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 likely to find a simple recipe on TikTok, grab a good knife and make something that tastes great without turning dinner into a three-hour project.And yet some of those machines are still sitting there.I’ve been thinking about that this week because I’m beginning to notice how often I do the same thing with other parts of my life.The things that once matteredFor years I had this feeling that once I had started something, I somehow had to keep it going.A podcast. A website. A social media channel. A project. Sometimes even a hobby.If I stopped, it felt suspiciously like failure.I would tell myself that if only I were more disciplined, or had a better system, or managed my time more efficiently, I could keep all of it alive.Which is obviously nonsense.At one point I also decided I was going to build a huge Lego city. I bought quite a lot of Lego for it, and I still like the idea. Little buildings, lights inside the houses, streets, the whole thing.The problem is that it takes me several months to finish one Lego set.So unless I suddenly get an extra lifetime, that city may have to remain imaginary.The funny thing is that some part of me still says: but you already bought all this. Maybe someday.That “maybe someday” can take up an enormous amount of space.Not just physical space either.I already ran the marathonsI noticed the same thing on today’s walk when I passed the place where I once injured myself while training for a marathon.For almost twenty years I ran a marathon nearly every year. For the past few years I haven’t.And occasionally this thought pops up that perhaps I should run another one, if only to prove to myself that I still can.But then I think about what marathon training actually means. Running four or five times a week, and eventually some of those runs take two or three hours.Do I really want to spend that time on proving something I’ve already proven many times?I still enjoy running. I still want to be healthy. I just don’t know if I need another marathon.Maybe that period of my life already did what it was supposed to do.That’s surprisingly difficult for me to accept.There are things we buy, habits we build and projects we start because they fit the person we are at that moment. They can be genuinely good. They can teach us something, give us joy, introduce us to people or help us become healthier or more creative.But that doesn’t necessarily mean they have to come with us forever.It served its purposeSometimes you just have to accept that something has reached the end of its usefulness, at least for now.That can be an object. It can be a hobby. It can be a project, or even an image of yourself that you have been carrying around for years.I scanned a lot of my childhood drawings a few years ago. Some of them are terrible, of course. There is probably a green blob somewhere that six-year-old me considered the most magnificent frog ever committed to paper.I don’t look at that drawing and think I should still be drawing frogs exactly like that.It was practice.It got me somewhere.I’m trying to become a little more comfortable thinking that way about other things too.Not everything I once loved has to remain part of my life forever. Not every project needs another season. And not every version of myself needs to be maintained simply because I invested a lot of time becoming that person.I’m still not throwing out all the Lego tomorrow.But I may finally be ready to admit that the city can wait.Father Roderick VonhögenP.S.: these thoughts were part of this week’s podcast episode of The Walk; you can listen via the player at the top of this page. Get full access to Father Roderick at fatherroderick.substack.com/subscribe

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 is peak fairy-tale season for me. Last year, around this time, I wrote 30 or 31 short stories in a month. This October has been very different because I deliberately tried to focus more. I wanted to work on my fantasy novel, on Pangur’s story, and on some of the other writing projects that have been waiting for me.What I hadn’t expected was that October would also teach me something about the circumstances in which I seem to work best.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The retreat I didn’t go onOriginally, I had this idea that I needed to go away somewhere. Maybe Ireland. Maybe some sort of writing retreat. I had already cleared most of my calendar, so the plan was to travel, walk, write, and create that sense of separation from normal life.In the end I stayed home.And after a slightly restless beginning, the rhythm just settled by itself. I went to bed around the same time, woke up around the same time, wrote in the mornings and went for long walks in the afternoons. There were very few appointments, hardly any travel, and not much external pressure.At some point I noticed that I wasn’t missing the retreat anymore.Apparently, what I needed wasn’t another place. I needed predictability.That has been interesting to discover because I’m actually very good at improvising. I’ve been doing that for most of my working life. Podcasting certainly trains you to solve problems quickly, and I have a very associative brain, so if something changes I can usually think of three other ways to make it work.But it costs energy.I noticed that again this week when some plans for the saints podcast