Tag Archives: money

On Creativity and a return to the UK

Posted on January 25, 2013 | 4 Comments

Last night was the first time in three years I’ve cried because I missed home. I had a craving for fields. Yes fields. And woods. And the smell of bonfires. And strawberries. Summer and autumn sights and smells. So if you dropped me back in the UK right now I’d swear at the cold and the snow and get back on the next plane, tossing my rose-tinted glasses into the bin on the way.

But most of all I was crying for my family and friends.

An email from my brother triggered it. Talk of my nieces and nephews. An email from my best friend too, with the butterfly heart-beating possibility that she might be coming to visit in March. The hope of that being tempered by the possibility she may not, just squeezed my emotions in such a way I burst into tears. OK, there was also the fact of a tax bill I have no idea how I’m going to pay. It had been a hard week.

Hard in that after three years, John and I are still finding our feet here financially. We walked out of well-paid jobs into a life of instability but outrageous potential. To pick yourself up from nothing and get back to a state of feeling comfortable takes a lot of hard work or a lottery win.

Though maybe that’s the point. Maybe ‘comfortable’ is not a place I subconsciously want to reside in. Being uncomfortable makes me work hard, push boundaries, try new things, keep trying new things when the first ones fail, keep throwing stuff at the wall in the hopes that one day something will stick. Would comfortable equal lazy and complacent? It’s a possibility.

My mum asked in an email ‘why not come home?’ and even through my tears (some now of guilt) I smiled and shuddered. Because even though I miss fields and strawberries (Kintamani ones have nothing on English ones) and bonfires and family and friends I could never move back there.

It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t been here. I have days where I hate Bali (the days when I’m told that ‘no your hard drive still hasn’t arrived from Singapore because it’s been diverted via Surabaya and now they’re holding it back until we pay a bribe’…the days when the internet fails for no reason and it takes a week before anyone can fix it…the days when I’m told I have a black magic curse on me) sure. But 99% of the time I love it here. And that’s not just because I don’t have to do the dishes.

I love who Alula is here. I love the world she gets to grow up in – this magical TV-free, advertising-free place where she is so, so happy. Never has a 6 year old child been so innocent. She’s growing into a conscious, kind, generous, empathetic and wildly imaginative child, as at home in a developing Asian world as in a first world city, able to flit between an American and English accent before ordering a juice in Bahasa.

Yesterday she said to us ‘I love living in Bali’ before skipping off to play among the butterflies.

I love that just as Alula gets to be creative and explore her imagination 100% of the time, so do I.

I love that John’s creativity has soared and he’s poured it into two incredible new businesses to inspire others’ creativity and connection.

I love the friends we have made here – all passionate, creative and entrepreneurial.

The word I keep coming back to is creativity. And the more I reflect on it the more I realize that for me, creativity has become a central component of living. It’s one of the main things that now gives my life meaning. Not always happiness that’s for sure, but definitely meaning. I see it give meaning to John and to Alula every single day as well. This is how we live now. We can’t ever go back from that. It’s inconceivable.

Which isn’t to say you can’t be creative in the UK. But it’s a hell of a lot harder. It would be something we squeezed in between going to work, doing the dishes and prising Alula away from CBBC.

This place is where we get to explore outrageous possibilities unfettered and unhindered, supported by the energy and people around us. So no, we’re not moving back to the UK.

While so much potential has been fulfilled there’s still so much ahead of us.

(sorry parents).

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‘Wow, you’re an author, that’s like so cool.’

Posted on March 9, 2012 | 2 Comments

‘Wow, you’re an author? Like, that’s so cool (pause) are you like, um published?’

‘Yes,’ I mumble. I have had this question about a hundred times and I never know quite how to answer it.

I don’t blame people for asking because here in Ubud, every other person is a writer, or claims to be one. So when they find out I’m actually published (by a big name publisher), and haven’t just photocopied my manuscript and sold it in Bali Buddha next to the crystal deoderant and sacral chakra pendants, they can’t believe it (actually I still can’t either).

I have this weird relationship to the word author though. Partly because I feel like a total fraud saying it. Because I’m not like Margaret Atwood or Zadie Smith or Monica Ali. And also because the word author has so many connotations for others when they hear it.

