Pip Lincolne

Interview by Madeleine Dore

Pip Lincolne: writer, crafter and blogger

Full transcript

“It’s not about being the best, it’s just about feeling creatively fulfiled and, I suppose, turning away from doing stuff unconsciously. Being mindful of the things that you’re doing in your life and spending time doing things that matter to you, because your life is potentially short and why not be doing the things that really make a difference to you and make you feel good?”
– Pip Lincolne

Madeleine Dore: One of the most powerful lessons I ever learned about creative careers was actually discovered through conducting a blind dating experiment. You see, we can easily fall into patterns in our love lives. As the philosopher Alain de Botton said, “We are not merely looking to find love. We are looking for the familiar.”

And the same can be said for our creative work. We can so easily get into a routine doing the same same, doing what’s safe. But creativity actually requires that we shake this routine, we shake the patterns. 

So a few years ago, I was curious to see if I could tweak my own habitual dating tendencies. Over the span of three months’, I had friends, friends of friends, and colleagues of friends set me up on dates with complete strangers. Concluding my experiment in blind dating revealed more to me about how we approach finding love and the stories we tell ourselves than I could’ve ever imagined. 

And the biggest takeaway was something that I now apply to all facets of my life: rejection isn’t personal.

The most terrifying part of rejection, I think, is actually not so much the act itself, the being rejected, but actually how we let it define us, even before it may have happened.

We can take someone declining a second date, for instance, and turn it into evidence for a major flaw in our character. But just because one person rejects you, doesn’t mean that you’re destined to be rejected for the remainder of your years. In fact, it rarely has anything to do with you.

In this conversation, writer, crafter, and blogger behind Meet Me at Mike’s, Pip Lincolne adds to this two-folded lesson with perhaps the best book writing advice I’ve ever received. 

You don’t just focus on finding the one perfect date from the outset. You go on many dates until the one for you, or the one right now, reveals himself to you. So in other words, you don’t just sit waiting at home for the date to come. You go out there and you try things. The more dates you go on, the more books you write, the more ideas you have, the more times you put yourself out there, the better you get at it and hopefully the more opportunities, both in love and your career, come to the fore.

It’s really fitting advice from someone who’s just published their sixth book, but it’s also really heartening advice because that book is actually about loss, heartbreak, and the breakdown of a very difficult 23-year relationship.

When Life is Not Peachy is a gentle guide for navigating loss, grief, or other sad times, and full of pragmatic and comforting advice.

In this conversation, Pip and I talk about the winding and twisting path that she took to a creative career after she left high school in Year 11. We also speak about feeling like an outsider, parenting and creativity, falling back into yourself and what that means, resilience, wobbly routines, fitting and writing around a day job, solitude, and how prioritising yourself isn’t selfish.

Be it experiencing a recent rejection or heartbreak or loss or perhaps just a lingering mood that you just can’t shake, our daily lives really do tend to wobble. So here’s Pip on how she is today.

Pip Lincolne: I’m actually really good today. I had some really good news, professional news, this afternoon, which was entirely out of left field, so that is very exciting, on top of a book about to come out. It’s just unexpected for me. I always think when one good thing is happening, there’s no room for other good things, but apparently there is. So that was my day.

MD: Oh, that’s so lovely. I actually have a friend who’s Instagram is Gorkiegork, and one of my favourite illustrations of hers says, “Waiting for an email to change my life,” and you just had that today. That’s lovely.

PL: That’s it. That’s it exactly.

MD: So you are a celebrated Melbourne crafter, you have authored six books, and you’ve run the blog Meet Me at Mike’s for over 14 years now, and I’m really interested to hear a little bit more about the winding path that led you to where you are now, especially because a lot of people might not know that you actually didn’t finish high school. 

PL: Exactly.

MD: So could you take us right back to then?

PL: Oh gosh, I’m just such a self-made girl, really. I’m not really a girl actually, I’m a woman, but you know. We say these things about ourselves because I do feel a bit perpetually like a girl, I guess. I’m always sort of excited about things and always trying to latch onto new things and improve my life and improve my skills, and so that sort of ethos has propelled me through my life, I guess.

I did leave high school in Year 11. When I was going to primary school, we moved from Tasmania to Western Australia, so the other side of the country. I went to primary school and high school there, and then we moved to Canberra. So all this shifting around and different education systems meant I skipped a couple of grades, so by the time I was in Year 11, I was only 14 or 15, I think. Everyone else was a lot older than me and I was in a new city.

So it was just all too much for me, really, and I was a sensitive soul and so in the end I just said to my mum, I just can’t do this anymore. I don’t fit in, I feel stupid because everyone’s much older than me and people are going to bars and I’m just at home reading Sweet Dreams books and listening to records. My life was just a bit upside down.

So I left school and I started working in the public service, would you believe? My parents were obviously working in the public service, then transferred to Canberra and most of the jobs there at the time were in the public service, and so I just started out as a typist or something and worked there for maybe two years and then I decided Canberra was not for me. My best friend was living in Melbourne and so I decided I would up and move to Melbourne, and that’s what I did.

