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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august always feels like the build up to the grand finale. the crescendoing toward a perfect cadence. the fading sustain of a high note. the last few pages before you close the book. and there were times in my life where i’d try to keep playing. to prolong the ending, and never lift my foot from the pedal. but as i breathe under the vastness of a crisp cotton sky today, i am inching ever closer to the path of least resistance.

autumn feels like a cautionary season for the inescapable harshness of winter. and don’t get me wrong, reader: i loveeee autumn, i’m usually just afraid of what comes after it. and in scotland, you can’t blame me. but this year’s long walk toward winter feels different. maybe it’s because i’m, instead, dancing it.

maybe it’s because i’ve been storing nuts: reading books and writing them. creating writing sessions and teaching them. recording videos and posting them. finding objects and painting them. it’s all kindling for the fire. it’s not fireworks, but a slow burning flame. something to sustain me through those cold, dark winter nights.

reader, this is a good time to let you know that all of today’s ramblings have been powered by a homemade vanilla latte and a lemon blueberry cake from my fiancé’s family bakery, helmi’s in bearsden. today’s column would also not be possible if it weren’t for the watchful eye of my feathery boss and editor, bee. 🐝

back to some musings…

when i left my job, it was the first time i had ever noticed the seasons changing since a child. and i mean every change: from the first falling leaf in autumn to the first budding snowdrop in spring. it was like someone had cleaned the lenses of my glasses. i looked upon the world with a crystal clear vision, a world of vibrant technicolour, and wondered if i had ever really been ‘seeing’ at all. for me, it was like the return to childhood.

we’re naturally prone to ‘golden age thinking’, believing that life was better when we were younger. we’re sick with nostalgia. and whether the outside world was actually better or not matters very little. i believe we’re just searching for a time where we had the time and energy to ‘pay attention’ and play. the very acts that are fuel and medicine for our inner world.

i’ve always wondered why we all feel comforted by the soft ‘coo’ of a mourning dove or wood pigeon on a summer’s evening. why we all feel calmed by a soft evening light that trickles through the leaves into our bedrooms. we have never been more present than when presence was all that was required of us. and that’s when we were children. to just be here was enough.

now, we’re disturbed awake by a violent alarm. our mornings sound like car horns and the deep rattles of trains on the tracks. our only light is artificial from various screens. the only bird people know are city pigeons or seagulls. and we’re proud to know so many people without really knowing them at all.

life is too fast to notice the leaves changing colour or the migrating geese across the clyde in october. you only understand your place in this big unfolding tapestry from the date you’re on from your google calendar. months are no longer months, they’re deadlines. seasons are no longer cycles because we’re expected to maintain the same pace and rhythm throughout all of them. we’re living but no longer alive.

lately I’ve been wondering where the time goes…telling all my friends about how they missed the colours of their youth. no man is a mountain. no rock face too steep. no river is too deep. to take the bridge back to me. last night I peered through the clouds, pulling off the layers that kept me blind. the lyrics for this song are just too beautifully precise to not have it as the song for this week. ✨

so this year, i’m dancing toward the finish line. vowing to taste every aroma along the way. to hear every note. and pay deep, deep attention to the rhythms of my body and the cycles of the seasons understanding that they are not separate from one another. “it’s all one,” as my nana used to say.

until next week reader, may all your coffees be savoured in the changing seasons☕️🍃.

– ailsa x