It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post, and in that time life seems to have filled every available gap.
- Worthing 10s Girls Rugby Festival.
- End of season awards, BBQ and water fight.
- Plenty going on at work.
It’s been one of those stretches where you don’t really stop – you just move from one thing to the next. And somewhere in that I noticed I hadn’t written anything.
For a moment, I wondered… is that writer’s block?
But the more I sat with it the more it felt like something else entirely. Not a lack of ideas, but almost too much life to process in real time. No space yet to step back and make sense of it.
Because writing, at least for me, seems to come after the living. Not during.
Something else I’ve noticed in the last couple of weeks is a shift in how I’m moving through life.
I’d say on the whole I’m more level-headed more often. That doesn’t mean I don’t still have moments where emotions rise up, because I certainly do. What’s different, though, is how quickly things settle again.
The swing back to centre feels quicker. Softer. Less dramatic.
And that’s new.
I was listening to a recording from a coaching session by Jamie Smart the other day. He was sharing a story about the origins of the 12-step process.
I don’t remember the details exactly but the essence stuck with me.
The founder had spent weeks and months telling anyone who would listen that he had seen the light. He was trying to help others stop drinking but nothing seemed to land. Eventually, he became disheartened and said to his wife that no matter what he did, he couldn’t get these people to change.
Her response was simple – but it cut through everything.
“At least it’s helping you stay sober.”
That landed.
Because it points to something easy to overlook – that the things we share, teach or explore with others are often doing just as much work on us.
Sometimes more.
I saw that play out in a very real way recently.
We were away camping and someone accidentally damaged a piece of our equipment. In the past that would have been enough to tip me over. Frustration, annoyance, maybe a bit of blame – all of it would have shown up quickly.
But something was different this time… I stayed calm.
Not through effort or restraint. It just didn’t escalate.
There was a quiet knowing in the background – that reacting wouldn’t fix the damage, wouldn’t help the situation and would probably make the other person feel worse than they already did.
So I carried on.
And we moved on.
No fuss, no fallout and everyone’s dignity intact.
When I shared this in a coaching call earlier this week, my coach reflected something back to me that I hadn’t fully seen.
All the conversations.
All the reflections.
All the time spent exploring how our experience is created.
It’s doing something… even when I’m not consciously thinking about it.
Maybe that’s the real takeaway from these past couple of weeks.
Not whether I’ve had time to write.
But what’s been quietly changing underneath it all.
Because if the work we’re doing – the thinking, the learning, the conversations – is showing up in moments like that…
Then something meaningful is happening.
Whether we’re writing about it yet or not.
Patrick Hickman 