suddenly changed. It wasn’t even necessarily the amount of extra work that bothered me. It was having to rearrange everything. I woke up much too early the next morning and my brain immediately started trying to solve the entire month of November.I can do that. I’ve always done that. But I’m beginning to see more clearly what it does to the other work I want to do.What happened when things got quietOnce October became predictable, I had much more room to think.I spent a lot of time rebuilding the plot of my fantasy novel, and I’m very glad I didn’t give myself a deadline of 3,000 words a day or decide that the book had to be finished by Christmas. I’ve done those kinds of writing sprints before, and they can be wonderful, but this book needed something else. I had forgotten how many pieces of the world were still vague in my own head. Going back to the foundations forced me to think again about the history, the magic, the characters and, most importantly, why I want to tell this particular story.That takes time. There isn’t really a word-count target for thinking.Of course, social media doesn’t help. You see another writer announce that they finished a novel in six weeks, or that they wrote 5,000 words before breakfast, and immediately part of your brain goes: I should be doing that too.But you don’t see the ten years before those six weeks. You don’t see the days when they were tired or sick or simply didn’t write anything. You see the part that makes a good post.I would love to have several finished books by now. I’m very impatient about that. But since I don’t, rushing the first one in order to feel as though I’m catching up with somebody else is probably not going to help me very much.And strangely enough, the month in which I stopped pushing for that kind of visible progress has been one of my most creative months in a long time.Keeping some of thisAll of this is on my mind because my work is going to change quite dramatically at the end of the year. The daily saints podcast will stop in its current form, which also means that a large part of my income disappears. So I have plenty of practical questions to answer.But I don’t want to answer those questions only by asking what kind of work I can find.I’m also asking what kind of life allows me to do the work I’m actually good at.I love telling stories. I love travelling and interviewing people. I love history, saints, books, fantasy, walking and writing. There are probably ways to combine much more of that than I have done in the past, and I’m exploring quite a few of them at the moment.What I don’t want is to fill every empty space in the calendar again simply because it is empty.October has been a useful experiment in that sense. My world became physically quite small. I spent most mornings in the same little room and most afternoons walking through the same woods. Yet my imagination went everywhere.Tolkien once wrote that “the realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things.”He was so right!Father Roderick VonhögenP.S.: these thoughts were part of this week’s podcast episode of The Walk; you can listen via the player at the top of this page. Get full access to Father Roderick at fatherroderick.substack.com/subscribe

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 the house’s electronics, and there’s a single square window.I’ve always loved the image of Bilbo Baggins sitting safely inside Bag End, surrounded by books and familiar things, writing down his adventures while the outside world disappears. That’s more or less what I wanted for myself: a small, warm place where I could shut out distractions and step into a story.There was also a very practical reason for choosing the smallest room in the house: it was the only room I could afford to keep warm.Writing with gloves onThe rectory was built in the 1950s, when apparently nobody expected heating a house to become a luxury.The roof has never been properly insulated. The insulation inside the walls has largely deteriorated. Downstairs there are enormous old windows through which both heat and money disappear at alarming speed.Last January, I spent around €1,200 on heating alone.So during the winter I mostly retreat to my Hobbit hole. I keep the rest of the house at a fairly low temperature and heat only the room where I work. Last year there were days when even that wasn’t enough and I sat behind my computer wearing thin gloves.It turns out that typing fantasy novels with cold fingers is considerably less romantic than it sounds.This week I finally decided that something has to change.I had two people from a local energy service inspect the house and explain where the biggest problems are. A company is coming to look at the walls and give me a quote for new insulation. I’m also investigating how to insulate the attic without spending a fortune.And for the Hobbit hole itself, I’m considering an infrared panel.Bilbo had a fireplace.I’ll take what I can get.The unromantic side of a creative lifeI’ve been thinking about this because October has been such an intensely creative month for me.Every morning I sit in that little room and work on stories. My big fantasy novel is slowly being rebuilt. The children’s book about Pangur the magical monastery cat is evolving almost every day. Then, after several hours behind the desk, I put on my coat and walk into the woods to solve whatever story problem is