doing what you love Archives - 100 days of solitude

For Now: Notes on living a deliberate life

What does it mean, to live a deliberate life?

I use that term, but I’m still trying to figure it out. And I think that’s the point, essentially: that we’re always trying to figure it out. All of it. Who we are and where we belong, and whether those things are fixed or fluid, and whether we’re allowed to change. What it means to be alive.

Torn between the two extremes of her personality, City Girl, the streetwise arsehole Londoner who subsists on traffic fumes and black takeaway coffee, and the mellow, nature-loving Sifnos Chick, who has found peace on a small island where there are barely any streets to be wise on, Daphne explores the contradictions that are inherent in all of us, as we strive to find our balance in a seesaw world; to find a life that makes sense to us and a place where we belong.

Written in Daphne’s signature confusion of memoir, reflective essay and travel writing, and as much a sequel to 100 days of solitude as a standalone collection, For Now contains 27 stories of an ordinary life lived deliberately. Stories that could have been told differently or not at all, stories with a deliberate twist to allow for the extraordinary moments to break through the mundane and be noticed, and add up to a meaningful life.

For Now: Notes on living a deliberate life is available to buy on Amazon, in paperback and on Kindle, or read for free on Kindle Unlimited.

I am the storm.

Ever since I self-published my first book, 100 days of solitude, I’ve been standing at a precipice, high over the world, scuffing at the edge with the toes of my shoes, and watching dust rise up and stones tumble down the slope. One, maybe two at a time. I watch them roll down, gaining momentum sometimes, sometimes dislodging a small rock on the way and taking it down with them. I watch them hit the bottom, the impact they make: another cloud of dust rising and settling again. Again, I nudge, pulling another stone from the soil; I get down on my knees, freeing one more with my hands and setting it loose down the mountainside. I watch. I wait. I start again.

I want an avalanche. I want a landslide. I want that magical, inexplicable something that brings my book crashing into the world with a great, rumbling roar. I don’t want it to be a wave, gently lapping at the shore and pulling back again, to disappear into the ocean. I want it to be a tsunami, a great sweeping mass of words and thoughts and joy, rushing into the lives of thousands. Millions. I’m done being waves and pebbles. I’m done being quiet and small. I want the magic. I want that something, that moment when my book goes from selling a thousand copies to selling a million. Because that’s all it is: a moment. A click that sets it all in motion. That’s all it takes: some magic, and a click.

Perhaps literary agents and publishers have the big, industrial machines that tear chunks out of mountainsides and cause landslides that bury the villages below. Perhaps they have massive ships that cut through the ocean, dislodging the seas, turning waves into tsunamis and drowning coastal towns in their authors’ words. Perhaps they do, and it’s not sinister; it’s just the way it is. But I have no such equipment. I am just a girl chiselling away with my hands, but my words are just as big as theirs, and there’s another way.

The world is changing, and we can make our own magic. We can make our own destiny. We always could, but perhaps we have turned a corner and we can see it, now. Perhaps the dust from their big, industrial works is beginning to settle, and we can see it. Perhaps we’re done being told what we can’t do. Perhaps we’re done waiting. Perhaps we’re done being lodged in the ground, calling out for someone to come along and kick us free. Perhaps we’re done being rolling stones in other people’s landslides. There are mountains enough for all of us, infinite oceans of possibility. We can be our own landslides. We can make our own waves.

These thoughts had been building up for a while, but it was my friend Leo who gave me the word that brought them all together. We were having coffee, and I was trying to explain the magic moment, the click. “Avalanche,” he said, and I saw it. I’d known it from before when, in another magical moment, I suddenly understood, on a level entirely separate from intellect and real-world odds, that this book would go far. I’d known it, but I had no visual, and then Leo said that word, and it all came together and I saw it: the avalanche, the landslide, the tsunami. Sweeping into the world, graceful and magnificent; a natural phenomenon, but not a disaster, because it’s words I’m sending into people’s lives, stories to make them better. Because, as pretentious as it may sound, I really do believe that books can change our lives. And this is a book that’s all about changing, and finding your own path, and finding joy. This particular book has already changed my life. And it deserves its own landslide.

In real-world terms: the landslide, for a writer, translates into lots of sales. Money. But it’s not about that. It’s about having the means to carry on doing what you love, and, for me, this book is the way. Because another thing I believe – another one of my pretensions, if you like – is that we all have a purpose in this life, a gift, a thing we are uniquely qualified to do. And this is mine: writing. It’s what I do, and I do it well. And I deserve the chance to carry on doing it; to try. We all do – whatever our thing might be. And the real-world odds can go fuck themselves. There is another world, where anything is possible. And it is just as real as we make it.

There is nothing noble in stoically accepting the odds, nothing admirable in admitting defeat before you’ve even begun. This gift, this purpose: it shouldn’t be taken for granted. It needs to be defended. Suffering for the sake of suffering is such a wasteful way to live. But if the thing that you love doing can fund doing what you love, isn’t that the perfect way for the world to go around?

I am done with odds. I am done being pebbles and waves. I am done being the tortured artist selling drinks and dreaming of words. I have written a book, and I’m standing up for it. And for anyone who’s ever done a thing that meant something to them, for anyone who wants to, for all the pebbles and the waves, the quiet and the small, slowly gathering their strength against the odds to crash into the world. We can be the avalanche; we can be the tsunami. All it takes is some magic, and a click.

Fate whispers to the warrior
“you cannot withstand the storm”
and the warrior whispers back
“I AM THE STORM”.

You can click here to view 100 days of solitude on Amazon and perhaps add another rolling stone to my avalanche, if you like.