So I came here and I guess I was attracted to people who were very creative and I fell in love with a guy who was studying sculpture and his father was an artist and his step-mother ran a restaurant, and it just all seemed so interesting to me. So I fell in love with this guy, fell pregnant at 18, which I always think is a funny expression, fell pregnant. I actually got pregnant and really decided I wanted to be a mum, so I had a baby by the time I was, I think, 18 turning 19. Maybe a week off 19. 

And just progressed from there, really. Tried to find creative ways of parenting. I was living in this amazing warehouse apartment in Clifton Hill at the time, in Melbourne, and the guy that I was madly in love with, who was the father of the baby, his parents also lived in the building, so they were helping to look after the baby. I was seeing all these interesting people drifting in and out of their lives, and I guess I wanted that interesting, creative life for myself too. 

That was a really long answer, and I’m not even halfway to where I am now.

MD: But it’s extremely illuminating to see how much was going on during that period of your life. Not only were you trying to step into this creative world that you saw, but you were also a young mother, and you’re also paving your own way in a career as well, so how did those puzzle pieces come together? How were you able to balance, for a lack of a better word, the parenting with the discovery that creativity requires?

PL: So the first time I tried to grab hold of creativity and parenting together was making clothes for my daughter. Her name is Rin and she’s very grown up now, but I used to make her cute little dresses and outfits and really enjoyed doing that. It seems a bit dinky to look back at it, but I also think that was me really trying to carve out some creative time for myself, and do it in a way that was practical, I suppose, and didn’t seem… I don’t know.

When you’re a mother, people expect you to spend a lot of time on your child, so I sort of felt like the things I was doing should be to do with parenting, so that’s how I intertwined the two. But then after that, because my now, I suppose, mother-in-law was in the restaurant business, she was always bringing beautiful food home, and so I started cooking and learning to cook more and more delicious food, and that became a lifelong passion for me.

So I was cooking this lovely food and I was making beautiful clothes and I was trying to find different ways to incorporate creativity into my life, as well as parenting a child. And the relationship that I was in was in a bit of trouble then, and it eventually broke down when my daughter was three. But in the interim, I was basically keeping myself busy doing things that really made me feel happy and like I was moving forward in some ways, even though it felt like, in other ways, maybe I wasn’t.

I ended up working for a catering company part-time through my mother-in-law. She organised an interview for me and I got this job in the catering company. And that really made me think, I really want to be in hospitality. I think it’s really creative and I would love to cook food for people all the time, so I had an opportunity to go into partnership with another woman in the café in Richmond.

MD: I love hearing about the winding paths. So are you early 20s at this stage?

PL: Yeah, I was maybe 23? Something like that. I just thought everything was doable, I guess.

MD: What do you accredit that to in you? Do you ever feel daunted by these big decisions that you make, or is there something inside you that has this optimistic, anything’s possible?

PL: I think I really am an optimist. I guess I trust in myself, and also when people back me, I think well, if they think I can do it, maybe I can do it. I’ll give it a go. So I think it’s really important to have a crack at things, even if you’re not sure that you can do them. And I guess on paper, when I thought about it, I thought well, I know what I like in the café and I know how to cook and I know how to look after people, this will be fine.

So in I ventured, and I lived upstairs with my daughter, and she was just starting primary school then, so it was a little bit of a juggle, but somehow we made it work. In the end, that part of my career wound down because the woman that I was working with and myself, we had a different way of working. I was really young, I think I was probably quite irritating and, in the end, we parted ways. 

When I look back on it now, I think yeah, I would’ve been annoyed by me as well and I don’t think I would’ve wanted a partner like me because I was just… I don’t know, maybe that optimism can sometimes be a little bit clueless. I think I was possibly a bit clueless back then.

But anyway, that led me to the next part of my story, which was meeting the father of my two youngest kids. I have three kids in total. So Rin, who’s the eldest, and then I have Max and Ari, who are all grown up now. But I met Max and Ari’s dad through the café and that was, I guess, the longest relationship of my life. We broke up several years ago now, hence the book about heartbreak.

All these little steps have contributed to where I am now, which is not where I thought I would be, but I’m really happy to be at this point, I guess.

MD: Where did you think that you would be?

PL: I don’t know. I guess I had this idea of… I never would’ve thought that I would be a published author, for instance. I thought that most of my time would be spent on raising my kids, and then maybe I would do other things on the side. And what ended up happening was that, as my relationship got more and more difficult, I looked for fulfilment elsewhere, I guess, because I realised this was not enough for me. And as wonderful as my kids were, they needed me to have something else in my life. It gets a little bit intense when your mum decides you’re her whole job. It’s probably more okay when they’re primary school age.

So I had a think about what I wanted to do before all of this, like as a kid what I had really wanted to do, and it was to publish a book. I think I was maybe 38 and I just went look, I’m running out of time to do this book thing, I’m just going to send an email to a publisher and, at this point, I was co-running a business with my just ex-partner, father of children, and I had turned his streetwear store business into a craft and vintage shop.

And so I was meeting all these wonderful people through the shop and I thought, hey, I really want to document the people that are making the things that I’m selling, so I typed out an email to Hardie Grant, which was the publisher that I thought had the sort of books that looked the way I wanted my book to look. Even though there food books, I thought I wanted to write a book about craft and creativity that looked a bit like those foody books. 

