The Walk

I have a pasta machine somewhere in the house. At least, I think I still do. There was a period when I watched MasterChef almost religiously and imagined myself becoming this adventurous home cook who would make everything from scratch. So obviously I needed a pasta machine. And a bread machine. And various other things that would allow me to cook the way people on television cooked. I did use som...

The woods are absolutely beautiful at the moment. On my walk today I passed an old tree trunk covered in tiny yellow mushrooms, almost like little houses built against the side of a cliff, with a sea of brown and golden leaves underneath. And immediately my imagination went somewhere else entirely. I could see little creatures living underneath those mushrooms, sitting inside at the end of the day...

Of all the rooms in my house, I spend most of my working day in what is basically a closet. It was never meant to be an office. When I moved into the former rectory where I live, this tiny room beside the front door was simply where people hung their coats. It measures 2.5 meters (about 8.2 feet) in length and 2 meters (about 6.6 feet) in width. Last year, I turned it into my Hobbit hole. There wa...

Today, I ran into some parishioners while walking in the woods. “I thought you were going to be in Ireland,” they said. So did I. For months, October had been blocked out in my calendar as my writing month. The original plan was to travel to Ireland, move from hostel to hostel, walk for hours every day and spend the rest of my time working on my fantasy novel. Then I looked at the prices. Travel a...

I think I might be suffering from time travel whiplash. A couple of days ago, I spent most of an afternoon editing a podcast I had recorded at the Elfia fantasy festival in Arcen two weeks earlier. The recording had gone badly wrong. My ancient audio recorder had apparently decided that fifteen years of loyal service was enough, and large chunks of conversations had simply disappeared. So I spent...

October has finally arrived, and I’ve been looking forward to it for quite some time. I deliberately cleared as much as possible from my calendar. No big recording trips. No looming podcast deadlines. No administrative projects. For once, I want most of my days to revolve around one thing: writing. Getting here was not particularly relaxing. Over the past two weeks, I produced around thirty episod...

At the beginning of this year, I decided I was going to read 100 books. It seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. I’d read even more than that in previous years, and although I knew 2026 would be busy, surely I could manage 100? We are now approaching October. I recently looked at my Goodreads account and discovered that, to reach my goal, I’d pretty much have to read a book every single day unt...

I knew exactly what I wanted to work on this week. I was going to continue rewriting my fantasy novel. I had made some good progress on the worldbuilding and the magic system, and I was finally getting back into a rhythm. Then a letter arrived from the Dutch tax authorities. Our non-profit foundation, Trideo, had been selected for a routine check. Nothing alarming, as far as I can tell. But they n...

One of the unexpected gifts of this past week didn’t happen while writing my novel or recording a podcast. It happened while walking through the woods. As autumn slowly announces itself here in the Netherlands, the first mushrooms are appearing among the fallen branches. They’re easy to miss, but every year they remind me that life has its own seasons. Some things disappear. New things quietly eme...

Home again Every weekday morning this week, I’ve found myself back in early medieval Ireland. The morning mist still hangs over the valley as monks make their way across the monastery grounds. The bell has just called the community to prayer. In the scriptorium, novices bend over their desks, learning to shape letters and illuminate manuscripts. Outside the walls, old legends are stirring, and som...

A decluttering expert said something this week that I haven't been able to get out of my head. We often buy things not for the person we are today, but for the person we hope to become. Running shoes for the future athlete. A bread machine for the baker who’s definitely going to make fresh sourdough every weekend. An expensive sketchbook for the artist who’s just waiting for the right moment to be...

This week I finally began preparing the rewrite of my novel. Over the past year I’ve recorded hundreds of voice notes whenever an idea appeared, while walking through the woods, riding my bike or making dinner. Most of them last less than a minute. A better ending to a scene. A new character. A monastery that suddenly belongs on a cliff instead of in a valley. My plan was simply to transcribe them...

