Journal

How I worked from Naples for a month

So many people have been in touch to ask exactly I managed to move to Naples for a month and run my business from there.

I talk about it in this video and I'll put all the steps under here as well.

First of all I should say that this is something that I have been planning for a long time.  Back when I had a personalised gift business and a team of staff I worked far too hard, missed way too many things, never really stopped.  When in 2016 I realised that I had been sacrificing my life to my work, I started to make changes, very gradual changes that have completely altered the way I live.

Now my business is there to support the way I want to live rather than my life being dominated by work.  When I say it is there to support my life I don't mean in a purely financial way - most of the things I want in life are to do with freedom and flexibility, in living life fully.  The life I want to live isn't linked to owning things.  

Instead I used my A Wilder Way course to find out exactly what I wanted from life, what was at the root of those desires. What did I want to embody and what activities could support me in that.  You can get a free e-mail version of A Wilder Way here.

And going through that process shifted a lot - there is something about actually doing things, scheduling in activities and keeping to them, that shifts things.  You can't just skip the activities, read about them and pass on doing nothing and expect it to work.  You can't just drift towards the life you want.

Then, when I decided that I wanted to solo travel and work in Naples for a month I began to set intentions with new moon.  One moon I would emphasise courage, another creativity, another lightness, building up the internal skills that I would need.  

Taking practical incremental steps to make the business more flexible, less bound to my studio. Working on my physical health and stress management so that an auto immune flareup wouldn't happen.

Tiny steps piled up to make a big difference. Mainly they changed what I thought would be possible, they altered how I thought.

The Studio Club includes a creative course each month - sometimes it is botanical dyeing or printing, sometimes drawing or painting, sometimes slow stitching.  I planned out the year's courses so that I could do a slow stitching course - starting English pieced patchwork - while away.  

The diamond pattern I chose is based on floors from C500 BCE in the Museum of Archaeology in Naples. The technique is beautifully portable, perfect for taking on holiday, on train journeys, to waiting rooms.  

I put together a minimal filming kit so that I could film tutorials.  Everything else - the forum, blog posts, admin, accounts, newsletters, emails is accessible via my lap top.  WiFi is pretty good in Naples.

I made one room of my apartment into an office with my computer, charging cables, hard drive etc. so that I had separation between work and 'not work' and I spent part of each day with my notebook writing at a cafe table with an espresso.

I kept weekends as weekends.

You may also enjoy …