Mary Small from Hardie Grant, she was there at the time, she’s no longer there, she emailed me back and said hey, come in for a meeting, and it was just like this ridiculous dream story where I was like, I’m going to write a book, I sent an email, they sent yes, in I went, signed a contract, off we went.

And I got to publish my first book and it’s been a bit of a thing since then.

MD: Yeah, well, six books later. Do you think that, in a way, not overthinking things can be a bit of a key? Because I’ve been wanting to write a book for many, many years, and I’m agonising over what that book is and I’ve put it on the table, off the table several times. But do you think it was just your, I guess, having the idea and just putting it out there that was the key?

PL: Yeah, because I felt, so what if people said no? So what? I would just keep asking until I decided to stop asking, or until someone said yes. So it didn’t really matter to me if I was rejected, I suppose, and I think the other thing that I would say to you is that you’re going to write several books, I’m sure, so I think you should just get started on the first one. It doesn’t have to be the one.

It’s like when you have a relationship. You don’t go, I’m not going to go out with anyone unless they’re the one. You don’t. It’s a slow build-up to these things and also the more books you write, the more dates you go on, the better you get at is, presumably. I don’t know.

MD: I love the go on more dates with my book idea.

PL: Exactly, exactly.

MD: That’s wonderful.

PL: I think it’s just that thing of you have to dive in and then, it sounds so cheesy to say that, but you dive in and then things start to happen. It’s like when you do things in small increments, it eventually makes big improvements in your life. Unless they’re bad things, but don’t do that.

It’s the same with if you want to write a book. Just get started. Write down the ten major things that you think are the most important in the topic that you’re writing on. Each of those ten things is a chapter, get to work.

MD: I love it, Pip. I need you as my book coach. It seems like you’ve been able to circumvent the fear part, or the self-doubt part, or the overthinking, or perfectionist part. Would that be accurate? Or do you have those feelings?

PL: I do have the fear bit, but mostly it’s not in those early stages. If I’m talking to a publisher about writing a book, it’s sort of a one-on-one thing, it’s very intimate. If they say no, it’s not really about anything except the book isn’t right for them at the time, or they’ve got something like that already. So it’s fine. It’s not personal, I suppose. It’s intimate, but it’s not personal if they don’t want to do it.

What is hard is when your book is coming out into the world, which is my situation now, and you know that you have to… I won’t say endure because it’s the wrong word, but you’re going to be flooded with responses to your work. And that’s the part that I find a little bit scary because it’s hard to filter if there are not good things, I suppose. So somehow that feels worse. Like I don’t have control of it, I suppose, so it could just pop into my inbox, or someone could send me a link to a terrible review. It’s not a reciprocal thing I suppose, I just have to process and try not to react.

MD: So how are you arming yourself now? If you’re right in the middle of the daunting part where the feedback comes, the fear of judgement from other people. Do you have any advice on what’s worked in the past to have that resilience during this part?

PL: I think with resilience, the more you face this stuff, the more resilient you become. So even though I am a bit scared about it all, I know that I’ll be able to handle whatever happens. I feel that even the worst things that people could say, I can go over them and say okay, well, that’s what they’ve said, and that’s how they feel, and that’s okay for them to feel that way. 

I don’t really need to take it on, or I can take it on and feel really upset about it and just sit in that upset-ness. That’s okay too. I guess I’m not as resistant to the impact, I suppose, and the experience of processing it, which sounds weird and confusing, but I guess what I’m saying is that it can’t really hurt me because it’s not meant in the spirit of hurting me. It’s just potentially a response to the work that I’m doing, so that’s okay. It’s not life or death stuff. I will be okay.

So I guess that’s it. Not everyone has to like it. Not everyone has to like me. And I think it’s actually taken me a long time to learn that. It’s okay if people don’t like me. God, how could they not?

MD: Exactly! You beat me to it. Can you remember when that might have changed? The book itself that you’re about to promote is When Life is Not Peachy, and you say in the book how much you learn from those experiences, whether it’s grief or heartbreak or loss. Did that teach you about resilience? Or that it’s okay if people don’t like you because you’ve experienced the biggest loss?

PL: I think one of the things that comes from feeling a bit different when you’re growing up, which is something that I did, feeling like a bit of an outsider, is that you spend a lot of time trying to get people to like you. And I think this is something that I have learned through my childhood and adolescence and even my 20s, and 30s, and possibly 40s, to be honest. 

After going through a difficult time where I had to say to myself, it’s okay to just walk away from everything that’s going on now and give yourself time to convalesce because you are messed up, lady. Like I had really chronic depression, terrible anxiety. I was not functioning. I was lucky enough to have a job that I do from home so I could still work, which is lucky because I’m a single parent now and I really have to work. I don’t know what would happen to me if I didn’t work. Who would pay my rent?

But I opted out of everything, I suppose, and decided that if I was good enough at what I did, things would be waiting for me when I was ready to come back. And so having done that, I suppose I felt like it was gambling with my career at the time, but I didn’t really have a choice and I think, after going through that and putting everything aside and walking away, just retreating into some, not boring, but not really inspirational day work, I suppose, in a day job, I then got stronger and felt like I could come back and talk to other people about how horrible it is to go through heartbreaking things.

