light of day.

Pretty. Classic. Stuff.

But whilst my life operated as an extended cliche on the outside, something quite different and transformative was shifting within me.

I started taking more risks with my creative work and in my relationships. I made a conscious decision to get fully out of my comfort zone and lift the proverbial bonnet on all the sneaky coping mechanisms I had kept stashed away for all these years.

I stopped making the artwork I thought I should make, and started to make what I was genuinely excited about with no mind as to whether it was conventional, palatable or acceptable to people. I extended my practice to include writing, as it felt like a more immediate way of expressing myself. I had staved it off previously because I hadn’t felt competent enough, but after some months of steady practice, I started to publish my work online.

I got myself on camera, which was something of an ordeal, but I knew it was an imperative aspect of the business I wanted to build, and so after several weeks of daily clammy-palmed practising, swearing, and frustrating retakes, I felt adept enough to put video content online.

I allowed myself to be more authentic; more idiosyncratic; more weird, nerdy and intense, in both my work and my relationships, knowing that the right people would stay, and the unsuited ones would naturally drift away.

Perhaps most importantly, I became my own authority; as opposed to looking outwards for permission and validation, as I had always done previously. I stepped out of the mode of waiting for something to happen, and into a sense of having active ownership over my life.

All of these efforts culminated into a newly formed relationship with risk and uncertainty, and over time, my intense fear and various coping mechanisms began to gently dissipate and drift out of my life.

It took a while, but eventually I sensed that I had shifted gears from my old life and into a completely new way of operating in the world, and for the first time in years, perhaps ever, I sensed I possessed a creative potency that might actually be impactful to people.

Dear reader, I can’t lie to you - I was genuinely bruised and quite beaten by the whole affair, but nonetheless, after decades of unhelpful procrastination, rumination and lofty mental escapism, I was delighted to have finally made it onto the playing field of life. It was less fantastical than I had imagined, and yet so much better.

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I think people have mid-life crises for a lot of different reasons, but I suspect always as some sort of wake up call. If I hadn’t had mine, Lord knows where I would have ended up, but it certainly wouldn’t have been anywhere I actually wanted to be. I consider the whole experience a painful gift; a sharp elbow to the ribs prompting me back into alignment with a deeper, truer part of myself.

It had truly shocked me - how easy it can be to lose touch with yourself, to drift and dally, and then wake up one day, moored on a totally different continent to your original Self.

In many ways, that’s when the true creative journey really begins - we can certainly be going through the motions until that point; ticking boxes, playing things out - but the quest back to one’s true Self, I do believe that’s the path where the real treasure is nestled.

So all that’s left to say is - if like me, you have found yourself consistently trapped in creative quandary, or perhaps seduced by the ‘idea’ of things whilst simultaneously failing to root that vision into the real world - then I hope an existential crisis of the highest magnitude befalls you, dear reader. It might just do your hopes and dreams the world of good.

The wise & wonderful Martin Amis discussing mid-life crises (extract taken from the Charlie Rose Show/YouTube).

Further reading/listening:

• Fantastic episode from my all-time fave podcast ‘This Jungian Life’, all about how to navigate options and make life decisions: listen here. (You can also find the episode on iTunes/Spotify if you want to listen without adverts).

• I highly recommend this fantastic article about mid-life crises by Psychologist and author Dr Sharon Blackie via her Substack page: read here.

• Check out the brilliant Florence Given’s article about choosing your life path via her Substack page: read here. (FYI this piece is paywalled, but you can get a 7 day free trial in order to have a sneaky ganders!)

Thank you so much for reading this article, if you enjoyed it you can subscribe via the box below and you will receive all forthcoming newsletters straight into your email inbox:

Internet friends, I would love to hear about your experiences - please drop a comment below if you have had a transformational life crisis of your own!

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I have just finished reading ‘A Room of One’s Own’ by Virginia Woolf, and I loved it. It’s a short book that brims with humour, pathos and incredibly astute social commentary, all weaved throughout a gentle narrative of the author’s life (real and imagined) over a two day period.