currently occupying my brain.It is pretty close to the life I imagined when I decided I wanted to become a writer.Except that imaginary writers never seem to spend much time comparing insulation quotes. They don’t worry about natural gas prices or whether their hands will be warm enough to type in January.Real life insists on being considerably more practical. But perhaps those practical things matter more than I used to think.The stories may happen in my imagination, but I still need somewhere to sit while I write them. I need enough peace to concentrate. I need food, electricity and a room that is not thirteen degrees Celsius.Creativity doesn’t exist separately from all of that.A small room can hold a very large worldThe funny thing is that I don’t wish my office were bigger.There are much larger rooms in this house, but I rarely want to work in them. I like being surrounded by bookshelves. I like being able to reach almost everything without getting out of my chair. I like that when I close the door, the room feels separate from the rest of the house.The physical world gets smaller, and somehow that makes the imaginary world bigger.Over the past two years, that tiny room has contained medieval Ireland, dragons, saints, magical storytellers, short stories, podcasts and now a white monastery cat who is causing considerably more trouble than I originally expected.So I don’t want a different writing room.I just want this one to be warm.Hopefully, by the time winter really arrives, my Hobbit hole will have received its first major renovation.No round window or a fireplace. After all, this is not Bag End.But if I can write without gloves on, I’ll consider it a success.Fr. Roderick Vonhögen.P.S. This article grew out of this week’s episode of The Walk. In the full episode I also talk about Pangur’s latest adventures, my plans for a Story Magic magazine, and why this writing retreat has generated far more ideas than I expected. You can listen via the player at the top of the page. Get full access to Father Roderick at fatherroderick.substack.com/subscribe

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 turning into a trip of several thousand euros.So I stayed home.At first that felt a little disappointing. Now, halfway through October, I’m beginning to think it may have been exactly what I needed.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Walking without going anywhereOne thing I knew I would miss about Ireland was the walking.When I’m there, I can easily spend most of the day on foot. Walking helps me think. Problems that seem impossible behind a desk often begin to loosen after an hour or two outside.So I’ve simply kept doing that here.This week I spent three hours wandering through the woods and the park around a nearby castle. Autumn has arrived properly now. The leaves are changing, the light is getting warmer, and at one point the late-afternoon sun hit the moss on the trees in such a way that I had to stop recording and take a picture.The strange thing is that I don’t feel as if I’m missing Ireland very much.I’m spending so much time inside the world of my stories that Ireland seems to be following me around anyway.A different kind of retreatWhat I didn’t expect was how personal the writing would become.I’m rebuilding the fantasy novel I started last year, and the main characters are young people trying to work out who they are, how much they should conform to what others expect from them, and whether they can trust their own gifts.The more I develop them, the more memories return from my own twenties.I spent the first five years of seminary in Louvain-la-Neuve, in the French-speaking part of Belgium. I was incredibly happy there. It was international, exciting, and for a long time it felt as if I had found exactly where I belonged.Returning to the Netherlands was much harder. Suddenly I felt like the outsider. The culture was different, the expectations were different, and during those early years of priesthood I often struggled with a question that I now recognize much more clearly: can I be myself, or do I have to become the person other people expect a priest to be?At the time, I didn’t have the language for some of what was happening. Looking back now, I can recognize things like masking and the strain of constantly trying to fit myself into roles that didn’t quite fit me.Writing fictional characters who wrestle with similar questions has brought all of that back.Sometimes I go to bed after working on the novel and dream about seminary again.Seeing the same road differentlySomething similar happened earlier this year when I walked the Camino again.I returned to places I had first visited almost ten years before. The landscape hadn’t changed very much, but I had.That made it possible to look at old experiences differently. Things that once seemed like failures or difficult detours now belonged to a much larger story.October is beginning to feel like that too.I thought I had cleared the month so I could travel somewhere and finish a book. Instead, staying home has given me the space to look backwards, write, walk, sleep properly and take care of things I’ve been postponing for far too long.Some of those things are extremely ordinary. I’m finally looking into fixing the insulation in my house before another cold winter. I need new glasses; apparently twelve years between eye tests may be pushing it slightly. I’m