And I also realised that I am a strong person and I really like myself, and I like the myself that I’m becoming, and so if people don’t like the work I’m doing or think I’m irritating or whatever they may think, that’s okay because I’ve never really felt better about myself than I do now. Which is such a great place to be in. 

Even if I am a bit messed up and a bit scared and a bit this and a bit anxious and a bit depressed sometimes, I know exactly how I’m feeling. I’m 100% self-aware, I suppose. And I’m not pushing it all away, I guess, so there’s a real strength in that of just… I hate using the word vulnerability because I think it’s used so often, but there’s a strength in standing in your vulnerability and being who you are and knowing that, if people don’t like it, that’s okay.

MD: Oh, how powerful. I wish we could all bottle that up, but I think the point is to step into it for yourself.

PL: Definitely.

MD: So the book does really centre around the end of the 23-year relationship that you’ve spoken about and that heartbreak, and so how did you come to end something so momentous to get to this point now that you’re able to be yourself?

PL: I took a long time for it to end and it took a long time to know what to do with myself as a person standing alone without a partner. I think that if you’ve been in a relationship for any length of time, you fall into patterns of companionship and I think it was really hard not having a companion anymore. I just had no clue.

I would wake up on a Saturday and normally maybe we would go to the market or, you know, we had a bit of rhythm to the day after so many years together. I had no idea what to do. I would get in the car and drive around for a bit. I had to write myself lists so I could establish new routines and, instead of feeling like I was at a loss, I had to find ways to fill up my life in ways that were meaningful to me.

In the beginning, it didn’t feel like that, that’s for sure. The sense of loss is incredible and hard to fathom, I think.

MD: Yeah, it’s incredibly difficult. When you’re in heartbreak, there’s almost this feeling of, has anyone else ever felt this before? 

PL: I’ve been talking about this.

MD: And then when you’re out of it, you think, ah. But it’s really, really difficult to know that it will pass. But you have now written a book filled with strategies and tips and advice and things that helped you get through, and one of my favourites was about how you can actually embrace a wobbly routine. Do you have any advice on that wobbly routine?

PL: I think you’re just sort of starting again, and I think what happens in a relationship is that you do find that rhythm and things become routine, and you also forget about the things that were perhaps meaningful to you because you’re constantly compromising. So you might be eating the things that your partner likes that you sort of like one night, or you might be going places that you kind of like that they really love, or vice versa.

And so life can be full of these weird compromises where perhaps neither of you is really particularly happy with what’s going on, so when you have to start again, in the beginning you feel very sad and you don’t want to, but then you realise, oh, you can start picking up those things you might have loved doing before the relationship that you might have tucked away and forgotten about.

I found myself going way, way back, like I really need to get a CD player all of a sudden and I had to go and buy a lot of CDs from the Op Shop and I had to play [inaudible 27:17] and things like that. I was just obsessed with nostalgia and remembering who I was before things started to become really terrible so that I could fall back into myself again, I suppose.

MD: I love this idea of falling back into yourself.

PL: Yeah, and I feel it more and more, and when I was feeling particularly terrible, I might take myself back to who I was when I was seven and I would think about, what was my best day ever when I was seven? What were the things I would be doing? Even just thinking about it makes you feel better, but then you can take elements of that into your real life and maybe I would go to the Op Shop and I would look through all the children’s books and buy a couple of Famous Five books and tuck them on my shelf and they became sort of a totem for what was to come and what had been long ago. And, I guess, stopped me ruminating on what I felt I had lost.

MD: So helpful. And, as I said, there’s so many helpful tools. One of them that I particularly enjoyed was this idea of starting of a quest when you’re heartbroken, and I feel like everything you just mentioned there, those small things that you can put into your day, are wonderful, but then can you talk about maybe starting a bigger project or a bigger quest to stop the ruminating?

PL: Yeah. It’s been really important to me. Being a blogger before I was an author, I’m obsessed with projects. The Pompom Project, the Storybook Project. There’s no end of projects that I run on my blog and invited other people to be part of, but these quests are much quieter quests, I suppose, and they’re more like personal quests.

For me, my current quest, well, my first quest was to write a book because I was compelled to write my way through my hard times, and I needed something concrete to show for my suffering, I suppose, which sounds very melodramatic, but that is what it is. So that was my first quest, but now my quest is, I live in a rental property in North [inaudible 29:32], which is way cheaper than the northern suburbs, I will have you know, and I have a big garden and because I rent, I never really wanted to do anything with the garden, but I’ve got a great landlord and he’s like, stay forever! 

So I’ve started making a beautiful garden in my backyard, so it started really small. My son helped me put some vegetable beds in and now I’ve been planting all sorts of flowers and obsessively watching Gardening Australia, so that is my current quest and it’s just a beautiful thing to do and watching things grow is incredibly therapeutic and just ducking out into the garden to have a breather is a lovely thing to do as well. 