Namely the connotation is: ‘SHE IS AS RICH AS JK. ROWLING. WHERE IS HER SUPERYACHT?’ Their eyes go a little wide.  I see them scanning me for any sign of wealth…eyes dropping to my fetching yoga leggings, zooming up to hover at my Topshop sunglasses. They frown and then glance at my fraying old handbag. Yeah, keep looking I think to myself…if you find any sign of wealth please show it to me.

I think authordom is completely misunderstood. People have this vision of authors making six figure deals and living off the fat of the land in their thatched cottages in the Cotswolds (thinking of the guy in Tamara Drewe) or castles in Edinburgh (JK) or in their villa in Bali (ahum).  Let me be clear on one thing to all you aspiring writers out there. DON’T GIVE UP YOUR DAY JOB.

I was moaning with a friend via email about money. She’s a well-known actress, up and coming, constantly in work for TV and film and she’s broker than me. We were bitching about how hard it is to make a living as an artist (especially now with online piracy making it really hard to earn out an advance…just saying). But then I listed off my biggest expenses:

Massages, Sushi, flights, pilates, books…

Yeah. I mean. I read it back and started laughing. When you have enough money to afford those on a near daily basis you’re a long way from broke. And yes, I’m super lucky to have an amazingly hard working and successful husband able to take up the slack (until I’m as rich as JK he tells me, which is when he plans to retire – see even my husband is deluded).

Life is sweeter than sweet. I moan about being a poor artist but in actual fact I just had a manicure, lunch with my friends and ordered in frozen margaritas. Downstairs Kadek is making us a salad while I ‘work’. I might earn half of what I earned in London but my life is a trillion times more enjoyable.

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Don’t wake me

Posted on July 17, 2011 | 3 Comments

My first book Hunting Lila comes out in just over two weeks’ time, and joy, it’s getting rave reviews and will be on the 3 for 2 tables in Smiths and Waterstones throughout August.

It’s been a long journey and if you were with me from the start of can we live here you’ll know how I only first started writing when we decided to leave the UK because I couldn’t think of any other idea for how to make money. And thank God I didn’t google how much writers actually earn. But anyway fast forward 18 months and I actually have not one, but THREE books coming out in the next year.

ahahahahahahahahaha

There’s a line in Lila where she thinks that maybe she’s lying on a pavement in south east London comatose because she can’t believe the reality of her life and that’s pretty much how I feel every single day. I walk around grinning like a simpleton. (When you do this it’s surprising how many men smile back at you). I also drink a lot of wine because a) in Indonesia there isn’t any (or none that I can afford) and b) I feel I have an excuse to celebrate every minute of the day. I also buy a lot of things (more on this later) kidding myself that one day I’m going to be rich and will be able to afford to pay it off.

Ahhahahahahahahaahaha (that’s my publisher and every other writer in the universe bar JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer and Stephen King laughing at my naivete).

For the last two weeks in London I’ve been meeting my agent and my publisher for posh lunches, I’ve been editing my second book, and I’ve been working hard on promoting Hunting Lila (in between shopping of course) – there’s a blog tour starting on the 1st August and I am stalking the heck out of readers on Goodreads (I figure if I friend them all they might feel more inclined to give me a nicer review – cunning huh?). My favourite question so far in the interviews: How has your life changed since getting a book deal?

The funny thing is, I realised that my life wouldn’t be that much different to how it is now – ok fewer wining and dinings probably, but we’d still be in Bali. And I think that’s a really cool thing. My writing didn’t create the lifestyle. The lifestyle created the writing. (Ok and also John paying for everything at the moment is sustaining the lifestyle – thank you thank you amazing husband).

But the really exciting news, well second after the news that I have bought the most stupendous Vivienne Westwood dress and killer shoes for the launch, is that a ten year friendship with someone I met at uni has evolved into lunch at the Ivy Club (Daaaaaarling) and an offer to option Hunting Lila by an independent production company.

It’s early days of course and I’m naturally circumspect about stuff like that, though I am going to be wearing Westwood to the premiere and have written the clause to go in the contract which gives me the right to sit on the casting couch and test drive the male actors…but as I said, I’m totally circumspect…

If I am actually lying in a coma on a street in south London somewhere, please don’t bother waking me up.

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Creative accounting and fringes

Posted on June 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

John asked me.

No, I told him I would.

Let’s get this straight.

I offered.