Over-ridingly though, it’s an essay about being a woman in the world of literature. And back in the late 1920s, when it was originally published, it acted as a kind of spearhead piece - part analysis, part manifesto - for women who wished to realise the full extent of their creative and intellectual potential, yet faced a plethora of social and domestic hurdles in doing so.

Of course the practical and social impediments to creative expression have shifted, morphed, and unarguably improved over the previous century, but this particular conundrum of finding the time, space, and perhaps most crucially, permission, to focus and create - remains ongoing these days for so many people (both men and women alike).

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These days, as creatives, we have incredible access to technology, audience, and opportunity, with scope for self-publishing, self-promotion, global visibility and easy leverage to overhaul industry gatekeepers and cultivate autonomy and self-ownership in our practices.

The blocks and hurdles we encounter now are more subtle than those of previous centuries, but they seem to be more pervasive and insidious in nature - ranging from hustle culture, urgency culture and the ongoing and rather vehement culture war itself, to relentless, anxiety-inducing phone notifications, being constantly accessible via a zillion different platforms and apps, decision paralysis, digital overload, compulsive doom-scrolling, comparing and despairing, globalised news stories, the loneliness & mental health & chronic disease epidemics… oh boy, the list goes on.

Our possibilities have opened out to an incredible degree, but so too have our capacity for complication, overwhelm and burn out.

One of the conclusions Woolf draws in her 1929 essay, is that having a room of one’s own (that is, a sanctified space for creation) is an imperative aspect of meeting one’s full potential creatively. Whether that’s breaking into a creative industry and sustaining a lifelong career in the arts, or simply delving into, and accessing, one’s potential as a creative, at any level.

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Well, my apologies Virginia, I’m afraid I’m going to take your concept of a room of one’s own, and bleed it completely dry during the course of this article. And that’s because it’s such a brilliant symbol of creative sanctity - both literally and figuratively, and here’s why…

Claiming a space as your own in order to root yourself into a recurrent creative practice creates a kind of anchoring between self and craft. It builds relationship, habituation and cadence. I think this is to do with the actual physicality and concreteness of sitting down in a designated space - how having tangible parameters enables a sense of containment and inviolability.

Marking out a defined space for creativity offers the requisite sanctuary and solidity to ideas and impulses which might otherwise become wispy, ethereal or, quite simply, postponed until later. It distinguishes, and protects, from distractions and external noise which might otherwise usurp one’s energy and interfere with concentration.

It builds habit, routine, discipline and muscle memory, which over time builds character, resilience, productivity and self-esteem.

In short, it’s an act of reclamation - not just of one’s art, but of one’s self, and of one’s place in the world.

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I truly believe that anyone who wants to express themselves creatively, from hobbyist to professional (or anywhere in between), should have a room of their own. It doesn’t have to be big, or fancy, or even necessarily a literal place… But just some time and/or space that is consciously parametered and sanctioned for oneself. A hot date between you and the muse, if you will.

For example, this blog is my room of my own. This small corner that I have carved out on the internet means the world to me. I sit at my computer every day and tippety-tap away at my keyboard, brimming with ideas, fears, doubts, unsolved problems - bringing alll the grist to my trusty little mill. It gives me a physical space… my small desk in my small bedroom… to arrive at, to sit in, to safely contain my self-expression and creative impulses.

And for the hour or so I work on it every day, I know who the fuck I am. I know what I’m doing and why - that’s not to say I don’t get insecure or scared about showing up and doing the work or it actually being any flipping good at all… that’s all there and sometimes the fear of being an embarrassing fraud screeeams senselessly at me, but I appease it with action and ownership. And I do that by physically sitting down in the space every single day, otherwise I get pretty fucking miserable, pretty fucking fast.

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Because, conversely, what happens if I don’t carve out that time and space is the following:

I fantasise and ruminate and lament. I get stuck in my head. I go into a ‘functional freeze’ nervous system state and get trapped in woolly-brained inertia. I go to Tesco to see if the Mr Kipling French Fancies are on offer and if they are, I buy them. I reprimand myself for eating all the French Fancies and buggering my blood sugar and feeling ill. I replay all the awkward moments I have had within social settings in the last 6 months and I wince and guffaw at myself. I get trapped into patterns of intense mental problem solving, even though, ironically, the only real problem I need to solve is my unnecessary and deeply imbalanced tendency towards way too much mental problem solving… Suffice it to say, dear reader, if I stay in this state long enough, I turn into a kind of melancholy, self-perpetuating, ouroborus-like-creature, and not only is it a poor use of my vital energy, but not one jot of good ever does come of it.