When a partial solar eclipse became visible across Europe this week, I grabbed the most sophisticated piece of scientific equipment I own. A kitchen colander. I’d read that the tiny holes work like a pinhole camera, projecting dozens of miniature eclipses onto a sheet of white paper. It sounded just improbable enough to be worth trying. So I packed the colander in my backpack, walked to the open f...

On Sunday afternoon at the Castlefest fantasy festival, I made a last-minute decision. I’d already spent the previous day interviewing authors for my new Dutch podcast, Fantasyfans.nl . Instead of recording more conversations, I decided to spend the rest of the festival making a short documentary. There was no camera crew, no script and no elaborate equipment. Just my iPhone and a rough idea of th...

Every creative life has one problem that success doesn’t solve. Sometimes it actually makes it worse. Earlier this week, I found myself looking at my calendar with a growing sense of unease. It should have been a quiet week. After walking two hundred kilometres during the Nijmegen Four Days Marches, I’d planned to recover before beginning the next phase of my fantasy novel. Instead, my schedule fi...

For four days, I walked fifty kilometres a day. I came home with sore feet, very little sleep, and a renewed faith in people. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. By Friday afternoon, every step hurt. After four days of walking fifty kilometers a day during the Nijmegen Four Days Marches —the world’s largest multi...

When I arrived in Santiago de Compostela two months ago, I assumed the journey was over. I’d recorded forty podcast episodes along the way, filled my phone with hundreds of photos, and written a short diary entry every evening before going to bed. Surely that would be enough to remember what had happened. This month I’ve started turning those memories into a book. Every morning I open my Camino di...

On Monday evening, I finally uploaded the first chapter of my Camino book. By the time I’d published the accompanying newsletter and shared it online, it was already half past ten. I stared at the clock with mixed feelings. Not because the chapter had taken longer than expected, but because I’d broken a promise to myself. For months I’d been trying to stop working at five in the afternoon. That si...

This morning, I found myself back in Ireland on top of a cliff at the end of the Pilgrim’s Path in County Donegal. A little later I wandered through the Scottish Highlands near Ullapool. By the afternoon I was standing inside a medieval chapel in Brittany, listening to the echoes of footsteps from years ago. And yet, I never left my home. In fact, only a day earlier I’d decided that I wasn’t going...

In this episode I record during a historic Dutch heatwave, on a day officially marked as code red. I talk about waking up at five to cool the house, improvising sun‑blocking with bedsheets, and trying to adapt to temperatures that feel increasingly normal in a changing climate. I explain why I cancelled a planned storytelling workshop for seminarians, even though the topic is close to my heart. In...

This week I take an evening walk through the woods during a heatwave and reflect on a surprising decision: skipping one of my favorite events of the year. Comic Con Holland was happening just down the road. Friends were there. Authors I admire were there. Under normal circumstances, I would have spent the entire weekend interviewing writers, meeting readers, and soaking up inspiration. Instead, I...

This week I'm reflecting on something that many creative people struggle with: what happens when motivation disappears. After several busy weeks filled with podcast production, events, travel, administration, and a growing backlog of unfinished tasks, I found myself dealing with fatigue, brain fog, and procrastination. Instead of trying to push harder, I decided to take a closer look at what was r...

For a long time, I thought that progress depended on inspiration. If only I felt more motivated. If only I had more energy. If only I could find a few uninterrupted days to focus on the things that matter most. But the older I get, the more I discover that meaningful work is rarely built on inspiration alone. It's built on small routines, simple habits, and the willingness to take the next step ev...

For most of us, it happens without us noticing. Our world slowly becomes smaller. The people we follow think like us. The news we read confirms what we already believe. The conversations we have rarely challenge our assumptions. Social media is especially good at creating that kind of comfortable bubble. In this week's episode of my podcast The Walk, I found myself reflecting on what happens when...

Last week I found myself doing something I haven’t done in a long time. Instead of working on the mountain of deadlines waiting for me, I disappeared into video games for three days straight. On paper, that made no sense at all. I had twenty-two podcast episodes still to produce, unanswered emails, financial administration, requests for future talks, parish work, and a head full of open loops. The...