also taking the first steps towards getting proper professional help with some of the ADHD-related issues I’ve been learning to recognize and manage.None of this was on my romantic picture of a month-long writing retreat in Ireland.But perhaps a retreat doesn’t always require going somewhere.The ideas are coming backThe easiest way for me to tell whether this slower rhythm is working is that ideas have started appearing again.I’m working on the novel. A little side project about a magical monastery cat has unexpectedly turned into an entire book. Other stories are beginning to connect. I’m walking more, sleeping more and feeling increasingly like myself.There are still plenty of practical questions waiting for me. My daily saints podcast ends at the end of December, so I have to work out how to replace a substantial part of my income next year without creating another job that consumes all the time I want to spend writing.But I don’t have to solve all of that this week.For now, I’m walking through autumn woods, working on stories and slowly sorting out the things that have been waiting for my attention.Ireland would have been wonderful.This is pretty good too.P.S. This article grew out of this week’s episode of The Walk. You can hear the full update via the player at the top of this page. Get full access to Father Roderick at fatherroderick.substack.com/subscribe

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 end of the day, something strange had happened to me as well. I felt as if I had just returned from the festival. I could remember the sunshine, the people I had talked to, the atmosphere, the conversations. Audio does that to me. The moment I start editing an old recording, I am back there again.Then I opened Instagram and started promoting episodes of my saints podcast based on recordings I had made six weeks earlier. At the same time, I was scheduling other episodes that won’t be published until November. Past, present and future were all occupying the same afternoon. No wonder my brain occasionally wonders what month it is.The month I was supposed to writeOctober was supposed to be simple. I had deliberately cleared the month so I could concentrate on rewriting my fantasy novel. Originally, I imagined myself spending much of October in Ireland, moving between hostels, walking during the day and writing the book in the evenings.Instead, the first week mostly involved recovering from everything I had done to clear the month in the first place. I slept. I tried to slow down. I looked at travel prices, discovered that Ireland would cost considerably more than I’d expected, and started wondering whether I should change the plan.Then I started another story. Then I researched medieval monasteries. Then medieval storytellers. Then architecture. Then ninth-century Irish monks living in Germany.All fascinating. None of which involved actually rewriting the novel.I know this pattern rather well. When something important feels difficult, I become extremely good at improving everything around it. I reorganize the system, fix my email, rethink my routines, do more research and make a better plan. All of those things can be useful, but they can also become an extraordinarily sophisticated form of procrastination.The problem isn’t motivationThis morning I finally sat down and asked myself what was actually going on. I’m not lacking motivation. I love this book, I love the world, and I know much more about the story than I did when I wrote the first draft.That’s part of the problem.The better I understand it, the more pressure I feel to get everything right. If I’m creating an entire fantasy world, shouldn’t I know exactly how the monasteries work? Shouldn’t I understand the history? Shouldn’t the magic system make sense? Shouldn’t I know how all of this affects books I haven’t even written yet?Before I know it, I’m standing at the bottom of another research rabbit hole.Meanwhile, writing my little story about an old monk and his magical cat feels effortless. I think that’s because I’ve told myself it’s a small story. I’m allowed to play with it. I’m allowed to make jokes. I’m not worrying about whether I’ll regret chapter seven five years from now.The bar is lower, and apparently that makes it much easier to jump.Standing on the platformIt reminded me of something I did years ago during youth camps. We had one of those climbing courses high up in the trees. At one point you had to step off a small platform and trust the cable attached to you to carry you across to the next tree.I hate heights.I remember standing there calculating everything that could possibly go wrong. Then a girl of about eleven went before me. She didn’t hesitate. She jumped and had a wonderful time.And there I was, still standing on the platform, considerably older and supposedly wiser, imagining every possible disaster.That feels uncomfortably familiar now. I see other writers publishing books. Their first novels aren’t perfect. Their fifth probably won’t be perfect either. But they’re writing them.Meanwhile, I keep thinking that perhaps I should first do a little more research. Or build a better system. Or go to Ireland. Or not go to Ireland. Or solve some other problem before I begin.At some point, you have to step off the platform.Here and nowMaybe that’s where my strange time-travel week has been pointing me. My head spends an enormous amount of time