No Breakfast to Make

Reflections on my first quiet morning after the last tour of the season

Today is my first completely tour-free day. The last tour of the season finished yesterday, and it feels incredible — though I don’t think it has fully sunk in yet. This morning there is no breakfast to make, no packed lunches to prepare. No rush to be on time, no running through all those little details and things not to forget. After a summer this full on, this exhausting, my mind is still catching up with the fact that it’s over.

What I feel most of all is gratitude. Gratitude for how the whole summer went, and for all the lovely groups — every single one of them — with such a wonderful last group to finish on. I ended this season — this chapter — on a high, in a celebratory mood, the way it deserved. The way I deserved.

I’ve poured my life and soul into these six groups. I gave the best of me and didn’t cut any corners. I always went the extra mile, even when my body kept telling me, “I can’t do this anymore…” I pushed through, and I’m so proud of how it all went and what I achieved this summer.

The whole Shetland Wool Adventures 2.0 has been incredible. It’s taken four years — with a Shetland guidebook thrown in for good measure — and in all that time, I’ve never stopped thinking about it for a single day. Not on weekends, not on holidays. I’ve found myself working from Lisbon, from Bergen, from the Czech Republic.

But it has all been worth it. I have no regrets, because I know that building something of your own takes enormous energy, time and determination. You give up a lot. At the same time, everything is on your own terms — and that has been so important to me after almost fifteen years of being an employee.

I was always someone who strove for the best, who put every ounce of myself into every project and idea. And eventually you realise that people simply come to expect that of you, because that’s what you do. More and more. And where — and when — does it end?

Then one day you realise you’ve had enough, and you decide to redirect all that energy and effort into your own thing. To work for yourself and fully benefit from your own efforts. To never again ask permission for a holiday you’re owed, or have someone question a couple of days of leave when you have plenty left. When that happened at my last job, it was the final straw. I handed in my notice and never looked back.

Yes, it’s been tough. Earning your own money without the security of a monthly paycheck is hard. But it’s also incredibly empowering and rewarding. You learn to rely on yourself and trust yourself. You know that if you don’t do the work, no one else will — and there simply won’t be enough money.

You go through stages. At first you take on more and more, driven by a scarcity mindset — the worry that you’ll run out, that there won’t be enough. Then, slowly, you arrive somewhere else: the realisation that it isn’t all about more, about endless growth. That the most important things are contentment and enough. Feeling happy. Having the headspace to do what you enjoy. You stop trading your time and energy for more money that, in the end, won’t make you any happier.

I know this comes from a privileged position — the ability to choose — and that many people don’t have that option. But I focus on what’s around me, and I believe deeply in the ripple effect. If you do good, are good, make little changes for the better, those rings slowly grow bigger and bigger and reach more people.

Do good is my driving motto, my happy self. It’s not always easy, and it doesn’t always come naturally. But it’s a process: move forward, leave behind what hurts, and stop keeping it at the forefront of your focus. Instead focus on the positive.

So many people have been asking me: what’s next? And the honest answer is — more of what I love. But first, I’m giving myself something I haven’t truly had since 2016, when I first set up Shetland Wool Adventures: time. It’s been relentless ever since — and now, at last, there’s time to reflect, to recharge, and to come back fresh. Time to travel, to work in the garden, to finally get on with all those house projects that have been on hold for far too long.

And to knit a tank top.