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!

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you see i have come to doubt, all that i once held as true. kathy’s song spins on my record player, the soft crinkles of static send a textured nostalgia through the air. almost makes me want to light a cheap cigarette. but instead, i’m 13 years old again, fiddling with the dodgy wire of cheap earphones on a bus on my way to kingarth’s countryside. i’ve got my parents’ thick silver ipod in my hand, the metal cold against my palm. i’m circling my thumb on its centre, scrolling through the 9,000 songs. that’s when i paused on ‘simon & garfunkel’.

thought garfunkel was a hilaaaarious name so if it wasn’t good, at least it was funny. first, it was america. then, kathy’s song. my middle name’s catherine, named after both my grandmothers so there was a natural intrigue. from the first notes, it became sentimental. leaning my head against the cold windows, clouded with condensation on a drizzly winter’s night, i remember wishing that moment was in a film.

i was looking at myself through my own lens, catching the orange street lights cast upon my face. pressing my eyes to the raindrops down the window, capturing my own close-up in their reflection. i think that’s when life became more than something i moved through, stepping from one day into the next. it became something i could participate in and i think that’s when i realised… i could make it art.

i’ve avoided making any form of external meaning in my life for quite some time. that tends to follow a long year of…over-performance. i submitted myself to the small, ordinary and natural. stepping, indeed, from one day into the next, but carrying big feelings inside.

everything i did, i did with a practical purpose at the forefront. same meals. same clothes. same routine. do not overwhelm your brain with choice. it’s a necessary phase when you’re unwinding all the tangled knots from a previous life inside yourself. one lane of traffic had truly been shut off. and reader, now it’s beginning to re-open.

today i wiped the layer of dust from my record player and reintroduced myself to that funny old garfunkel name. and with no objective in mind other than… just because. majd handed me a coffee, the heart latte art getting lost in the waves of milk as he carried it along. it paired gorgeously with a cranberry and dark chocolate cookie from helmi’s in bearsden.

it’s just a record player. but it’s not. i’d forgotten how much i loved doing things…just because. the whole process of picking out an album you’re ready to commit to, slowly undressing it from its sleeve and placing that needle on the vinyl. it’s uninterrupted lovemaking. a previously stale and domestic life now turned, dare i say it, a little sexy. even if i was sitting there with a towel on my head 😆.

and it’s made all the better by reflecting on a week of personal triumphs sparked by choosing inconvenience. it was inconvenient to walk from glasgow green to dumbarton for the kiltwalk. it was inconvenient to push these previously very still little legs to 40,000 steps. it was inconvenient to go swimming: to pick out a costume, to pack a bag and make my way there. it was inconvenient to begin my morning pages again: to wake up a little earlier to scribble down feelings that aren’t very pretty. and two truths have been held: it’s so painfully inconvenient, but it’s so beautifully transformative.

and i keep learning this. moving from this low-energy, domestic life is the continuum of small, radical choices of how i’m choosing to move through life. it’s not enough anymore to step from one day into the next. i must come alive. i must participate.

the changes on the inside are coming to reflect on the outside. it’s the other lane of traffic opening up. it’s a raindrop running down the window to kathy’s song. a coffee made with a heart. it’s sore feet and tired limbs. and new perspectives from the new people you’ve met. oh god, i’ve fallen in love with an enemy: inconvenience.

i urge you, reader, to take the long route home. swap your spotify playlist for an untouched record. take the time to curate an outfit. do something that disturbs your comfort. until next week reader, may all your coffees be accompanied by a song that makes you feel like you’re the star of your own film.

– ailsa x