So that is my current quest, but other people had other amazing quests. I detail a couple of women in my book. One who walked the rivers of England to mark the passing of her child and another woman who went to live on an island and counted birds to get over her alcoholism. They’re very, very superficial synopsis of those quests, but I think there’s something to be said for having a goal to work towards when all of this other emotional stuff is going on, I think it’s great to have something concrete outside of that to aim for, so I thoroughly recommend doing that.

Especially with something that you can see yourself progressing, like a progress practice, as I like to call it. I think that’s vital to getting better. That said, if your getting better is just, you know, today I got up from under the doona, then that’s awesome too. You don’t have to do the big things if you’re not ready for the big things yet.

MD: I love that because, as you said, there’s a different timing for either small movements or the bigger quests, but I just love the framing of quest because, unlike a goal, it just seems like there’s these wonderful levels that you can [inaudible 31:42], but it’s not something that you fail at in the way that you can fail at a goal, supposedly.

PL: Exactly, and it’s almost like you know when the quest has reached the point that it was meant to.

MD: Oh, it is the treasure chest?

PL: Yeah.

MD: Okay.

PL: And then you can go, okay, well, it’s actually a choose your own adventure quest and I can now veer off in that direction or pivot over there. So you know, you can adapt. Or you can change your mind all together and that’s fine. It’s not really about ticking a box, it’s just about having something outside of yourself to focus on, I suppose, and for some people maybe that’s their work. But for me, I wanted it to be other things, I guess.

MD: Yeah. Well, I’d love to zoom into what your day’s looking like now, now that you’ve completed your quest of finishing the book and now have the wonderful new quest of the garden. What is your relationship to routine now? Are you someone who wakes up regularly or do you follow a routine? Could you give us a little bit of a peep?

PL: I’ve always been such a routine girl. My routine used to be getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning and it was very productivity-driven.

MD: How did you do that? Was that just natural, that you could wake up at 5am? Because that’s elusive to me.

PL: I just kept getting up earlier and earlier and I think the thing was, when you’ve got kids, it’s the golden hour in the darkness because no one’s up. It’s that time of day when you can get things done before everyone else is bustling around and needing you, so perhaps it was more necessity rather than, I don’t know, some lofty early morning person.

But now I get up around six. I’m very routine-oriented. I have pets that need me to be up in the morning and feeding them, so that’s another very good thing to have if you’re not feeling 100%, having someone else or something else to look after is so, so therapeutic and lovely and rewarding. And they might lick your face too, so that’s always good.

And then it sort of varies. Sometimes I’ll start doing research for my day job quite early and then have an hour to read or do stuff for myself, and other times I flip and do the reverse. So it just depends on how much I am needing, I guess, creative inspiration. If I’m feeling really run down, then I’ll be like, I really need to look at Instagram, read blogs, read seven pages of my novel, all of those sorts of things, straight away, with a cup of coffee.

But if I’m feeling a little bit more energetic, I might be like, okay, let’s get some work research done early so that I can be ready for my day, and then I might make a lovely breakfast and go outside and water the garden with the dogs, and that sort of thing. So the time I get up is the same, but what I do after I get up varies on how I’m feeling in myself and how tired I am, I guess.

Because that’s another part, I guess, of recovering, is that often you do feel really fatigued and you have really exhausted days and I am really mindful now to go really slow on those days. When I get up, I kind of have a think, how are you feeling today? Are you feeling energetic? Are you feeling happy? Are you feeling upset?

And once I’ve kind of worked out what sort of a mood I’m in, which sounds so cheesy, but honestly it works, then I know whether I have to have an early night, whether I should take it easy, whether I need a big bowl of veggie soup for lunch. All of those things.

So yeah, I guess I assess in the morning and then respond accordingly.

MD: Yeah, that’s a wonderful skill to learn, and it’s obviously, in many ways… well, I wonder. I wonder if it is only a privilege to those people who work from home to be able to say, well, what mood am I in in terms of how can I dictate my day?

PL: Perhaps it is, but perhaps not. 

MD: I wonder how anyone can take that into their day.

PL: I think that we don’t. I think that we hit the ground running. Obviously I don’t work out of home, so it is different for me, but I think if you get up and you assess how you’re feeling, then you can plan your day accordingly and know that maybe you don’t want to go out straight after work, maybe you do want to go home and tuck yourself up and have dinner in bed.

I think we don’t do those things. It seems self-indulgent, but it really isn’t. Why wouldn’t you look after yourself is you possibly can? Obviously if you have kids, it’s different because they’re going to come first and it’s a little bit harder. But still, I think, maybe there’s something you can do in the midst of the day that is just for you, that is looking after you. I think that’s so important.

MD: Yeah, but so difficult to prioritise and I think that we have all these obligations that we insert into our days without even questioning them, and maybe that busyness or that obligation that we can actually rethink no matter what our situation.

PL: Yeah, I think the easiest way to garner time for yourself is to get off your phone. I know it’s easier said than done, but we do spend a lot of time on our phones and I think, imagine if you just spent that time making yourself something really delicious to eat, or sitting in the library looking at beautiful books about art, or doing something that makes you feel a little bit restored.

Because I think, you know, scroll through your phone for 20 minutes and you come away and you’re just like, ugh. I don’t know if it gives you anything, but you know, make a conscious decision to stop and do something that makes you feel happy and inspired and refuelled. That, you can take that with you in your day.

