Today, few markers mark time. We make our own markers, using light as a guide on some days, milestones and deadlines on more frenetic ones. But it’s the rare person who, at 6PM, can walk, head high, out of the studio or office, turning day into night and one thing into another. Marking the fact that it’s time to play.
I’m about to move back to the city after two years living in a cottage in the beautiful Peak District.
The village is only 30 minutes away from the city, where I work. But to get from one to the other, you have to drive over the hills.
And I know I’m going to truly miss those hills, because like light, deadlines and milestones, physical space provides markers too.
When you live and work in the city, it’s easy to let one drift into the other. But when work and home are kept apart, in a quite physical sense, that divide is equally reflected in your mental state.
Currently, when I finish work, I jump in the car and head for the hills. When I get there, and more importantly, when I cross the divide and start my decline towards home, my brain makes a mental adjustment. The physical directly affects the emotional.
It’s an incredible, almost tangible feeling. It’s also one that I’m going to need to fight hard to recreate when I return to the bright lights. Perhaps with the help of a bicycle.