Now, there is ONE THING that breaks my tendency towards spiralling neurosis, and that is… focused creativity. Entering a flow state and creating; working on something outside of myself; diligently stewarding ideas into the world; holding vivid, exciting images and thoughts within my brain, then drumming up various ways to get these vivid, exciting images and thoughts out of my brain and into the world so I can connect with other people and find meaning and purpose in my otherwise strange and bewildering existence…

But to put all this quite simply - focused creativity immerses the chaotic human mind into a more relaxed brainwave state. Literally. Scientifically. Like, the electricity in our brains just chills the fuck out when we enter into a concentrated zone. Various other things do this, including meditation but, for me personally, nothing quite cuts the mustard like bringing ideas to fruition. And in my experience, if you are a deeply creative person, you will have been blessed/cursed/tasked with a big ol’ quota of creative energy, just vying for a home and a place in the world, and refusing that particular call to action… well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but it certainly never does end well for me.

But ENOUGH about little old moi! Let’s talk about you, my friend…

Do you have a room of your own? Is there a sanctified time and space in your life that is yours, and yours alone? Are you regularly meeting with the muse, or putting her off with other, seemingly more urgent, priorities and excuses?

Because claiming a space for yourself doesn’t mean quitting your day job, or retreating to the Amazonian jungle or ruthlessly disowning your family. It can be as small and simple as having a desk with all your trinkets, notebooks and a pot of steaming coffee where you can write or draw… Or an hour or two on a weekend where the husband/wife and kiddie-winkles know not to disturb mummy’s/daddy’s creative time… Or maybe it’s a weekly life-drawing or novel-writing or beginner’s ballet class where you get to turn off and enter into a delicious, zoned out, flow state… Maybe it’s just 15 minutes of meditation before you head out the door to work.

The only criteria is that it’s yours and completely undisturbed by the outside world.

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Now look here, I am not suggesting for a moment that this is an easy or carefree process. Oh, no no no. What with jobs and children and health stuff and ailing parents and relationships and existential crises and godforsaken emails/texts/whats app replies… adult life can feel like a crazed, frequently joyless, interminable game of whack-a-mole.

So, we naturally think - how could I possibly make time for something so frivolous as creativity??? Forgetting, of course, that it is the very thing that balances, repairs, invigorates, fortifies and recalibrates us when we do commit to it.

In fact, giving oneself the actual permission to create can be more challenging than finding the cold, hard minutes in which to do it. So much of what holds us back, not just as creatives, but as human beings, is the incredible array of mental and emotional blocks that we accrue over our lifetime… the little sponges that we naturally are. For example, the teacher who chastised you when you expressed your creativity freely; the competitive ex who ridiculed your artful efforts; the boss or co-worker who kept you firmly ‘in your place’; or of course mummy or daddy who loom so large, scoffing at your ‘ridiculous’ plans to pursue a career in the arts or leftfield territories…

We accrue such a wealth of external noise and mental chitter-chatter over the years, all of which can cumulatively amount to a feeling of creative unworthiness, or a notion that art is for other people, or we develop a wall of fear and resistance around others seeing us as someone who takes themselves seriously, or, well, all manner of pesky blocks and inhibitions really, all of which can act as diversionary smokescreens from our actual creative potential.

Taking the first step, however small, is pretty much always the answer in these situations. Because what we are actually aiming to do is get to the other side of our own resistance. There is a whole way of showing up for ourselves that we may not have yet experienced, and so of course we have no idea of the benefits and undiscovered treasures that we might find there - because they are, by their very nature, undiscovered…

… at least for now.

*

If you have never given yourself the chance to fully explore your creativity, to see what you have to offer the world, how do you know what is in there? What it will be like, feel like? What will transpire? We can take a guess of course, but that would no doubt be a simple regurgitation of our internalised environment and conditioning (please refer back to my earlier point re: being a funny little porous sponge…).

