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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there were signs last week, but it’s crystal clear this week: something about me has changed since the holiday. my vitality has withdrawn inwards into the unseen and quiet (but just as important) things again: getting the sudden urge to paint a mirror in my garden (hello?! i can’t tell you the last time i painted!!), writing my mum a song for her birthday on keyboard that was actually lowKEY (pardon the pun hehe) kind of good & of course, vividly dreaming. sometimes i forget that life goes in cycles – we can’t always be climbing hills & swimming in the ocean. poetry still needs written, books need to be read and dreams still need to be dreamed.

since i’ve not had the urge to go galavanting for brunch spots, i’ve been bringing brunch to me for the time being. i made a little pancake with pistachio, strawberries and cream. a wee vanilla iced latte too. all enjoyed in the garden while my washing dries in the sun. you will not catch me at that outside table. i am not sharing my food with 18 and a half spiders 🙏.

anyway, i’ve not gone totally underground. i’ve still been appearing here & there. going to literature & music events in erskine, celebrating with family & continuing my writing classes. perhaps i’m living that ‘third way’ i’ve always written about. where i don’t swing to either extreme but live somewhere in the middle. i think that’s the life of a writer. to find that. to not succumb to total solitude or to force yourself into every social event, but to use your discernment to strike that balance. and it’s not easy. it requires the heat of two sticks. friction.

speaking of friction, i keep having close encounters with it as i continue writing my book. doubt creeps in. events feel repetitive. words feel futile. in fact, words don’t even feel enough sometimes. and i know there’s a critic in me; an ex manager’s voice who wants to underline everything in red and tell me to redo as i’m writing. and the way i’ve found to combat that is what an old lecturer told me at uni: “the first draft of anything is shit.” and i find a kind of solace in that.

just build the bones ailsa, i remind myself as i fumble for unique descriptions and decorative words. and that’s it! i pride myself on my ability to describe in decorative detail events, people, feelings. but when i’m writing this book, i’m just dumping everything inside of me out. i guess i didn’t realise that’s how it’s supposed to be. i keep getting the analogy in my head: you don’t decorate the cake while you’re making the sponge.

so i’m being patient with myself and all the while i’m writing this book, i’m also discovering more about myself. i knew i wanted to do something quite precious for my mum’s birthday so i sat down at my dusty keyboard and messed about with the chords. i finally landed on something i loved and the melody appeared in my head along side the words. i just kept going & time seemed to disappear. before i knew it, the song was ready.

then, as i’ve been cleaning the house, i pass a mirror in my hallway. just a plane wooden mirror from the range i got about 3 years ago when i stayed in kirky. something inside me said get your acrylics out and decorate it. those acrylics are older than the pandemic. i think that’s the last time i painted. it felt so irrational. i’m a writer, not a painter. and i’m not even that much of a confident drawer!

but as i sat the mirror outside in the garden and began painting a gold frame, an idea popped into my head. i can’t confess it with you just yet, reader. it’s in its infancy. but if you know me, you know i always trust when something inside me says ‘this! do this!’. so i trusted it & i got rewarded with the loveliest little idea. also, don’t judge the grubby slabs! we’re getting there slowly but surely with the garden. what’s that famous saying? erskine wasn’t built in a day 💅.

i long for the era when we truly embrace our intuition as a natural function of being so irrefutably human and in touch with the world around us, instead of some woowoo bs that we constantly override and push aside. i would never have left that dead end job or run down flat had i not listened to it. i would’ve kept pushing it aside to keep up appearances and fuel my girlboss persona.

i will never romanticise or glorify all its taking to become a writer. it’s been a hard road, and at times, it still is. but somewhere along the way, you think the years get easier, but the truth is, you just get stronger.

i’ll admit, i thought i was leaving my job to jump straight into the utopia of my writing dream. and i got an almighty shock when i instead dove head first into the dark side of the creative world. i know it’s because i had to see its two sides. the exploitation, the ego, the moral corruptness is just as present in the writing & creative world as it is in the steely cold corporate.

so i learned that the hard way. then came up against unemployment, job centre visits, many temptations to go back into the same world that i just unshackled myself from. so many tests of faith. and i’ll never forget trying to convince myself that i wanted a traditional job just so i could be like everybody else. just so i could prove i have some ‘worth’ in this world (took me a long time to realise that my worth is inherent). just so that people would stop looking at me with a sort of pity when i said i was a writer.

i’ve seen my hopes and dreams lying on the ground. i’ve seen the sky just begin to fall. i’ve picked this song because it is sooo very fitting for what i’ve began to ramble about. it’s actually one of my all time favourite songs, made famous by thesilence of the lambs.

i was afraid to say the most dangerous and sinful sentence in our modern times: i don’t want a job. i don’t. i want a vocation. i want to spend this lifetime discovering many many different facets of myself: the writer, the painter, the musician, the poet, the mystic, the wild woman, the little girl who loved animals, the teenager who loved sports and the woman who loves gardening … and from that place, from that strong centre of self, i can be of service to everything else in this world.

how radical it is to just want to be what oneself really, truly is under all the masks and silly costumes of suits, ties and briefcases. of aprons and broomsticks. i just want to be ‘me’ and i know all the world will benefit from that place. i’ll carry no resentments. no regrets. no feelings gone unfelt. no truths gone unsaid. no life gone unlived.

and the best part? i just can’t seem to stop because i know this is what i’m supposed to be doing. this is my road. and i love that i get to share this experience with you, reader and with my class. i don’t share this experience with people to say “do it my way” but to show you that “there is a way”. and yours will be different from mine in costume. but the bones will be the same. you’ll have tests of faith. you’ll see the ugly sides to things you once thought were pure. you’ll doubt yourself a thousand times. and when you don’t, other people will doubt you instead. that’s it. that’s what robert frost wrote about: “two roads diverged in a wood, and i – i took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.”

until next week reader, may all your coffees be sipped on a road less taken, in whichever direction feels true to you ☀️

– ailsa x