And also you feel good about yourself because you’re like, hey, I did something for me, ooh. Compared to, aw, I feel like an idiot, I just spent 15 minutes on Instagram, and I hate my life. What’s the point?

MD: Yeah, exactly. What I love about your blog, Meet Me at Mike’s, is how it curates so many good things. You find amazing podcasts, films, books, other blogs. How do you find that balance between spending enough time on the internet or on your phone to find those goodies, versus making sure that you don’t fall into that spiral?

PL: I guess those hours before I start work at 8, those are my skimming about the place, looking for things.

MD: So, it’s intentional? I am skimming about looking for things.

PL: Exactly. And it’s actually, what is going to make people’s day? I’m going to look for things that are going to make people feel uplifted and happy, and so I really do consciously do that, and when I do stumble across things, I save them to my notes app, and I tag them so I know what it might be for.

MD: That’s a lovely morning routine. And then how do you step into your day job then? Do you carve out specific hours for that?

PL: Yeah, I work set hours, but they vary on each day. Some days will be shorter, and some will be longer, Tuesdays being my long day, where I work 8-5, so I write all day. But then on a Friday, it’s only 8-1, for instance, so different days bring different things, I guess. And that actually really suits me because, for instance, on a Tuesday I would not plan too much in the evening. I would just make sure that I have a really delicious dinner and watch something good.

My new thing, really, for the last month or so is not watching anything in bed. So I always go to bed and read a book. I love that whole idea of reading to sleep. I usually fall asleep reading the book and then I wake up, go, oh, you fell asleep reading a book, and then I’ll listen to something because I love listening to podcasts and people talking me to sleep.

MD: How lovely. I think a lot of people who might be juggling a day job with a creative practice might struggle with when the day job is similar to the creative practice, so example, if your day job is writing and then you’re writing book as well as blog posts on the side, how do you keep up the momentum to keep writing and writing?

PL: I think my day job, which is what I spend the bulk of my time on, is really training for the things that I really want to do, so I’m writing all day, that really works my writing muscles, then when I want to sit down and write a chapter for a book or, you know, whatever, it just comes so easy. It’s like I’ve put in the training, got paid for it, and now I can do the stuff that I really want to do.

And it’s just actually working out like that more and more, which I really love. I love the people I work with during the day and they’re super supportive of everything that I do, and when I clock out, I’m like okay, now I can start doing the other stuff.

At the moment, I just started studying online through open university, which I’m sure lots of people are curious as to what that’s like and so I enrolled in just one unit, because I was like, I’ll see whether I’m good at this or not. Creative writing. I don’t know, for some reason I thought maybe I won’t be good at studying, so I’ll just do this one unit, and it’s been wonderful. So I might finish work and then make a cup of tea, do the dishes, which have been sitting there all day, and then I’ll watch a lecture, or I’ll read my 40 pages of readings for this week.

It’s intense, I suppose. I spend a lot of time doing writing-related stuff, but I just feel so lucky to be able to be paid to write. Like my gosh, arts jobs are few and far between and it’s really hard to get a book published these days and it’s really hard to get published online in decent publications, so I’m just super aware that I make the most of these opportunities and of my time, I suppose.

MD: Yeah, so it doesn’t sound like there’s much faffing or procrastination when it comes to writing.

PL: No, not at all.

MD: Which just seems like a rare thing.

PL: Yeah, I just never wait for the muse, I have my own muse, I just dive right in, get going. I guess I’m not writing the most literary stuff admittedly, but I don’t want to be writing that stuff either. I think, you know, just get started and the words begin to pour out and somewhere in the words that are poured out will be some good stuff. So write first, edit later.

MD: So are you writing practically every day then, either for a book, blog post, or for your job?

PL: Pretty much. Maybe on the weekend, I might have one day where I don’t do any writing, but I might be out in the garden doing some digging.

MD: Planting the seeds in the mud.

PL: Yeah, or I’ll be at the Op Shop looking for old poetry books or whatever treasures I can dig out. My house is full of books. That’s one thing since my relationship ended. I feel like my books have tripled and it’s amazing. And that’s no accident, so that’s been lovely, to just have a house that is the way that I want. Just with book forts everywhere.

MD: I love that. So I guess back to your day now, you said that there’s some big days and you plan for that and have a lovely meal and unwind. What about the days where you do have a bit more time in the afternoon? Again, is that just back to blog writing, book writing, or playing?

PL: Yes, exactly. Blog writing, book writing, studying, reading for study, all of those things. So just surrounding myself with all the things that I love doing. Which is not to say that writing is always easy or fun, but I feel lucky to be doing it, so I get on with it, I guess. I have limited time, so I have to use that time to the best of my abilities, and I do. And also my son is still living at home, so he’s buzzing around the perimeter of all of this and needing me at various times to pick him up from god knows where and god knows what time, so there’s factoring that in, but I think I’m definitely on the tail end of all of that parenting stuff now.

I know how intense it is and I know how lucky I am to have more and more time now and, bloody hell, I’m going to make the most of it. I kind of think, well, I’m getting older now, I really need to quick sticks maybe or get a degree now. Why not?

