One of the great things about being a writer is that you can do your work anywhere. All you need is a notebook, or a laptop and your imagination.
Or so I thought.
Since I reorganised my desk in my new house and become more productive I can’t help but think the two are related. I love my desk. I love it’s cosy feel. I’m surrounded by notebooks, plants, cups of coffee, my mug of coloured pencils and a chicken mug of pens and I’m happy. I want to be sitting here working and writing. I’m inspired.
At my old house my desk was next to the kitchen, on the same level, and when paperwork came in, when there was something hanging around the house that didn’t have a home, then these things would often find themselves in my office. Bills on my desk, unused gift wrap on the floor, cracked mugs I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. They would all collect around me and suck out my creativity and motivation. Especially the house admin. That is a creativity killer.
When we started to prepare to move I started to declutter my office. There’a a lot of ‘stuff’ that has made its way to the charity shops or to the bin. At my new house my office feels clearer, it can breathe and I can breathe and create.
Yes there are still a few boxes of stuff that I haven’t unpacked yet because I cannot decide what to do with it. But they can stay in boxes for now, there’s no rush. In the meantime I have my cosy desk and three Ikea units and that is more than enough for my work things.
I photograph my desk for Instagram and I get a lot of questions. So I thought I’d do a tour of my writing desk and show you what I keep on it and why it makes me feel so ‘creatively cosy’!


Over the weekend I sent out a newsletter which opened with a short anecdote about my YouTube channel. The subject of the newsletter wasn’t actually about YouTube at all but I received an email back from one of my lovely subscribers asking what had happened with my YouTube journey. She said: It feels almost like we followed you on your journey then when you arrived at the Emerald City, you left us outside the gates.
I completely agreed. I’d stopped talking about YouTube once I reached monetisation. I’d shared a lot of what I was going through including my analytics and how close I was getting on my Instagram Stories - but then just didn’t carry that narrative on.
My YouTube journey has dominated my life for a year. I was thinking about it a lot; anxious that I would not reach the relevant requirements and then, when I did, I was worried about being rejected and monetisation would not be allowed for my channel.
So I thought I’d explore why I stopped talking about my YouTube channel in this blog post, as well as looking at my YouTube journey so far.