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 some of them for a while. I learned a lot. I still love cooking.

But these days I’m much more li...

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 drinking hot chocolate.

I have no idea how that would work in a mushroom house, but apparently my imagination does not care about practical details.

This really...

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 was just enough space for a small IKEA desk, a chair, and a few bookshelves. One wall holds a cupboard with all...

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 alone had become expensive, accommodation would add another considerable amount, and suddenly my supposedly simple writing retreat was...

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 six or eight hours reconstructing what was left, cutting around the gaps and trying to make the finished episode sound as if nothing unusual had happened.

By the...

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 episodes of my Dutch saints podcast, finished the paperwork for the audit of our foundation, and spent more than four hours on trains to record another ten episodes in a...

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 until the end of the year.

Part of my brain immediately went: Challenge accepted!

Fortunately, another part...

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 need documents. Annual reports. Plans. Financial information. Details about what we’ve been doing and what we’re planning to do.

And...

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 emerge in their place.

I’ve noticed something similar happening in my own life.

For years I’ve tried to hold on to every version of Fathe...

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 somewhere in the distance a young novice is about to stumble into a story much bigger than he could ever imagine.

Then I look up from my laptop.

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 begin.

As I looked around my own house, I realised I’d been doing exactly the same thing.

Not just with posses...

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, organise them into a story bible and finally start writing. Instead, I spent an afternoon listening to my own thoughts, and as the notes piled up...

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 fields outside my village, and joined hundreds of other people who had gathered to watch the sky.

Some had brought telescopes. Others carried homemade vi...

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 the story I wanted to tell. I wandered through the castle grounds, talking to visitors about the stories behind their costumes, interviewing artists and following whatever caught my attention.

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 filled itself almost overnight. Interviews in three cathedrals. Editing another series of podcasts. Publishing a few articles. Parish work. A radio interview about my Dutch podcast. And then, almost at t...

For four days, I walked fifty kilometres a day. I came home with sore feet, very little sleep, and a renewed faith in people.

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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-day walking event—I had reached the point where my feet objected to almost every surface. The next morning, the short walk to the su...

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 diary, replay one of the podcast episodes I recorded on the trail, and begin writing. Almost immediately, something unexpected happens. A single photograph reminds me of a co...

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 simple habit had transformed my days. I slept better, woke up with more energy, and actually looked forward to sitting down at my desk each morning.

<...

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 anywhere this summer.

For weeks I’d been trying to convince myself that I should r...

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. Instead, I stay home and continue editing the Camino saints series, reflecting on how much I enjoy spontaneous, on‑location storytelling and how these recordings remind me of my earl...

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 stayed home.

In this episode I talk about why I made that choice, how the fear of missing out can quietly undermine focus, and what I'm learning about...

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 really going on.

In this episode I talk about the importance of rhythm, the hidden cost of open loops, why journaling helps me make sense of difficult periods, and how I've learned to replace...

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 even when you don't feel like it.

In this week's episode of my podcast 'The Walk', I reflect on that...

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 we deliberately step outside of it.

The thought started with the stories of the saints that I've been recording these past weeks. Again...

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 more pressure I felt, the more impossible it became to sit down and actually start. So instead of writing scripts, I escaped into the deserts of Arrakis an...

Some weeks feel like spring sunlight breaking through the trees. Other weeks feel like standing in the hail with your hands in your pockets, wondering why everything suddenly turned cold again.

This past week felt like both at the same time.

After returning from the Camino, I found myself immediately pulled back into a whirlwind of obligations: parish life, fantasy festivals, interviews, talks, trains that weren’t running, late nights, and a stubborn cold that refused to leave. Somewhere between coughing fits, crowded convention halls and endless cups of tea, I also had to...

Coming home from the Camino felt stranger than I expected. Not because I missed the walking itself, but because I suddenly had to switch back into a life full of deadlines, obligations and screens. After weeks of spending my days outdoors, telling stories while walking through forests and villages in Spain, I found myself sitting behind a desk again, staring at giant research documents and struggling to begin.

In this episode of The Walk, I talk about the friction between creativity and pressure. About why some work drains energy while other work gives it back. And...