Fuck it, and faith: Making a living doing what you love

The other day I sat down at my computer with the intention of writing a short, practical post on making a living doing what you love, but it degenerated (is that the right word?) into an essay about poetry, and dignity, and my dad. This is attempt number two, and I will try to stick to the point and resist the lure of tangents.
But, actually, the point, in part, is tangents: it’s how many different directions you can go in, how many different possibilities you can see without losing sight of your path. And how that path, too, can change, and how that’s allowed, how everything is allowed as long as you’re operating within the space of who you are.
I’m not talking about the “comfort zone”; comfort zones are tight, limiting things, hence all the talk of stepping out of them. Who you are is infinite, and it’s up to you to shape it and define its boundaries: how far you’re prepared to go, how much you’re prepared to do, how deep into this space you allow other people to penetrate – so that you’re ultimately living your life in a way that makes sense to you. Knowing your own shape and your own boundaries is not limiting: it’s freedom.

I believe we’re all here for a thing (you might call it a purpose, but I’m a bit allergic to those terms), and we owe it to ourselves and this world we’re part of to do that thing as well and as fully as we can. Essentially, collectively, I think we’re here to be good and kind people, to give generously the best of ourselves that we can give and to receive, gratefully and graciously, what we are given. But to be able to do that we need to be happy, individually, each of us within ourselves; we need to be living within the boundaries of who we are. We need to be doing our thing. Because we’ve all seen it, how frustration breeds bitterness breeds resentment breeds hatred, and before you know it you’re attacking other people for perceived successes that should, by rights, have been yours, for imagined slights upon your worth as compared to theirs, competing in a game that you never signed up for and that you don’t understand. That’s not a life; that’s not making a living. That’s making a big fucking mess of the infinite opportunities we’ve been given, simply by virtue of being alive.
Making a living: have you thought about that phrase? Not making ends meet, not struggling through, not getting by; not working your arse off and living for the weekend, not counting down days until the next holiday, the next reprieve. Not working towards, always towards an ever-shifting goalpost, not working to keep up with the stuff, all this stuff we’re supposed to need. Not working at all. “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a single day in your life” they say, and my boyfriend likes to announce to people that he’s a player, not a worker (often resulting in strange looks, and a few glances of sympathy in my direction). But he has the right idea, and work has become synonymous to burden, to obligation, to struggle. Perhaps we could reclaim the word, but in the meantime, how about playing? How about doing what we love? How about making a living that way?

It’s easy for you to say, people tell me, because it looks easy from the outside, now that I’m doing it. There’s an edge of resentment, sometimes, the beginning of that horrible spiral, but most of the time it’s fear of the uncertain, that dark, terrible void of how the FUCK?, mixed in with the hope that I – player not worker for the past couple of years – might have some sort of answer. And I do, and I don’t. And it’s easy, and it’s hard. But it’s possible, because I’m doing it, and that means it can be done. It’s not that simple, they tell me, and it isn’t, of course, but also it is. I, too, had a job and stuff to keep up with and comforts to earn and bills to pay; I, too, had to work for a living, but I yearned for a life. A life of doing my thing. And I had the fear and the how the fuck and I could sense the resentment building up and making me less of a kind and good and happy person than I could be, and in the end the choice was simple, even if its execution is a constant balancing act between easy and hard. In the end, the answer was I don’t know how, but fuck it. Fuck it, and faith.
    Those are the ingredients for playing this game; that’s what you need to bring along. Fuck it, and faith, and – to back those up in times of doubt – the principle of “I don’t need this that much”. That’s the best answer I can give to how, if you’re asking.
    – Fuck it: I gave up the job and the stuff because there was something I wanted more, and I couldn’t have it within that setup of limited comfort. And fuck it, I’ll make it work. Somehow. Each day, I’ll find a way to make it work. Not working, but playing. Going off on tangents and seeing all the possibilities: what can I make? What can I sell? What can I give in exchange for something I need? What skills do I have, what ideas, what abilities? How can I turn them into another day of doing what I love?
    – Faith: that it will all work out. Because it does. The universe wants us to do our thing, and it will back us up, it will help us along once we start moving in that direction. Once you step outside that comfort zone and into the true space of who you are, once you start living the life you yearn for, even if you can’t see the exact shape of it yet, everything will conspire to shape that life around you. And if that sounds too woo-woo bullshit for you, believe me: I can be the Queen of Cynicism, but I haven’t had a “proper” job for over two years, and I’m doing my thing, and I’ve survived. And whenever the gaping void starts screaming how the fuck something comes along and fills it. Every time. It hasn’t swallowed me up yet, because of faith, and fuck it.
    – And “I don’t need this that much”: apply this principle whenever you start to question yourself, because you will, often. Apply it when other people question you, because that will happen, too. Doing your thing is a constant balancing act between easy and hard, between comfort and fear, and it takes time and strength to break away from familiar patterns, to resist the lure of security, of working for a living, at any price. You will be tested, you’ll be offered a thousand ways back to the place that you left behind. Remind yourself why you did that. With every offer, with every opportunity that doesn’t feel like a blessing, ask yourself – do you need it that much? Be open to everything, but respect your boundaries; only let the good things in. Whenever you’re given something that doesn’t fit the shape of the life you want to live, whenever you feel that sting in your stomach, say thank you, but I don’t need this that much. Try it: it feels good.

Happiness breeds happiness, and we’re allowed to go off on tangents to find it. Go find it; do the thing that you’re here for. Make it a living. Make it your life. Collectively, we’ll all be better and kinder people, as a result.

This didn’t turn out to be much of a short, practical post. I’ll have to keep trying.

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