In the not so distant past, an opportunity arose which resulted in me taking a small but significant leap of faith from one job to another. I found myself with a short window of time to make the most of in the interim. More often than not, gaps of time and breathing space seem quite scarce and as much as I want them, when they do arrive, it’s all too easy to let the fear of wasting them overtake the enjoyment.

The ever enticing lure for hobbies, learning and creating catches eyes with a looming dense, buttery smudge of self pressure to produce and utilise the precious, precious minutes.

You’ve been given a gift of free time to explore you and your own specific enjoyment alone, what do you do with it? It wouldn’t be out of the question to find me playing my guitar, covered in oil paints and simultaneously getting my running shoes on while stood in the spice aisle at Morrisons, looking up which spices contribute to the beastly tang of Caribbean jerk seasoning.

I can think of a million things that I enjoy doing and want to do, but deciding which to do and when has never been a strong point of mine.

One thing that I had made clear to myself was that before the time came for me to re-join the rat-fest, (I’d say rat race but ‘race’ implies to me that we have a direction and even more so that we all have the same one. I see it more as a mass fumbling around, mud-covered and stinking from good and bad times. The way I remember Leeds Festival in the mid 2000’s.) I would drive out somewhere with my dog, somewhere that I wouldn’t usually have the time to get to, I’d drive there and go for a nice walk.

So I did just that. Following my days of juggling spices and plectrums I jumped in the car alongside our faithful yet disobedient dog and drove over to Ilkley.

It was the within the first few days of October. A fresh autumn day of deep grey blue-ish skies. Of course it was raining quite heavily and there was that kind of breeze that’s just powerful enough to blow the rain directly into your face to make it extra fresh.

Unsurprisingly, the wondrous scenery and power of the weather combined gave me a great sense of fulfilment and an escape from the stress of overthinking. I was forced to feel every cold, wet spray hit me directly in the small gap between my hat, fleece and waterproof where a small section of my exposed face was hiding. If you could see under it there was a smile starting to grow.

What is usually a constant mash of me irritating myself in every thought out nitty, gritty situation that has been or is yet to even prove itself to exist was noticeably absent.

I was taking a breather from the chaos of me, myself and I.

It was like I had picked up a giant stick and started barking at the top of my lungs to ward them off. Not today lads. For these few hours it was just I. I & the Dog.