somewhere else. Sometimes I’m reliving something from six weeks ago. Sometimes I’m imagining what readers might think of a book that doesn’t exist yet. Sometimes I’m worrying that future me will look back and wonder why I made a particular choice.It reminded me of Luke Skywalker. In The Empire Strikes Back, his mind is always racing ahead. Later in life, he gets trapped in the opposite direction and can’t stop looking backwards. Neither helps him very much with what is actually in front of him.And right now, what is in front of me is remarkably simple. It’s October 8. I have about three weeks left. My novel has roughly twenty-five chapters. I could spend those weeks designing the perfect writing system, or I could write one chapter a day.The trip to Ireland may happen. It may not. The research will continue. The book won’t be perfect.But none of those questions need answering before I write today’s chapter.So that’s my assignment to myself: stop time travelling, write the story that’s in front of me, and jump.Fr. Roderick VonhögenP.S. This article grew out of this week’s episode of my podcast The Walk. You can hear the full episode via the audio player at the top of this page. Get full access to Father Roderick at fatherroderick.substack.com/subscribe

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 basilica in the south of the Netherlands.By the time October arrived, I was exhausted. But the blinking lights in my head had finally gone out.When everything keeps blinkingI’ve noticed this about myself before. I can have plenty of time to write, but if there are five other things demanding my attention, I find it almost impossible to really disappear into a story.An email I still need to answer. A recording that has to be scheduled. A problem someone else is waiting for me to solve. None of those things may take much time on their own, but together they create a kind of white noise in my head.Producing a daily podcast has created a lot of that noise this year. I’ve loved making it, but it also asks for a constant stream of creative energy. Spending your working day telling stories doesn’t necessarily make it easier to sit down afterwards and tell another one.Last year, I was constantly dreaming up new stories. This year, much of that came to a halt.I missed it more than I realised.Three days into OctoberOn October 1, I started writing again.I’m back to rewriting my fantasy novel, and the year away from it may actually have helped. The world is much clearer to me now. I understand the characters better, and I have a stronger sense of why I want to tell this story in the first place.At the same time, another idea came back to life.A couple of months ago, while walking through Utrecht, I had a very simple thought: what if an old monk had a magical cat?The cat soon acquired nine lives, each lasting a century. The monk became a former story mage who had lost confidence in his abilities. Something hidden beneath the monastery should probably have remained there.This week I wondered whether I could combine that idea with Inktober, the annual drawing challenge with a different prompt for every day in October. Three days later, I had the outline for a 31-chapter story.I’m still tired, and I’m already behind on the drawings. But my brain is making things again.That is the difference.Keeping it playfulI’m deliberately keeping this second project small.The novel gets the serious writing hours. The story about the monk and his cat gets my lunch breaks. One short chapter, one small illustration, then back to the novel.I’ve learned that tiny side projects have a habit of turning into enormous undertakings if I’m not careful. This time, I want the lunch breaks to remain playful. I want to make something because the idea makes me smile, not because it has to become part of some larger strategy.Ireland can waitI still haven’t booked my trip to Ireland.A few years ago, that probably would have made me panic. Instead, I looked at the possibilities and realised that travelling immediately would be unnecessarily expensive.So I’m not going yet.My first job this month isn’t to maximise every available day. It’s to recover from the sprint that got me here, to walk, sleep, settle into a rhythm, and write every day.Ireland can wait another week or two.For once, I’m not particularly worried about how much I’ll accomplish by the end of the month. Three days in, something more important has already happened.I’m excited about writing again.And I’ve missed that feeling.P.S. This article grew out of this week’s episode of The Walk. You can hear more about my plans for October, the stories I’m working on, and why I may end up in Ireland, Scotland, or both by hitting play on the audio player at the top of this page. Get full access to Father Roderick at fatherroderick.substack.com/subscribe