Because, given that we’ve run though my book advance as though it was on a self-destruct timer, we’re now living off him. And I’ve never lived off any man (other than my dad…thanks dad!). John paying for stuff – as in paying for everything – is totally novel. It’s taken a while to get used to and makes me distinctly uncomfortable…so uncomfortable I have cut my massage excess to just once a fortnight and resorted to cutting my own fringe.

Witness:

(with my two tone roots and my hacked fringe I could audition for a part in Eastenders.)

Even when I was on maternity I paid my way. I’ve always earned the same or more than John. I went to a school where we were indoctrinated with the belief girls could do anything better than boys. I’ve always believed that as a woman financial independence is paramount.

This having to rely on John has been a tough call for me…no really.

Really. (As she reaches for the ice-cream with one hand and speed dials the masseur with the other).

And so even though riches are of course – let’s not even worry about it, it’s bound to happen – coming to me in the form of book royalties, film deals, Barbie merchandising deals (I will have no ethics when they wave that cheque in my face) at the moment I’m broke, so my token gesture to say thanks to John for bearing the load is to offer to do his accounts.

Ahahahahahahahaahaha

The joke may be on him when it comes around to submitting accounts to the taxman.

I sat at my desk with his mountain of receipts and I thought ‘I can do this. Yeah, this is novel…oooh, now where’s excel…ok, spreadsheet thing how do you work again? Now um, right, um…what’s this symbol?’

And then after five minutes I got up and got some ice cream.

When I sat back down I started remembering my other life, when I used to run multi million pound projects. Yeah. I know. Mental right?

I used to play with numbers every day of my life. And I was good – I knew how far to play the creative accounting game (well, ok normally I would play it too far and our amazing finance director would arch his eyebrow in my direction and I would wheedle and then come up with some great creative expression for him to use in exec meetings and then it would all be fine). I kind of miss those days where I could bullshit over a spreadsheet almost as though I was gearing up for a future life creating paranormal young adult novels.

But still, as I sit here buried under a mountain of receipts (with an empty g&t glass beside me) I do shake my head in wonder that I actually used to do this as part of a 9-5 job. Urgh, is all I can say. Once more I am reminded of how spectacular life is these days.

And I’ve only managed to tally up two months’ worth and I’m bored already. John won’t let me be creative with his receipts (why can’t we submit massages and pilates lessons as a work expense?)

Time to play on facebook and twitter. I do so like my life. Have I mentioned that already?

 

 

 

 

 

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The 9-5 encroaches on the dream

Posted on May 19, 2011 | 8 Comments

For those of you who’ve followed us since the beginning you’ll remember that our reasons for leaving the UK were numerous. We wrote these reasons on post-its and stuck them on the wall of our bedroom in south east London before we decided to up stix and get the hell out of dodge. The reasons included: spend more time with Alula, be healthy, swim everyday, no commute, no working 9-5 ever again, live a 4 hour work week and of course, HOT SUN.

Hence Bali. Hence the fact that can we live here turned into, hell yes we can live here and then into oh, look we are living here (I just didn’t want to buy all those different URLs).

We’re lucky, I managed to get a really good book deal whilst we were still travelling and John being the super talented designer that he is hustled his butt off in Singapore, set up his own company and has not stopped working since. We both work pretty much full time (so much for the ‘work a four hour week’ post-it – but we both love our jobs so that’s cool) and admittedly I work beside the pool a lot. And I can stop to watch episodes of Buffy and / or decide that I need a three week break by the sea to recharge my brain whenever I like. We’re lucky and we’re oh so grateful for the way life has panned out.

Up until now John’s been spending about 2 days a week in Singapore but now he’s been offered a job at probably the best design company in the world.  A permanent job that is.

Excuse me whilst I tear up the post-its which said ‘no 9-5’ and ‘no commute.’

Now to me, the idea of ever working again for anyone else sends me into such a panic that my throat closes over in much the same way it does when someone with a peanut allergy eats a snickers bar.

Recently I did my birth chart and discovered that I should never, ever work for anyone because ‘I don’t respond well to being managed.’

If only I’d known that ten years ago. Could have saved a lot of my ex bosses a lot of heartache and stress.

But no point looking back. And thank God I’ve discovered a way of working that doesn’t involve a boss. I mean I have an editor but it doesn’t feel like she’s my boss. It feels like she’s Willy Wonka and she’s giving me the keys to the chocolate factory of my dreams (no oompah loompahs on my factory line, only clones of Alex Skarsgard naked swimming in the chocolate lake…sorry I digress).

