Making good decisions for yourself and your work

How I'm avoiding falling into a pit of post-residency blues // a few things I've been playing with this week

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It’s been the best part of a week since I got home from Italy, and while I’m glad to be back for all sorts of reasons, it’s also an adjustment. I miss Italy, and my little top floor studio apartment. I miss the simplicity of my daily routine in the mountains. I miss the swims and the conversations with my fellow Fellows. I miss 5 euro Aperol Spritz.

I have been lucky to travel far and wide over the last few decades, but I have rarely stayed in one place for long; mostly I move from place to place, so it was different to make a short-term home from home. And, I really loved it. Truly. It was a taste of my great unlived dream: that I would one day live abroad in the mountains, learn the language, have a different sort of life from the one I have here in the UK. I’d hoped that country would be Italy. I don’t think that will ever happen now, and I’ve (largely) made my peace with that, but at least this was a glimpse. Glimpses preserve the fantasy, and sometimes we need the fantasy more than we need the reality, right? Yearning keeps the heart strong et cetera.

Coming home is not a chore because I love my home and my routines here too, but my biggest worry was that the magic would fade too fast, and that spread too thin with life and work at home, I would lose any sense of creative continuity. It’s a huge gift to spend uninterrupted, low pressure, time on your work – how on earth would I be able to replicate that quality of time when I got back? And acknowledging the impossibility of replicating Italy at home, how would I avoid the post-trip emotional slump? I am so prone to post trip blues.

As it turns out I made one big, good decision (and, several related small ones) which I think have saved me from falling into a pit…