MD: You have so much possibility. You’re quite prolific even with the busyness of children, it seems.

PL: Yeah, I think maybe because we always lived above our businesses or close to the businesses, so work and life were all one big mish-mash. When I’ve done most of my work, the kids have been primary school, so they weren’t little, which made it a lot easier to get that big block of time during the day. I guess I always make the most of the time that I have.

I don’t tend to procrastinate, I don’t tend to dick around, I just get on with it. Because these are things I want to do. I want to write this book and get it published, I want to have a blog that people want to read and it’s got lots of interesting things on it that are popping up a couple of times a week. I want these things. These are things I want. I don’t have to do them, but because I want them so much, I really strive to do them.

MD: What is your relationship with, I suppose, this idea of striving or ambition or success? Does that relate to any of this in terms of what you want?

PL: I do care how it’s received because I want to impact people’s lives and make them nicer and happier, and give people cheerful moments and show them things they might not have seen. But that’s more about connection to the individual, rather than becoming famous or something like that.

In fact, I don’t really want to be super well-known. I don’t want to be that lady that goes on TV and all that. I just have no interest in that, to be honest, and my publisher asked me to go on TV for this book and I don’t know what I’m going to say because I just want to deal with people and connect to people in a very simple way, I suppose. It’s not really about all that stuff, so that is actually hard. It’s hard because you want to sell a lot of books so that your publisher is happy and so that you can maybe cover the time that you’ve put into writing the book, but at the same time, you don’t want to be that recognisable face. So it’s really hard.

I did find that when, earlier in my career when I did a lot of press for previous books, it was really hard. I was no comfortable with it and I didn’t like being called ‘The Queen of Craft’ and all of that stuff, because, you know what? I’m not. There are so many people that are so much better at making things than I am.

What I do is encourage people to make things. I want people to know that they can find their own way into creativity, even if they think that they can’t. And so I’m about inspiring people to have a go, rather than being the Queen of Crafts. So this is difficult.

MD: It is difficult, especially now, I think, more than ever, when your success is “attached” to even a number on social media or what have you. Because you’ve witnessed that shift from the blogosphere to social media. How’s that been for you?

PL: It’s really difficult to watch, to be honest. Not because I feel left behind, but because I don’t want to be dragged along with that. It’s not what I like about the internet, I guess. I love the early days of blogging when you had your own blog and people would come and visit you and it was all very sort of conscious. You had to make a decision to go and find people and read their stuff.

Now we’re all be aggregated on Instagram, and Instagram’s deciding who we see, and sometimes it’s about talent, but other times it’s about something else altogether, who knows? It’s a mystery.

So I think I’m feeling more and more removed from that whole beast, I guess. I’m not into it, basically. I don’t know how you balance having a successful career with not being that into social media anymore, but I guess I’ll find out. I’m just going to keep blogging and dig my heels in and hope for the best.

MD: And keep writing books.

PL: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And keep learning more and improving my skills and whatever happens, happens.

MD: Oh, that’s such a refreshing perspective, Pip, because there’s so much pressure and, for me, I find Instagram stories really difficult. I run my project, my blog, but it is about other people, but then there’s something about stories, that there’s this pressure to share who you are, and I wonder if there’s a relationship between being introverted and not wanting to have a social media presence?

PL: I think I am definitely an introvert despite how it may seem to others and sometimes I just think, can’t it just be about the work? Why does it have to be about all the other stuff as well? I think that’s why I like doing things like podcasts and radio because no one’s going to look at you and sum you up by what they’re looking at. Rather they’re going to listen and think about whether or not they connect to what you’re saying or not.

MD: Yeah, there’s less smoke and mirrors in that sense, definitely. One thing that you are good at sharing is food, and that’s a wonderful thing to share on social media. It sounds like you weave cooking into your day quite effortlessly.

PL: I do.

MD: That’s something that people can struggle with in terms of staying on top of everything. Cooking for yourself, doing your life admin, doing your work, getting enough sleep. Is there anything that helps cooking-wise?

PL: I love making bread, and bread is one of things you can work into your day really well. You can make bread dough the night before, get up and put it in the oven while you’re getting ready for work, and before you’ve gone off to work, you’ve got a loaf of bread in front of you.

It looks like you’re being amazingly tricky, but really, it’s more about timing and spending a few minutes here and there working on your dough than anything else. So I think it’s more about planning than any particular talent.

I’m careful to plan things like that and making slow-cooked meals or doing a whole bunch of things on the weekend, like this weekend I made hummus and beetroot dip and Turkish bread, and I’ve been like, my gosh, homemade Turkish bread in the toaster is just the best thing ever, so I’ve just been having Turkish bread and dips and it looks so snazzy when you take a photo of it on a plate. It’s so colourful, but really easy to make and it lasts you all week. 

So planning. Planning. Not doing that whole food prep thing that you see either. I like to eat according to mood and what’s in the shops and stuff, so I’m not much of a prepper like that. I just call it making a batch of hummus, rather than food prep.

MD: It’s definitely this lovely theme, I think, of grabbing little bits of time here and there, starting really small, and also listening to yourself and your mood in all parts of your days. It’s quite wonderful.