Anyway for John this role is like gold dust. It’s a career high, a once in a lifetime offer that will really open doors– potentially to places we might want to move at some point (sagittarius remember?).  But as I write this my bottom lip is sliding up and out. I’m pouting I realize, in a way that even Alula would be envious of.

We’ve come this far just to slip back into a similar routine to the one we had in London only replacing Starbucks with coconuts and south eastern trains with Air Asia. And replacing the child minder with well, um, me. Hang on. This doesn’t feel right.

Ok, so the childcare thing isn’t so bad, especially as Kadek is there to make pancakes. We can hang out at the pool as opposed to Croydon Rec, and there’s no waiting around for trains at London Bridge panicking at whether I’ll make it back in time to pick Alula up. But what does this mean for us if John takes the job?

What does it mean for our relationship? For my sanity as a part time single mother? For Alula? What does it mean for our dream? We haven’t compromised on anything thus far, other than not living in the same time zone as fashion, I’m not sure I want to start now.

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Is the world ready for Raffle Girl?

Posted on February 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

Oh dear.

It all started about ten days ago.

A concert

Afro Moses

Cool

Franti’s Villa

Pool Party                        Awesome

Raise money

Raffle

Fundraiser

‘Sarah can you ask Leila to be a raffle girl?’

‘Ooooh I like, like one of those 1950s cigarette girls’

‘Yeah, short skirt, a little hat, part men from their cash by shoogling her toosh.’

‘That will totally work. We’ll make a fortune.’

And somehow we’ve ended up here…

…Me standing holding a plate of ketchup in which a dozen chips are slowly sinking, whilst Leila measures me.

‘What are you measuring me for?’ I ask dropping another chip into my mouth. I remember asking her to make me a dress a while ago. It must be for that I think.

‘I’m thinking bright pink. What about you?’

‘Errrr – ‘ I say.

‘We don’t have to be the same.’

‘Errrr-‘ I say.

‘You’re doing the raffle with me right?’ Leila asks, jotting down my vital statistics which even upside down look huge.

‘Errrr – I guess I am now,’ I gamely say, gulping as she measures my bust and starts talking halter necks.

‘How short do you want the skirt?’ she asks.

I put the plate of chips down.

‘Belly on display?’

GOD NO. Corset can you make a corset I’m thinking. ‘Let’s go with hourglass shapes,’ I suggest.

I stand there as she measures my waist, my hips and bust and start thinking about what this might mean for my standing in the community.

Then I think, what standing?

I have no idea what people in this town think of me. I can guess though. The words sarcastic, sharp, aloof spring to mind. Possibly bitch. Maybe one or two people might say I’m friendly (those people I am actually friendly to).  I know at least one person who calls me dancing sarah. I also know a few people who call me Alula’s mum. And a spattering who call me ‘the girl who blogs about us.’ However, I’m pretty sure in amongst all the adjectives there aren’t many people thinking ‘raffle girl’. I’m worrying all of a sudden about the raffle ticket sales.

But nonetheless, I cannot leave Leila to look like a cigarette girl come turn of the last century prostitute all by herself on Friday night. So I will be donning my costume like superman pulling on his tights, with a martyring expression on my face. I will be Raffle Girl.

Hello Tequila.

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How to Budget

Posted on January 11, 2011 | 4 Comments

I just got paid. It’s very exciting. Money. For writing down all the crazy stuff that my imagination comes up with. How mental is that? Also I’m excited because today I appeared as a headline ABOVE Julian Assange.

that's me ABOVE Julian Assange

Bet he’s gutted.

Anyway with the chaching still ringing in my ears I thought I’d be all adult and like, um, budget. Almost had to google the definition but then I remembered I used to write budgets all the time for big volunteering projects. But then I remembered my technique for that went something like ‘so 10K for um materials, and let’s say 15K for my management fee and um what about 20K for say volunteer expenses, no that’s not right I should get more than the volunteers…’ and then a vastly inflated budget would get approved. Just like that. And back then I hadn’t even appreciated the depths my imagination could plumb or considered how much further creative writing could take me.

Anyway as I’m the one approving this budget I figure I’d better be a bit more circumspect with my spending review.

Thus far my budget looks like this:

Flights                                           $3000

Tax                                                 $0

(I will figure it out next year by which time have sold my film rights and it will be fine…lalala head rebury in sand)

Topshop fund                               $500

(If I allocate now I will avoid that guilty feeling when I enter those hallowed Oxford Circus halls and hand over my credit card for clothing which I am NOT too old for).

