Chez Hanny

For a while I’d been thinking that I would go away by myself for a couple of days, but for some reason it took a long time to build up the courage to actually do it. I’m not sure why, as I’m quite happy to do things by myself but perhaps I was concerned by what other people’s reactions would be? As September came into view, I knew I needed to mark the occasion of not going ‘back to school’ with something special.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash Just over three years ago I quit. I was 38, and I’d been a secondary school teacher for 16 years. I was very good at it - by age 29 I was at the helm of a 20-person music department in a large London independent school. I was earning a salary of £75k and on paper I had everything I wanted: a beautiful house, nice holidays, a decent car… Except I was unhappy.

I hope your week is going better than mine. The will they/won’t they house move back and forth has been going on all week and it’s driving me completely insane. I wish I could tell you more than that, but despite our very best efforts for closure we still don’t know the answer. One day I will hopefully be able to share.

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash Foolishly, I thought that by the end of August I would know definitively whether I was moving house or not, but it seems the universe has other plans and limbo is here for a while longer. More on that later. Before I get into those August feelings, here is the most recent episode of my Creative Career Change podcast with author Jennie Godfrey ICYMI. It’s a great reminder of how/why taking creative risks can pay off.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -51:32 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Jennie and I first met back in 2023 at a creativity retreat with Emma Gannon and Tanya Lynch. Jennie’s debut novel ‘The List of Suspicious Things’ was not yet out in the world and I had just left my 16 year teaching career behind. Change was afoot. Since then, Jennie’s world has turned on its head and she is now a Sunday Times bestselling author of two books and is currently writing her third.

A quick check in from me today because despite what I wrote about last Sunday -‘Is it the end of limbo land?’ - it turns out that the house-move rollercoaster is still going. Albeit very slowly, stuck at the top unsure whether it will remain there for weeks (forever?) or suddenly whizz down the slope with no warning.

I’m writing this from my very warm studio. The fan is on full blast and it currently displays 32 degrees as the air temperature. It’s also 7 minutes in to the Create Ensemble Zoom session I’m hosting on Wednesday afternoon. It’s the first time I’ve held a session on a Wednesday afternoon and it’s popular! Upcoming dates at the bottom of this post, including another Wednesday afternoon.

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash I don’t usually write on a Tuesday, but I’ve got two time-sensitive things to say, so here I am! The first is a reminder that tomorrow is Create Ensemble and I’m trying out a new time/day of the week. We’re meeting at 3pm on Wednesday 12th August for an hour via Zoom and I’d love you to join me.

It turns out that there are downsides to going on holiday in June. Obviously there’s my envy towards everyone who is currently on holiday enjoying these unusually balmy days on British beaches or exploring foreign cities and sharing their fun times on Instagram. But more than that is the lack of anything happening. As I thought it might be, my work is very quiet right now. Even some of my favourite Substack writers are declaring a break for August which means fewer things to read.

I’ve always been happy in my own company, but one of the challenges of that is constantly having a mental to-do list rolling in my brain. I’m not very good at switching off and doing nothing. Combine that with founding an interior design studio which, as any other business owners will know, can take up every single bit of your mental energy, leaving little room for ‘switching off’. On Thursday last week I’d blocked out in my diary what I was referring to as a ‘Hannah Day’.