The fact is, we can never fully know without actually doing it.

So my friend, I encourage you, neigh, I’m downright prodding you, like a persistent little sticky-fingered toddler desperate to get your attention: If you have an impulse within you, an idea or a dream or a vision or desire - just take the first step. And then do it again. And again. And then once more. Because that is the bones of the creative life - just showing up, for whatever amount of time you choose, over and over and over again.

And then some more…

Do you have a room your own, dear readers? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you:

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Further reading:

• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

• The Pathway to Flow: The New Science of Harnessing Creativity to Heal and Unwind the Body & Mind by Julia F Christensen

• Flow: The Psychology of Happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross

• Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer

If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing so you can receive all forthcoming posts straight into you email inbox:

Listen here:

In this conversation I speak to UK based singer-songwriter Anna Carlyle. We discuss her songwriting process, how being brave enough to be fully yourself in your art is the most powerful way an artist can create, and we nerd out on the meaning and process behind a few of the most popular songs from her debut album ‘Love, Lion’, which was released in January this year.

It’s a beautiful deep dive into her artistry and I’m so grateful to Anna for taking the time to chat so openheartedly with me. Above is the audio file to listen to the interview - I hope you enjoy listening, as much as I did recording it.

A little about Anna:

“Singer/Songwriter Anna Carlyle is from West Sussex in the South of England. Dedicated to her divine vocation she is creating music straight from the heart. Ethereally infused soaring vocals and experimental melodies that demand attention, Anna is discovering and playing with various genres and has big visions for her upcoming releases. Visual accompaniment for her music can be found on YouTube and social platforms.”

Here are the timestamps for Anna’s album ‘Love, Lion’ which is played in its entirety at the end of the interview. You may wish to jump straight to it and have a listen before delving into the interview, or perhaps dip into the songs as we mention them during the chat. Either way, I’m sure you’ll agree - it’s a phenomenal debut album and extraordinary listening experience.

Album starts at: 57m 11s

Track 1, Aham Preema: 0:57:11

Track 2, Shimmer: 1:03:47

Track 3, Devorah: 1:06:45

Track 4, Paper Tigers: 1:10:00

Track 5, All For You: 1:14:53

Track 6, Home: 1:20:08

Track 7, Phoenix: 1:25:43

You can follow Anna and keep up to date with forthcoming releases and live shows via her Instagram & Facebook pages. Listen to her album and various single releases on Spotify, and check out some of her music videos via her YouTube channel.

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Welcome to my Substack page, I’m thrilled to bits that you’re here.

I thought it only polite that I should introduce myself properly - I intend to write quite intimately about my path into the Arts, as well as my somewhat circuitous quest for spiritual growth and enlightenment - and this introduction is a kind of ‘potted history’ of my journey thus far, it roughly indicates the tone & topics that you can expect from this page going forwards, and hopefully will whet the ol’ whistle for what’s to come… So here we go, a little bit about me and my journey:

I’m Harriet Grace Catchpole - a portrait artist & illustrator based in the South East of England. I didn’t always know I was an artist - it took me a very long time to find my vocation, and I was in creative crisis for what felt like an eternity -

Initially as a model (I never progressed past sporadic, cheesy-grin commercial jobs and narrowly avoided presenting on QVC shopping channel)… Then I trained as an actor (I did some cool indie films and a sci-fi TV pilot (alongside Taron Edgerton & Anthony Head1) but was not thick-skinned enough to endure the relentless conveyor belt of rejection)… Later I worked as a medical roleplayer, training medical students in communication skills (sometimes I pretended to have cancer, other times vaginal thrush; there was never a dull moment)…

There was an array of inexplicable jobs in between - giving dessert samples out at London Underground stations dressed in a fluorescent lycra catsuit and wig (the hue of the wig was so bright it attracted a swarm of flies and I had to shudder my head like a horse every few seconds to prevent them landing on me)… I conducted hysterical children into tremulous crescendos of ‘let it go, let it gooo’ at Frozen-themed Disney parties… I intermittently wiped sweat off the glass panes during televised squash tournaments… I temped at a trendy media company where a directorial fist-fight broke out as the other staff members nonchalantly tapped at their excel spreadsheets… and, during a particularly unharnessed moment in the proceedings, I travelled to Romania in a van with a troupe of clowns and theatrical vagabonds to perform in clowning shows.

