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Brace yourself, get yourself a cup of tea and a biscuit, hell, a packet of biscuits…this will be a long one.

Last Friday I left Budapest (insert melancholy music – I recommend something from Cat Power’s Covers album). I’d spent the week before wrangling with deadlines – I have literally never been busier - but each day I went for a walk at dusk and along the river, when the whole thing looks like a watercolour painting and it’s so fucking beautiful it  squeezes your heart a bit to look at it. I packed up my stuff in my old apartment in my beloved 8th district where I’d just started to make friends: the local cafe owner, the lady who sold me vanilla cookies to go with my morning coffee, the green grocer, the kids who played in my courtyard (Hello! Hello! Hello! Giggle, giggle, giggle). All just getting used to this strange smiling foreigner often wearing sweaty gym kit. I knew when I arrived I would love the city and I loved my time in it just as much. As the airport bus wove through fields with wildflowers just starting to appear I was already thinking about returning. I’m not done with Budapest, this I know.

That airport bus was taking me to my flight to London. At the airport I sent off a short story I’d been commissioned to write for Freight Books, an anthology of LGBT Scottish Fiction edited by Zoe Strachan, it will launch in August and Freight are sure to do a gorgeous job of it. My story is about queerness and love and sex – it has chip wrappers tumbling along a beach, a squeaky rubber bacon rasher, anallingus – let it never be said I don’t go to All Of The Places.

In London I caught the train directly to Norwich where I’d be teaching a day-long workshop for the Writers’ Centre Norwich on redrafting your first draft. A day long. On novel redrafting. I was nervous, really really nervous. Because of this I prepared like my life depended on it – which when you’re standing in front of twelve expectant participants who’ve paid good money for it, it does. The day was brilliant though and, as you always hope will happen when you’re teaching, I left feeling like the participants will go off and do very good things indeed. I got the feedback and it was bloody…well, glowing…which has made me so happy. I celebrated with an ice-cream sandwich and G&T on the train home and a weekend in London with all of my favourite people eating, drinking and laughing so hard I ruined my eyeliner every twenty minutes.

Picture of food I have eaten number 1…

Then I was off again, on another plane to Italy, this time to visit the brilliant writer and human being Lisa O’Donnell. For the past two years Lisa has been intermittently renting a beautiful wee house just outside Treviso to Get The Writing Done. She kindly let me come visit and together we laughed like drains, swore like fishwives and ate like fat lads…there might also have been an Aperol Spritz or two involved. I had four glorious sunny days in Treviso, Venice and Fagare (home of beautiful rose gardens and multitudes of tiny rabid dogs) and then I found myself back at an airport looking out at planes gliding on and off the runway with a tub of gelato and Kundera’s ‘Unbearable Lightness…’ to keep me company…oh, and this…why Italy? Why?

And now? Now I’m in Kreuzberg in Berlin where I’ll be for the next month or so. I’ve cycled from one end of the city to the other on a rattling old Dutch bicycle. Kreuzberg feels a bit like they’ve transported Dalston, mixed in a bit of Camden and introduced rye bread and fixed pricing – there’s the same skinny jeans, freelancers lined up in front of Macs in minimalist coffee shops, the same artfully distressed cafes serving really good food. No complaints here. It might be hipster but it’s sunny, good to cycle in, cheap and full of art and books - all things that make me happy.

And that’s the point of this post. The last month might have been the busiest in my professional life: two trips back to London for multiple events, three big deadlines which I needed to do a good job on, the launch and management of the WoMentoring Project, the bazzillions of emails that having a book out in a few months generates…I also just worked out I transited four countries in the last seven days. 

But, but…fuck, I am happy. Today I found myself doing a little dance in my pants from sheer joy. And of course I have the occasional whinge about being knackered or stressed but I make sure I have a word with myself and stop being an ungrateful fuck good and quick. I’m remembering every day this is the life I always wanted, one full of change, adventure, productivity and completely on my own terms. This month I learned that working hard brings rewards but making time for happiness is important too and, if you are very lucky, the two will be entwined.

Are you still reading? You deserve a medal…or just have another biscuit…

Tomorrow I’m going to write about these things…(TOMORROW…I know this level of blog productivity is unheard of but in Kreuzberg if you’re not hunched over Tumblr you’re nothing…)…#30kin35 - #ThingsIsawtoday and how you should all come to this at the weekend and say hello to me and Richard House…