I didn’t expect the hardest part of the Camino to come after I got home.

A week after arriving in Santiago de Compostela, I found myself walking again, this time through familiar surroundings. Same blue sky. Same rhythm. But everything felt… different. During the Camino, life was simple. Walk, observe, create, connect. Back home, all the noise returns. Deadlines, expectations, unfinished work. And yet, something had shifted. The Camino didn’t change my life overnight, it showed me how much had already changed.

One of the biggest lessons hit me in a way I...

The arrival at Santiago de Compostela.

My thoughts on the third week of my Camino.

My impressions on the second week of my Camino to Santiago de Compostela.

My impressions on the first week of my Camino to Santiago de Compostela.

I’m getting ready for a trip that feels both exciting and slightly overwhelming: I'm going to walk my second Camino to Santiago de Compostela! There’s a long list of things that need to be done, deadlines that don’t move, and a body and mind that are already feeling the pressure. Normally, this would be the moment where I push harder, try to finish everything, and ignore the warning signs. But this time, I’m trying something different. Instead of forcing my way through the chaos, I’m learning to slow down, to choose what really matters, and to acc...

Lately, I’ve been noticing a deeper question underneath everything I do. Not just how I plan my days, or how I manage my energy, but something more fundamental: can I actually trust the rhythm of my life? Because if I’m honest, I often try to control it. I plan, I push, I expect myself to perform. And then there are those days where nothing works. I’m tired, unfocused, and whatever I try just doesn’t land. What’s new is that I’m starting to respond differently. Instead of forcing it, I step outside, go for a walk, and...

The news has been heavy lately. Every day brings new reports about the war in Iran, images of destruction, and stories of people whose lives are suddenly turned upside down. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by it. In this episode I reflect on what it means to stay attentive to that suffering without losing hope ourselves.

One thing that helps me is remembering how powerful stories can be. News often focuses on what is going wrong right now. Stories, on the other hand, help us imagine where we might still go. They remind us that...

Sometimes the world feels like a constant stream of urgency. News updates, deadlines, expectations, and worries about things far beyond our control. In this episode, recorded during a quiet walk through the woods on a bright spring day, I reflect on how easy it is to get pulled into that whirlwind, either by endless scrolling or by escaping completely into distraction. But there might be a healthier place somewhere in between.

During these walks I notice how the rhythm of nature slowly changes my perspective. The problems of the world do not disappear, but they begin...

The birds are loud again. The days are getting brighter. And somewhere between winter and spring, I’ve made a decision that is changing everything.

In this week’s episode, I talk about something very simple: stopping at five. No more “just one more thing.” No more evenings that slowly dissolve into unfinished tasks. I used to think my hyper-focus was my greatest strength. Now I’m learning that without boundaries, it was the very thing draining me.

What happened when I finally drew a clear line around my time? B...

On the verge of Lent, I found myself asking a different question than usual. Not, what big project can I launch, or how can I make these forty days impressive, but what actually needs rebalancing in my life right now? The past few months taught me that enthusiasm and overcommitment can look very similar from the inside. I love creating, I love writing, I love saying yes to meaningful work. But I also discovered what happens when there is no margin, no boundary, no protected evening. Lent, for me, is not going to be about adding pressure. It is...

A few weeks ago, I could feel it in my body before I fully admitted it to myself.

My blood pressure was up. My sleep was fragmented. Even at night, my brain was on orange alert. And during the day, I had this nagging feeling that I was living for work instead of working so I could live .

On paper, nothing was new. I’ve worked hard my entire life. Deadlines don’t scare me. But this time it was different. Producing daily saint podcasts under constant pressure had quietly taken over everything. And...

This week, I realized something I didn’t expect: doing less can actually help you do more.

After weeks of high blood pressure and creeping exhaustion, I finally took a step back to reevaluate how I work. With the help of an AI coach, I started looking at the patterns behind my stress. What emerged was confronting. I’ve spent most of my life in overdrive—driven by deadlines, fueled by people-pleasing, and constantly measuring myself by what I produce. Even when I thought I was resting, I wasn’t. I was just switching gears and calling...