Film trailer                                    $ 1000

(True value? Priceless. I get to sit on the casting couch for Alex. You can’t put a price on getting to actually touch see my lead character in the flesh).

Rent                                                $ 2000

(here’s hoping we manage to rent our house over the summer and I get to take this 2000 and add it to the Topshop fund  instead).

Pension                                            $0

(I’m going to die when I’m 62 so what’s the point of saving for tomorrow?)

Projector, ipad, surround sound system, washing machine (all of which I intend to use except the last one)            um $1500?

Cleaner                                                    $800

(Really this item should come at the top of the list, before Topshp, before the casting couch, even before rent and school fees.)

Circumspect right?

 

 

 

 

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What to do for christmas

Posted on December 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

‘So for xmas we have two options. If the weather is nice we can go to the beach. And if it’s not we can stay in Ubud and do what xmas is about. Namely eating.’

‘Actually Christmas is about Jesus,’ John reminds me.

I raise an eyebrow at the heathen grinning at me across the table. ‘We can eat all day, touring restaurants, then have a two hour massage,’ I say.

‘What about Alula?’ John asks.

‘We can get a babysitter for the day.’

John pauses to look at me, fork half way to his mouth.

‘Oh, yeah, right’, I say, ‘Christmas. Family. Babysitter bad.’

We agree that there will be no turkey. And instead of presents we will buy a family drum. Because what this family needs is a drum.

‘Actually I need a bookcase more than a drum,’ I say.

‘Ok, we’ll get a bookcase.’

John and I have taken to prioritizing what we’re going to buy in January when we have finally been paid and have money flowing in. Top of the list was a drum. Now relegated to second behind a bookcase. John wanted to buy a car so we don’t have to drive around in a smashed up tin can anymore but I like our jeep and if we have $10,000 I’d rather spend that $10,000 on these things:

Speakers. A projector. Outdoor furniture. A sofa. A sofabed. Oh, and a swimming pool.

‘But a car’, John says, ‘will hold its value over here.’

‘Not once I’ve totaled it, it won’t.’

I move on and John doesn’t argue.

‘I think we should do something like volunteering in an orphanage on christmas day.’

‘Urgh.’

(guess who said which sentence).

‘Why not?’ John asks, ‘It’s the kind of thing I want to do more of.’

‘Well I worked for a volunteering charity for 8 years. I’ve done my bit. I’ve earned my karma, I never have to volunteer ever again.’

‘You just fired people and hired people, that’s not exactly volunteering.’

‘That’s not true. I set up projects and um – yeah, whatever. So which beach shall we go to?’

John just shook his head. Sometimes I really think he wonders why he married me.

 

 

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It’s my birthday

Posted on November 26, 2010 | Leave a comment

So what better reason to break into a five star hotel?

Driving up to the valet point in our rusting hunk of metal should have outed us as not that rich but the dudes with the wavy bomb detector things let us on through. They even parked our pringle encrusted car for us (hey I got hungry on the way and it wasn’t like we could afford to actually eat there).

We strolled on through the grounds as if heading for the helipad down by our own private villa and then took a sharp left to the pool.

Check it out. Good job non?

 

After a swim we mooched on out of there. We spent the rest of the afternoon eating. John organized a raw food picnic. This is amusing because a year ago the only thing I’d eat raw was cow – and the occasional fish – vegetables most definitely cooked. I was the serve it up still mooing give me some bleeding flesh girl. I was so carnivorous that I’d walk past sacred cows in India and start smelling the mustard. Yet here I am not only not turning my nose up, but actually choosing to order the raw chocolate cake over the proper chocolate cake – probably because RAW also seems to denote NO CALORIES and INSTANT KARMA POINTS in my head making it thus ok to eat five slices because the more I eat the thinner I’ll get and the better my next life will be.

Anyway after the raw food picnic we got massaged. I feel disloyal to massage Wayan saying this – but hey she’s never going to read this – this massage truly was the best massage I’ve ever had. I thought they were going to need to hose me up at the end of it. I contemplated handing over my life savings and telling them to just keep going until they ran out, sometime in mid 2011 but I’m glad I didn’t because then I would have missed the wasabi eating competition that came later.

wasabi makes your eyes go blurry.

