coffee off the clock is a weekly column full of musings on life since i left my 9-5, and building a life around writing. join me for a coffee every week and follow my journey!

---

reader, i’ve been living & being a little afraid while doing it. trying to remind myself that the world is not made of glass and these hands are not hammers. i write to you with the companionship of our new baby cockatiel, bee. bee, because he makes life sweeter. that, and he’s always buzzing.

speaking of buzzing: we’ve went up in the world of coffee! today’s was a hazelnut latte from renfrew’s hugs & mugs on canal st. quite small, but indulgent enough to get away with it. felt refreshingly caffeinated, despite my very poor 6 hours i got last night. i’d give it a yap score of 7/10.

yapped about the trials & tribulations of being 15 and discovering cactus jacks. yapped about the global disaster that is american coffee culture. cold foam? i’m leaving that there. yapped about future projects that i’ll probably never see through but it was nice to be an armchair astronaut for a bit. you get it, the caffeine did its thing. anyway, less about coffee and more off the clock…

one of the first things i discovered about myself when i left my job was my love of birds – all birds. that’s when my armour really started to crack. and we know the saying: cracks are where the light gets in.

i remember the morning wake-up call of soft chirps and whistles in the kitchen; the smell of slightly overdone toast and a rumbling kettle. there’s something so comforting about hearing your mum’s footsteps after a year of living alone.

every soft shuffle was a reminder that i belong to someone. to somewhere. beyond my job. beyond who i pretended to be. it reminded me that i was hers long before i was mine. that i had an origin that i spent a year trying to forget. hyper-independence had me posing like a tree without roots.

i was off sick from work and had just given up my flat to move back with my parents. my world – glass. and my hands had to become hammers to destroy a fallacy. i’d gone from hedonistic, hyper-independent party girl who was drunk on city lights and corporate dreams to something entirely unknown. a shadow in complete stillness, but held safely in the arms of a nostalgic domestic bliss while i tried to figure it all out.

this week’s song is a little throwback to a bob seger tune i heard on the kitchen radio one night while reflecting on how i landed in their spare bedroom surrounded by my clothes in bin bags.

am i really here at last? i’d spend breakfast time with lulu, their pearl cockatiel and the two budgies: cookie and casper. at first, i didn’t want to move back home. then, i didn’t want to be anywhere else.

lulu had watched me become many different people over the last few years atop his wooden throne (we didn’t realise he was male when we called him lulu, then aptly got the nickname king louis!). he sits silvery and wise, whistling only when it’s warranted and loves nothing more than to watch the world go by. and for 2 years, i’ve understood it. i’ve been that. i’ve gotten silvery and wise. but like i said last week, the wisest thing you can do is become a fool all over again.

enter bee.

bee has been a big step in living again. he’s seeing the world for the first time with bright eyes and rosy cheeks. i get it. i’m becoming that. but it’s not without fear. i feel like i’m holding the responsibility of something so delicate in these hands. one moment, i tell majd this was meant to bee 🐝 . the next, i’m certain i’m not doing enough. i’m worried he doesn’t have enough toys. or that i can’t live with this new responsibility.

but i had this huge realisation yesterday (socrates would’ve loved me):

was i really not making plans because of what it would mean for bee or was i not making plans because of what it would mean for me?

i had to admit the latter. there’s something about us and our ability to draw many conclusions with any evidence so long as it suits our bias. if there is no step to fall over; we might conjure one, so long as our unconscious objective is to enjoy the pity of the fall.

so it was clear to me: bee was not the obstacle; he was the small yellow friend that i had a good old time projecting the real obstacle onto because it suited me quite fine to not want to live again. after all, it’s the same thing i’d been doing for 2 years.

but today, i kept my vow to this column. i went for coffee and explored the charity shops. and all along, bee was content at home. the world was not made of glass and my hands danced through mug handles and fabric, knowing that every small participation was a participation in a bigger life than i’d been living.

today’s outfit was picked off the rails of the salvation army in renfrew. a £7 ode to the cool girl i used to be and i still honour from time to time. i thought the long skirt and leather jacket went with the lack of sleep that’s made itself comfy under my eyes.

anyway, what i’ve come to understand is that i can have both and there’s a certain strength that’s taken years to acquire in being able to hold complexity like that. i can have the responsibility to my morning pigeons, to the dust and the dishes and those ordinary responsibilities of home, while also lifting my arms up to life again. and knowing this time, it’s safe to do that. the life i’m building is not fragile because it’s built on truth.

there’s also something changing in my writing. the work i’ve been doing for these last few years has produced some really abstract & heavy poetry. poetry that i can’t even attribute to myself. i just felt like the channel in which it wanted to exist through. it had its time. it gave me my first book. but my compass feels oriented outward now. after all, what is a writer without experience?

i guess you could say right now, reader, i’m not trying to sally the whole sea. i’m just trying to raise the sails. and that began with a morning of small novelty. a foot out the door. permission to live amongst the many faces i’ve never seen before and feel all the more human for it.

the journey begins. and it began with bee.

– Ailsa x