I know. Yes, really I KNOW.

It was totally wild, and I just couldn't find my place during this time. I sensed I had good creative seed and yet I (clearly) had no idea where to plant it. Eventually, I moved back to my hometown and embarked on an MA in Fine Art but had to drop out half-way through due to debilitating chronic fatigue.

At this point, exhausted and frequently struggling to leave the house, I started drawing charcoal portraits of artists I loved. For no reason really - just an act of therapeutic expression to keep me sane. I had recently joined a collective, and we were putting on art shows, so I put a handful of the portraits into one.

I was surprised at the positive feedback I got and, shortly after the show, I received my first two commission requests… At fucking last!… Something clicked, and I knew that I was finally heading in the right direction. (Isn’t it funny how when we stop trying to get arrested, we sometimes make the space for things to flood right in…).

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My path to self-discovery through spirituality and religion took a similarly confusing, and rather snaky, trajectory also.

I cannot lie, my initial interest in otherworldliness and things outside of the 3D realm, took the form of escapism and a persistent impulse to annihilate myself out of the current reality.

I guess it all started when I won a huge bottle of gin in the tombola at a school fund-raising event when I was eleven. ‘Oh goodness, you are going to give that to your parents aren’t you?!’ said a concerned looking teacher as I hefted the bottle off the table. ‘Of course, Mrs Smith!!’2 I nodded vigourously, as I scuttled off with the booty to find my friends and plan when we might start guzzling it.

Well, here’s roughly how it panned out over the forthcoming years:

Lambrini and Marlboro Lights in the park… cheap noxious vodka outside the heavy metal club… sticky pints of snake-bite as mosh-pit fuel… crudely rolled spliffs with the roach all soggy and sticking to our lips…

This progressed to raves in grotty clubs where condensation dripped from the ceiling… raves in fields that took two hours to get to… raves consisting of ten people around one van with a generator… fancy raves with skinny girls and posh boys and cocaine…

We huffed whippets on the backseat of a friend of a friend’s Mazda… lines off the sweaty toilet cistern in the old man pub… speed off Amy’s debit card… ketamine off my desk at the staff party… wraps of methadrone passed under the toilet door smashed into claggy little lines and, well… pretty much anything that was going for as long as it was going… until…

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It all became a bit too much.

I developed a persistent lightheadedness and a pain behind my eyes that I just couldn’t shake. Even more alarmingly, I started seeing apparitions of dead people in the house I had just moved into with my actor pals, a stone’s throw from the screaming crossroads of Manor House, in London. It began after a messy Ketamine bender and I presumed it would just wear off, but weeks and months later I still couldn’t shirk the heavy, vacuous figures. A continual dark, snaking energy wisped around me and when I looked at people’s faces, or glanced at framed photographs of family and friends, their eyes glinted and rippled with a sinister demonic glare.

I found myself staring with wide bloodshot eyes in the mirror; I didn’t know what I had done. I had always been highly sensitive since I was a child, but something had happened. I seemed to have opened my energy, but what exactly had I let in? I was pretty sure I was accessing a spiritual realm but had definitely gone about it in, unarguably, the wrong way.

I had always been open minded and a self-professed ‘seeker’ and I believed wholeheartedly in something… beyond. What’s more, I had felt plagued by my sensitivity and complete inability to not feel abso-fucking-lutely everything, including other people’s unspoken emotions. Perhaps that was why I had enjoyed taking drugs so much - they gave me the kind of ‘skin’ that I had always felt I was lacking.

I started to consider that I might be able to cultivate my sensitivities and maybe even steer this newfound extra-sensory bent towards a higher vibration - channel it in a healthy way rather than passively allowing it to haunt me in such a bizarre and oppressive manner. If I did so, I wondered what I might access then… I certainly was curious as to why this was all happening; the mechanics, the energetics of it.