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 asked a much more sensible question.Why?When goals become obligationsThere’s nothing wrong with setting goals. I love goals.The problem starts when circumstances change but the goal doesn’t.When I decided to read 100 books, I didn’t know quite how demanding producing a daily podcast would become. I didn’t know how much time I’d spend recording, editing, traveling and doing everything else around it.And yet there was still a little voice telling me that I’d failed because I wasn’t keeping a promise I’d made to myself nine months ago.I recognize exactly the same voice when I look at my writing.At one point, I wanted to publish eight books this year. Then I meet another author who published their first novel last year and already has their second book out, and immediately I think:I’m so far behind.Behind whom?Nobody is waiting outside my house with a stopwatch.The deadline mostly exists in my own imagination.The Halloween projectI ran into the same problem again this week.I had come up with an idea for a special series of seven episodes of my Dutch saints podcast leading up to Halloween. There are some surprisingly eerie stories about saints, demons and supernatural encounters, and I thought it would be fun to tell them almost like horror stories, complete with music and sound effects.I loved the idea.Then I tried writing them.It was hard.I’ve never written horror before. I’m actually rather impressionable myself, so I tend to avoid it. The first attempts felt cheesy. I couldn’t find the right voice. After struggling with it for a couple of days, I realized that doing this properly might consume another two weeks.A few years ago, that wouldn’t have stopped me.I’d had the idea. I’d committed to it in my head. Therefore I had to finish it.This time I asked myself another question.Why?Nobody had asked for these seven episodes. We already have interviews recorded that can fill those slots perfectly well. The Halloween series was something I’d invented because it sounded fun.So I parked it.Maybe I’ll return to it someday. Maybe I’ll have learned enough about writing horror by then to make it work.For now, letting it go gave me something much more valuable: room to breathe.Goals can change. Priorities don’t have to.I’m slowly learning to distinguish between my goals and the reasons I set those goals in the first place.Reading 100 books was a goal. Loving books and wanting to read more is the priority.Publishing eight books was a goal. Becoming a better writer and bringing my stories into the world is the priority.Creating a Halloween series was a goal. Telling good stories is the priority.Once I look at it that way, changing a goal doesn’t feel nearly as much like failure.Sometimes the circumstances simply changed.And sometimes I changed.That doesn’t mean giving up on the things that matter. Quite the opposite. It means protecting them from all the arbitrary targets, deadlines and expectations that can gradually make them feel like obligations.My desire to write hasn’t disappeared because I haven’t published eight books this year.If anything, it’s stronger.And now that I’ve cleared a few things from my October calendar, I’m getting ready to return to Ireland.This time, I don’t have a target for how many chapters I need to finish while I’m there.I just want to write.That seems like a pretty good goal to me.P.S. This article grew out of this week’s episode of my podcast The Walk. You can listen to the full episode by hitting play on the audio player at the top of this page. Get full access to Father Roderick at fatherroderick.substack.com/subscribe

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 they need it before the end of the month.There went my carefully planned September.A disturbance in the ForceAs I walked through the woods this week, I called it a disturbance in the Force.You can have your priorities perfectly organized and diligently work through them every day. Then something appears that you didn’t plan for but can’t ignore.I initially tried to keep everything else going alongside it. The novel. My podcast work. Preparations for a possible research trip in October. Fantasyfans. All the other projects already occupying little corners of my brain.That didn’t work particularly well.I stopped taking my daily walks. I didn’t sleep as well. I became agitated. There was a knot in my stomach.The funny thing is that the paperwork itself isn’t particularly frightening. The problem is uncertainty. When something suddenly lands on my desk with lots of different parts and no obvious first step, my brain wants to solve all of it at once.So I eventually did the opposite.For the next two weeks, the paperwork gets priority. The contractual work still gets done. Everything else can wait.Getting lostThere was a certain irony to explaining all this while recording the podcast.I decided to take a path through the woods that I hadn’t walked before.Except it wasn’t really a path.Soon I was climbing over fallen trees, crawling underneath branches and trying to work out whether I had accidentally wandered into someone’s backyard. At one point I found an enormous cobweb and decided that awakening Shelob would not improve my week.Eventually I found a real path again.Then the thunder started.Within minutes, the blue skies disappeared, rain was pouring through my flimsy running jacket and cold water was trickling down my spine.So much for planning.But perhaps that’s why I need these walks especially when life gets busy.For about a week I had skipped them because I thought I didn’t have time. In reality, walking is one of the things that makes everything else sustainable. The same goes for keeping my evenings free, going to bed on time and occasionally doing something creative that doesn’t have to become another project.Even drawing medieval miniatures can become work if I’m not careful. Before long I’m imagining a book, a video series and twelve social media