[post status: a brief life update]

When  Walking on Custard came out in 2015 (aside: I cannot believe that was three  years ago! What on EARTH is happening to the flow of time?!), I needed some sort of online home.

I considered all kinds of wild, imaginative ideas, like interactive websites which would act as companions to the book, somehow procedurally generating both entertainment and life advice…

… but in the end I realised that simplicity was definitely the best option in this case. So I set up this basic Wordpress site, and voila: a place where I can muse about anxiety and life without having to put in much effort.

A simple blog that exists is better than an all-singing, all-dancing web experience that doesn’t.

And this place has served its purpose well!

I’m constantly surprised at how many people manage to stumble into my little corner of the internet, AND at how many of those people bother to send me lovely emails about articles which resonated with them. (They can’t ALL secretly be my mum, right?!)

Anyway…Now that my new book is nearly finished (I’ll be sharing more on this soon, in case you haven’t heard already!), I’m starting to think about improving my online home.

I’m still planning to keep this blog as a hub for all my mental health and happiness-related musings, but I’d like to use some (not all!) of those more imaginative ideas I abandoned all those years ago.

And so, in between making the final edits to the novel (argh, please send help!), I’m coding a whole new website from scratch. There’ll be some fun collaborative games for visitors to play, and I have plans to gradually expand it as the years go by and future books and other projects get released.

(I also have some ludicrously ambitious ideas around interactive augmented reality phone experiences, but those might need to wait a lot, lot longer.)

What else am I doing?

Honestly, those two projects could easily expand to fill 100% of my time, but in keeping with my earlier post, I’m also taking steps towards finding some awesome, inspiring and satisfying regular work to add to my mix of activities.

And somehow I’m also juggling my social life and all my regular weekly or monthly work commitments, AND enjoying the heatwave here in the UK.

Why am I telling you all this?

Really, I’m not. This post is to tell myself. I’ve been feeling frustrated by my apparent lack of progress, but when I sat down this morning to analyse what I’m doing, I realised I’m actually taking great steps forward towards many of my goals at once.

Lots of these goals require a long wait for the payoff - I can confirm that writing a novel is the absolute worst way to receive short-term gratification - but there will be a payoff eventually.

And whether it’s a new website, a new novel, a new work situation or something else, I’m not far off several large payoffs at once.

Since I’m committed to sharing these frustrations rather than bottling up, I thought I’d quickly post about it. Most of the time we just see the end results of other people’s work: their new book, their new abs, their new yacht*, or whatever.

* I don’t actually have any friends who own yachts but I’m very open to acquiring some, so feel free to get in touch…! ;)

But reaching any goal requires an investment, and I want to share some of my investment at this stage. In a few months (hopefully), I’ll be posting about the new book, the new site, the new work, and I’ll be able to look back at today and think “there was a time it felt that I’d never make it to this day, but I did”.

And hopefully next time I’ll remember more easily, and get better still at just putting one foot in front of the other and making my way towards where I want to be.

Hope you’re having a lovely summer!