So I stopped taking drugs, not least because of the aforementioned ‘seeing dead people thing’ but I had also developed an array of chronic health issues which were seriously impeding my energy. And so I determined to embark on a brand new quest towards health and spirituality - (naturally with the same fervour and unbridled tenacity that I had lent to taking drugs, oh but of course…).

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I got straight to work - I took a two hour round-trip across London every week to do Zen meditation but found it too stark, too hard on my back; sitting robed, wordless and upright for 90 minute long stretches… I popped along to New Age meet-ups but found the energy sickly and overfamiliar; too much unsolicited shoulder rubbing and cloying eye contact with strangers wearing rainbow jumpers. No, I wanted more, not fewer, boundaries thanks all the same… I hungrily traversed the landscape of the ‘spiritual scene’ through books and podcasts and social media, imbibing everything that I could. I mostly found it unsatisfying and ungrounded; ‘just think feel-good thoughts!!’ was a recurrent slogan, but didn’t cut the mustard for me - it suggested a lofty and avoidant attitude and I was always left with the sense that some crucial aspect of the self was being bypassed…

I started to make progress when I discovered a Taoist energy arts class - at this point I was in my early 20s and was pining for respite and a community away from drama school where I spent the vast majority of my waking hours (wearing all black and pretending to be a meerkat or a tree or making myself cry on demand).

In the Taoist classes, I used Chi Gung and Nei Gung as a way to ground my energy back into my body and work with my nervous system in a calm, centring way. I partook in lengthy sitting and standing meditation retreats, this time I felt refreshed and invigorated after, and I gradually developed a sense of ownership and autonomy over my energy field and personhood. That is until my teacher, who had taken a shine to me, who took me out for teas and coffees and cake, and treated me as a kind of under-developed pygmalion figure; always nit picking my behaviour and correcting my opinions, at first affectionately, with a sense of generosity and fatherliness - ‘all in the interests of self improvement!!’ - later as a means of objectification; sending angry, overbearing text messages if I refused his invitations to sleep with him or questioned him on his behaviour.

I trained with another teacher, a bone-fide Taoist lineage master, a portly man in his 50s who was rumoured to have once killed a man with his bare hands in a cage fight. He approached me with a sly grin whilst we were packing up the meditation retreat and asked me to go home with him. I declined and watched him walk to the next woman across and ask her. She accepted.

The quest continued…

I tried Dzogchen and group chanting and Transcendental Meditation… I listened to the dulcet tones of Louise Hay through my headphones at the gym… I read ALL the books on self-acceptance & cutting ties & manifesting your reality… I thought, I journalled, I enquired.

Then I discovered Carl Jung, and the next big penny dropped.

Here was someone who described the world as I saw it - conceptual, elemental and as a deeply alchemical experience. He didn’t evade or bypass the darker aspects of reality, he encouraged his students to delve right into their shadows; to work with, confront, and integrate them. He described having incredible mystical experiences and visions, and if you delve into his Red Book for even an instant, I’m sure you will agree - he really went there. I felt inspired, vindicated, encouraged, and crucially, far less alone in it all.

I took the bits that worked for me from Taoism and combined them with Jungian psychology. This allowed me a map to navigate the world and my inner experiences, and a method of peeling the wrong things away and piecing the right things back together.

On a low level though, a subtle pattern of strain still ran throughout my body - an ongoing sense that I still hadn’t arrived somewhere and so I wasn’t yet ‘home’.

*

One day, I walked into a Catholic Cathedral, sat down, listened to the organ music and felt… peace. The mass was ending and as the congregants slowly dispersed through the heavy doors I just sat there. I came back a week later and did the same thing. And then again. And again.

Even though I didn’t understand the mass or why exactly I was there, I returned every week as though by compulsion. At this stage it was lockdown and bottles of disinfectant sat on the pews, singing was prohibited due to government guidelines and the mass was dulled down and muffled; recited through masks and two metre wide gaps.

When lockdown lifted I was officially received into the Catholic Church, I stood by the altar, invited God into my spirit, and renounced sin. And I meant it - with every aspect of my being.

