Chapter 5 – The Long Way Round

The last 4 years have been a rollercoaster of experiences and I have learned so much working as a head of year in a secondary school. Personally and professionally there have been some heartbreaking lows but there has been a lot of laughs, a lot of love and a lot of support and encouragement from my friends and family. 

For the first time in my professional life I found a place that felt like home. There were a lot of changes during this time, and just like my first dream job, no sooner had I started and changes came swiftly. Some good, some bad and some absolutely baffling. But I got to work alongside some of my favourite people. I had found my tribe and for the first time in a professional setting I got to be 100% me. My colleagues didn’t care that I was a geeky weirdo because they were too. My superpower of being a storyteller comes with insight and empathy. Gifts I use to support the young people I work with. They also think I’m a weirdo and that means they get to be themselves too. 

My experiences over the last 17 years have shaped my ideas. During this time my mindset shifted from positive to hopeful. This shift was important because I didn’t always need to find a silver lining. Trying to stay positive was difficult at times. Some moments are just bad, some days are just bad but we can hope that the next moment or the next day will be better. We can learn from this experience and our future self can have the knowledge they need to face the same situation in the future, but hopefully with less stress and quicker solutions. Or better still, avoid it altogether.

During this time I focused on joy, this is something I talk about all the time. I don’t believe in happiness. A bold statement I know but I’ll explain why. Happiness as a concept is difficult, the moment you are asked if you are happy and start to question it, happiness goes away, it is a state of being that needs to be maintained and we use it as a measure of success. We can’t make other people happy and our pursuit of happiness can sometimes be at the expense of other people’s peace and happiness. Joy though is beautiful and unexpected and can be found in small moments. It can be created and shared, it can be spontaneous and silly and playful. It can be quiet and still, it can be found curled around a coffee cup or hiding up a tree. Our days are sprinkled with these moments. I now start each day reflecting on the previous day and writing 3 moments of joy. I borrow the joy from yesterday to start my day. 

I didn’t realise at the time but what I was doing was refining my values, the cornerstones that I would use to build Pixie and Bumble. 

I believe that everything happens for a reason and that people will cross our paths at a particular moment in our lives when we need them most. This is my friendship with Ann English. During this time I was continuing to revisit my journals and the ideas I had written down for safekeeping. I found the Clarity Quest Ideasbook on Amazon. I was so excited. The timing was perfect. I worked through the first quest, going back through my old journals, looking back at what I’d achieved and what I thought I wanted, but something wasn’t quite right. I wasn’t the same person, and I was still holding onto old ways of thinking. I worked through my first Ideasbook and realised that I need to make a change. I love Travelling Ava but I didn’t have the same passion or inclination to blog about the places she had visited the way I had before COVID.

Working with my year group meant that I got to talk about the things I valued. I got to talk about joy, hope, curiosity, creativity  and community. All strands that I had woven through my various jobs and projects. Supporting my students and helping them overcome their obstacles helped me to better understand the values that are important to me. Joy being right at the top. By the time I’d finished my second Clarity Quest, I had fresh insights and I had something new, I had Pixie and Bumble. 

My story is filled with lots of detours. I am a storyteller, I have journalled my way back to the girl sitting with the typewriter happily setting her imagination free. I wasn’t ready before, I was working towards a dream I only whispered to myself. Without lecturing, Ava Kitsch and Travelling Ava and all the moments in between there would be no Pixie and Bumble. 

My dream isn’t to start a crochet business. My dream is to create a safe place for your imagination to play. To build a community, a home for my daydreamers, mischief-makers and restless souls to rest, connect and follow their own curiosity. I do this with crochet and storytelling.

I have taken the long way round, gathering the skills, knowledge and experiences I need to create something special. We trust the universe, trust that we are in the right place at the right time and we make the best choice in the moment, and we move forward along our path.