I'm sitting on the 13.08 train from Cologne, travelling back home, earphones in, listening to one of my favourite podcasts. The train is packed with people. Knees crushed up against suitcases. Feet on seats. Heads awkwardly pressed against windows. There's some kind of commotion going on behind me. The people around me are shifting in their seats and craning their necks, looking in that direction. I take one earphone out and turn my head to see what's going on. There's a woman—she looks all official in her train company uniform—barking orders at another woman, a passenger, for taking up too [...]

There's a tiny blue birdhouse nailed to the giant cherry tree in my garden. Inside it live a family of sparrows. I watch from my office window as the sparrow parents work tirelessly all day long, constantly feeding their babies all sorts of insects. I stood under the birdhouse yesterday and noticed that the baby sparrows have started to perch perilously close to the tiny, round hole that their parents fly in and out of. I've seen this before. Last summer, I watched some baby sparrows in the same bird house do this too. It means that they're getting ready to fledge. They start to [...]

I'm laying face down, arms by my side on a soft, plastic bench in my physiotherapist's clinic. My cheeks are squished together in the hole that's cut out of the bench for people's faces. I'm thinking that it would be cool if there was a television or something on the floor, directly underneath the face hole, so that I could watch a movie, like they have at my dentist, only there, the television is on the ceiling. "OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!"My thoughts about the cool television idea are cut short by the steely thumbs of my physiotherapist as she digs them into my [...]

I didn't write my weekly email last week. A few people noticed and wrote to me wondering where I was. I didn't have a reason, really. Other than that I don't always have something to write. It's rare, but the truth. My mind was a bit tired, you see. Not in a wild-eyed "I AM SO EXHAUSTED PLEASE WILL THE WORLD JUST STOP FOR A MOMENT?" way (although sometimes, I feel like that too), but in a more "I need to rest and take some time out" way. Time to think and potter around my garden and stack some wood [...]

I'm in the UK at the moment. I've been making the most of things I miss back home in Germany, like a decent cup of coffee and delicious food (I am not in any way suggesting British food is delicious by the way. I am referring to the restaurant and takeaway offerings from other countries like Thailand and India, of which, in my tiny little village in Germany, there are ZERO). I've also been sorting out "life admin" stuff, like finding a phone plan that lets me use my UK phone in Europe without charging me a gazillion pounds to [...]

When my sister and I were kids, we both had hamsters as pets. I can't remember what my sister's hamster was called, but mine was called 'Pocket'. Pocket was grey and my sister's hamster was ginger and white. We kept our hamsters in our respective bedrooms. I took a lot of time making sure that Pocket's cage was clean and that his little bedroom area was full of this weird cotton wool type stuff that he liked to sleep in. He always had fresh water and his food bowl was full to the brim with his favourite food. My sister's [...]

"I have built a very comfortable cage for myself." A thoughtful client said this to me in our session this morning. Which reminded me of something that also happened this morning. My mother-in-law took my kid to this kind of restaurant place that also has an animal park attached to it. I visited it last year, hoping to see the goats and donkeys and ducks that were shown on the website. What I didn't know was that there was also a lion there. And a tiger. A lion and a tiger, each in tiny, poky cages, in which both these [...]

"Live each day as if it's your last." It's really fucking stupid advice if you ask me. Want to know what I'd do if I knew today was my last day on earth? I'd hug my kid. I'd declare my undying love for my partner. I'd call my friends and tell them how much they mean to me. I'd spend time with my family and look into their eyes and we'd warmly recount old stories while flicking through photo albums and letting go of all of our past pain. Actually, I wouldn't do any of that. I'd probably do a [...]

"I am regularly asked to speak at exciting conferences and events." I wrote that in my journal a year or so ago. I regularly write down what I want from my life. I think it was Oprah Winfrey who said "'Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe" and although that quote makes me roll my eyes because it sounds so cliche and loaded with double self-development cheese, she has a point. Some people call it "manifesting". Some people call it a "positive visualisation practice". Some people call it "asking The Universe". I [...]

I used to keep a folder on my laptop desktop. It was full of free e-books and pdf-guides I'd downloaded from websites. The e-books and pdfs were called things like "How to grow your business in 7 easy steps!" and "Your free guide to an overnight six-figure income from working 2 hours a day on a beach in Bali!" I deleted that desktop folder. I realised I would never read any of it. Some of the free stuff you get from websites is not always that great, which is why it's important to me that when I do have something for free on my [...]