To be honest I think I was a ‘closet Catholic’ for years; I always loved the art, the iconography, the sheer maximalism of expression. I avidly read Dante, and debated pertinent ethical issues, and enjoyed the somewhat grave yet moving choral music long before I understood the bones of the religion or even believed in God. I think it’s always been a part of my sensibility.

I can’t stress enough though, dear reader, that none of these things solved my problems. There’s no panacea for discontent, inner turmoil or disconnection from oneself. But certainly what Taoism, and Jung, did was reveal my blindspots and offer instruction and a coherent means to delve into and unravel myself. Attending church gave me space and a sanctified container for spiritual experience. The faith, the community, the physical act of worship, as well as the absorption of biblical myth, enlightened me to humility, surrender and awe. These in turn allowed me to recoup a sense of perspective and groundedness. All of the above brought me back to a core part of myself, which, I now realise with great irony, was there all along.

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So that’s my heavily condensed story. In my bleaker moments (namely once a month when my hormones are critically askew) I get quite down about it all - the little man in my head telling me I have made a shambles of it and wasted so much time and energy on this strange, discursive, rambling life path - the haunting catchphrase ‘couldn’t it all have been so much easier?!’ plays on an indignant loop around my head.

But then I realise that I actually really like the person I have become through it all; the muscularity of my newfound character… the depth of perception and empathy which can only be bred through lived experience… not to mention that I have an absolutely knockout arsenal of anecdotes at ever-ready disposal.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not so much where you end up or what you achieve in life, per say - but more the person you become along the way (which might be the ultimate act of contribution anyway…). And sorry to be so crude and terribly brash and European etc; but we’re all going to end up as literal worm-food, so we may as well prioritise our soul’s journey and development - and lean into the challenging aspects of life in ALL of its messiness and imperfection. There’s no ‘getting it right’ really, just experiencing things and growing, living, being - if we can.

I realise this might sound a bit preachy, but I say all this as much to myself as to you, dear reader, because I spent so long at odds with my being; yearning to escape, desperate to shed my skin a thousand times over and never quite comfortable or satiated. Which is why I embarked on such a mad life-journey to begin with - always seeking and seeking and seeking. And whilst it was deeply uncomfortable feeling so lost for so long, it was really the only path I knew back to myself.

I just popped onto Google to look it up and officially the probability of being born is 1 in 400 trillion. So guys, whatever you end up doing with your life, I think it’s safe to say, we’ve already made the cut. Truthfully, these days I just feel lucky to have been given a chance to be part of it all: We’re all born funny little lumps of clay just waiting to be fashioned by life, and in many ways, our story is all we’ve got.

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Okay, this was supposed to be a fairly simple introductory post, but it’s gotten a bit deep and intense which, to be fair, is exactly what you can expect from this page - so great! Job well done, I guess. Start as you mean to go on and all that.

Now for the pesky admin - friends, I won’t at this stage commit to a regular cadence in terms of dropping the articles. I fear I won’t be able to reliably meet a concrete deadline and the recovering people pleaser in me will be riddled with guilt and self-reproach when I inevitably don’t. So I’m going to keep it super-duper loose at the moment.

In terms of what you can expect from this page - well, certainly more of these sorts of long-form articles, although I won’t be wanging on about myself quite so much (this one was heavily auto-biographical in the interests of providing introduction). But I will be wanging on about all sorts of other things - art, literature, psychology, philosophy, the creative process, religion & all things esoteric…

I’m excited to bring back a past project in a newly renovated format. I will be exhuming my ‘Portrait of The Artist’ series, although under a different name and in a new, rather exciting, video format. Yay! (You can read the original series where I spoke to six fascinating creatives about their art practices and drew their portrait here). Keep your eyes peeled on this page to catch all forthcoming episodes when they drop - or better still, add your email address to the subscription box below and they’ll be delivered straight into your inbox.

There’ll no doubt be other juicy bits ‘n’ bobs too - I’m thinking of doing some illustrated book & culture reviews, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves! One thing at a time Harriet…

So that’s the requisite info for now, friends. Thank you for reading thus far and I do hope you’ll stick around and join me for the journey.

Much love,

Harriet x

Let’s stay in touch!

Friends, you can view my artwork and connect with me via the following platforms: Instagram, TikTok & Threads

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