PL: It sounds like I’m so obsessed with myself. But honestly, I promise you I’m not. I think I’ve had years and years of thinking about other people, and so now I’m like, hmm, how do you think about yourself? I’m sort of putting together this 101 of looking after yourself after not doing it for a really long time. It’s a steep learning curve, but I’m enjoying working it out, I guess.

MD: Yeah, it’s wonderful. And how do you prioritise sleep then, in terms of looking after yourself? Do you get much sleep?

PL: I’m sleeping more and more because I used to think it was okay to get maybe five or six hours a night, and I just know that it’s not. When I was writing the book, I did a lot of research about sleep and I realised that one of the most important things you can do for your physical and mental health is to get enough sleep. I guess it’s an easy one to do.

That said, if you are unwell, mentally or physically, sleep can be a real challenge. So I did go quite a while there, maybe over a year, of not being able to sleep properly and it was horrible. I’m sure people that are listening might have other sleep challenges, like little babies and things like that, so you can’t always get the sleep you want.

But I’m learning that it’s very important and I’m learning to nap, which I’ve never really been much of a napper, but I’m kind of getting used to it. It definitely does make me feel a little better and give me a little bit more energy in the evening, so I’m trying that one out as well.

MD: And with the evenings, so I guess before you sleep, now that you do have singlehood as well, which can be an exciting, fun time, speaking from experience.

PL: Spinsterhood.

MD: Do you have a lot of time alone, or do you see friends a lot, or how do you balance that space?

PL: I have so much time alone. I really like being by myself. Part of it has been getting better, and so it’s been hard to be around a lot of people because it just feels like a challenge sometimes to talk about how you are and what’s going on in your life, and that would often set me back and make me feel worse and more depressed and more anxious.

So I have retreated, I suppose, and just tended to see a few people very occasionally. I see my kids most of all, so it’s not like I’m [inaudible 54:18] or anything like that, but I’ve just consciously been spending less time with other people to try and increase my energy and speed up my recovery from what I’ve been through. And that’s worked out great. I’m definitely gathering my strength and feeling more and more like being around other people again.

I think I don’t really hear about that sort of stuff. People say, oh, you’re isolating yourself, that’s terrible, but sometimes what you really do need to do is isolate yourself so that you can get better, and that’s what I did, and I honestly thoroughly recommend it. I don’t understand why people drag themselves around and ‘keep your chin up’ and ‘get back out there’ and ‘suck it up.’

Actually, don’t. Just stay home, do the things that make you happy, slowly rebuild yourself, gather your strength, and then, only then, start taking steps back out into the world again.

MD: I couldn’t agree more that those times of solitude can be so nourishing. What I really love about your message overall is it is an invitation or a nudge into saying, you can try this too, whether it’s being creative.

PL: That’s it. It’s not about being the best, it’s just about feeling creatively fulfiled and, I suppose, turning away from doing stuff unconsciously. Being mindful of the things that you’re doing in your life and spending time doing things that matter to you because your life is potentially short, and why not be doing the things that really make a difference to you and make you feel good?

MD: So what would be your advice to someone who worries that maybe it’s too late for them to try to be creative or they’re behind in their project or their career, or where they think they should be?

PL: I just think start. Start right now. It’s never too late. Look at me, I’m thinking maybe I’ll do a degree. I’m 51-years-old. But I’m doing this whole slow study thing now because apparently that’s a thing. I’ll probably have a degree by the time I’m 70, and that’s fine with me.

I suppose we want everything to happen so quickly. It doesn’t always happen quickly, so just get started. The sooner you start, the sooner you can get where you think you might want to be, or where you are meant to be, whichever of the two.

MD: And it always turns out to be a surprise anyway, if your career is anything to go by.

PL: Exactly, yeah. Just take those steps. There’s no reason not to start. Just like you and your book. Write down the ten special things, and get started.

MD: I just don’t know what the idea for those ten special things is. That’s the tricky bit.

PL: That’s because you might have too many ideas.

MD: Yes.

PL: Okay.

MD: Have you ever experienced that in your creative practice?

PL: Yes, very, very frequently.

MD: I think a lot of people do, so what’s your filtering system?

PL: Well, I did hear someone, I think it was at Clare Bowditch’s Big Hearted Business events several years ago, and she had someone called Danielle LaPorte speak, who I don’t know a lot about, but one thing that she did say, which sometimes I’ll be having a shower and it’ll pop into my head. You know sometimes people say things and they just keep coming back to you?

It was that, when she has a good idea, she just has a certain feeling in her body when she thinks about it. And at the time, I was like ha, that’s mumbo jumbo, but it keeps popping into my head, that idea, and I think there’s really something in it and I should not have said mumbo jumbo because you do get a certain feeling when you’re onto a good idea, and I think those are the ones you should chase, perhaps not the ones that seem commercially viable or of the moment or on-trend.

It’s the ones that give you some sort of special feeling that you can’t stop thinking about them.

MD: I just can’t believe the parallel to dating this has again. You’re basically looking for the butterflies.

PL: Pretty much, pretty much.

MD: Oh, that’s beautiful.