Just after this, amidst our raw fish feeding frenzy, (we were eating Japanese), a girl in a white turban, dressed all in white, with requisite dangly jewellery, wandered over to the table and started telling us about how her body keeps jolting every time she prays or meditates and that she thought she was going mad. (I was like well stop praying and meditating then – problem solved. If that doesn’t work there’s always lithium).

She then sat cross-legged on the floor and started jolting right there in front of us.

At the time I leant over to John and said ‘do you have a pen?’

Luckily for the jolting girl, one of my friends, who happened to be there with us taking part in the wasabi eating competition, is a master of Kundalini and fixed her up good so she stopped jolting at least for long enough for us to finish our sashimi before it went off.

You gotta love Ubud birthdays. A truly unique experience.

A friend reminded me of how last year I was sat amidst the growing boxes in our house in SE London on my birthday – in tears. This year was infinitely better.

 

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What if…

Posted on November 20, 2010 | 3 Comments

As you know John, Alula and I left the UK in January 2010. We were looking for a new home – somewhere hot, less stressful,  somewhere with a creative, entrepreneurial vibe, somewhere with good schools and good people. And we found Bali and it’s our version of perfect living (back then I hadn’t even anticipated the full time cleaner / cook thing). For the moment anyway.

Anyway in the summer of 2009 just after we’d decided to head off on our round the globe mission and were trying to figure out how to pay for it all, I was in melt down. What would I do? How would I make money? I mean, I had no discernable skills in life whatsoever other than being a pro at buying shoes on ebay and having a withering look that could shrivel people in a matter of seconds.

Swimming one day I had a conversation with myself that went like this:

Who’s rich? Let’s see. The queen. Hate her. Err, Stephanie Meyer she’s rich. She’s like a millionaire and all for writing about vampires. Ok, I can so do that. Now think about it think about it. What could I write about? Nothing about vampires. Cliché.  Yeah, so what if there was  a girl and her name was – um – Lila and then there was a boy. Let’s call him Alex, after Alex Skarsgard – yes Alex is a good name and he’ll be the opposite of Edward Cullen – so not a vampire, not moody or angsty and he won’t have quiffy hair and / or be a mindreader. And then I started saying what if… and then about 5 lengths later I had the outline for my story.

I got home, started plotting, started writing. Four months later I had my first book written.

Then we headed off to India and the day before we went I sent the manuscript to agents.

By the time we left India I had an agent.

By the time we left Bali I had a two book deal with a publisher – the brilliant and globally massive Simon & Schuster.

I went from being a Head of Projects in a not for profit in London where the only thing I ever wrote was creative fiction of the fundraising kind to being a like PAID author.

Heehehehehehehe (sorry still have to giggle at all this occasionally).

When we got to the States (by which point I’d written the sequel to Hunting Lila – as it’s now been titled) I decided to start a new book – a whole new series with new characters altogether. I finished it about three weeks ago.

And then yesterday I got an offer for that book too (hence the shopping for a breakfast bowl). This means – and I’m still having to process – that I’ll have three books out within about 9 months of each other next year. Two young adult book series, both with an amazing publishing house, alongside some of the best young adult writers out there – other writers I love like Scott Westerfield and Neal Shusterman.

Heheheeheheheehee.

I read the offer email to John. And John looks at me shaking his head and he says, ‘the universe really does give you whatever you want.’ Or something along those lines. And I am thinking to myself well it’s not giving me Gisele’s body, Scarjo’s face and Oprah’s wallet, but hey I’m not complaining.

But he has a point. I do think I’m the luckiest person alive right now. And I had said to John on Monday ‘I’m going to get an offer for my book on Thursday or Friday’ and whaddya know? I did. Ok, ok, Susan Miller kind of indicated it too and she is the oracle.

And I’ve been reflecting on this. Because what I think it is that I’ve always made it clear what I want. I say it out loud at every opportunity – to John, to my friends, to complete strangers. I don’t just say ‘what if’ anymore. I say, WHEN.

That’s all very well you might say, I’m going to start telling every and any person I come across that I’m going to be the next Nobel Prize winning physicist but that sure as hell isn’t going to happen. (It sure as hell isn’t going to happen to me because it took me five goes just to spell it).

No but if you believe it, if you genuinely believe that it will happen, not just think ‘that would be nice’, then I think it does.

You just need to stop saying what if and start saying When.

Or maybe it’s just me and I really am the luckiest person in the world.

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