posts about them.Sometimes a drawing should just be a drawing.There will always be more workBy the time I found my familiar walking route again, the storm had passed. The sun even came back.My plans for the next couple of weeks haven’t magically become less complicated. There is still a pile of paperwork waiting for me. There are podcast episodes to produce. I’m going to Elfia this weekend. And somewhere beyond all that, my unfinished novel is patiently waiting for me.But I’ve also made one decision that I’m rather happy about.In October, I want to return to Ireland.I had been considering Scotland, but Ireland makes more sense right now. It gives me a chance to write, revisit some of the places that inspired my stories and gather more material for the books I’m already working on.More importantly, putting the trip on the calendar protects it from all the work that will inevitably try to take its place.Because there will always be more work.There won’t always be another autumn in which I can go to Ireland.P.S. These reflections began during this week’s episode of The Walk. If you’d like to hear the original (and hear me get lost, caught in a thunderstorm and eventually find my way home) you’ll find the audio player at the top of this page. Get full access to Father Roderick at fatherroderick.substack.com/subscribe

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 Father Roderick that ever existed. The Star Wars enthusiast. The television presenter. The priest. The podcaster. The documentary maker. The YouTuber. The writer. I kept wondering whether I should still be all of those things at once.Lately I’ve begun to suspect that the question itself is wrong.Finding my placeLast weekend I spent a day at a small fantasy festival, recording interviews for my new Dutch podcast, Fantasyfans.nl. It was a much smaller event than Castlefest, which made it possible to have real conversations with artists, writers and visitors.What struck me most wasn’t the costumes or the music.It was the kindness.Again and again I met people eager to encourage each other, share their creativity and celebrate each other’s stories. I came home with hours of interviews, but also with a growing conviction that this community is exactly where I need to be right now.Not because everyone thinks the same way, quite the opposite.It’s because I can simply show up as myself: a priest who loves stories. A storyteller who happens to be a priest.Letting go of old rolesThat has also made me think about the things I’m slowly letting go of.This week I started clearing out one of the cupboards in my office. It was filled with microphones, cameras, old phones and equipment I bought for projects I once imagined I would make.I realised I wasn’t really sorting electronics.I was sorting through old versions of myself.Some of those dreams were worth pursuing because they brought me exactly where I am today. Others have simply run their course. Keeping hold of them doesn’t honour the past. It only clutters the present.The same is true for the roles we assign ourselves.There comes a moment when you have to stop asking, “Who am I supposed to be?” and start asking, “Who has God actually made me to be?”Trusting the journeyThat question has made returning to my fantasy novel much easier. I’m no longer trying to become “an author” as quickly as possible. I’m simply writing the story that has been growing inside me for years.The same goes for podcasting, for building this new fantasy community, and for everything else that currently fills my days.I don’t need to keep proving that I can still do everything I used to do. I only need to be faithful to the work I’ve been given today.Perhaps that’s what vocation looks like: not becoming someone else.But gradually becoming more fully yourself.Fr. Roderick VonhögenP.S. This week's newsletter is based on the latest episode of The Walk. You can listen to it by pressing play on the audio player at the top of the page.Fantasyfans.nl updateA warm welcome if you recently discovered this newsletter through Fantasyfans.nl!Last weekend I recorded the latest episode of the podcast live at the Evermore Fantasy Festival. It turned into a wonderful collection of conversations with artists, writers, cosplayers and fantasy fans about creativity, community and why these festivals feel like coming home for so many people.🎙️ You can listen to the live festival episode (in Dutch) here: Get full access to Father Roderick at fatherroderick.substack.com/subscribe

Home againEvery 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.For the first time in months, I’m genuinely looking forward to sitting down every morning to rewrite my first fantasy novel.Not because I’m making spectacular progress. Quite the opposite. Some mornings I rewrite a single page. Others I don’t write anything at all. Instead, I listen back to old voice notes, rethink the history of a monastery or spend an hour trying to understand one of my characters a little better.And I’m having the time of my life.Exploring instead of producingOnly a few weeks ago, this felt completely different.Rewriting the novel had become a mountain I kept avoiding to climb. Every new story idea seemed more exciting than returning to the manuscript I’d already written. I felt guilty about that, convinced I simply needed more discipline.Now I think something else was going on…Last week I wrote about letting go of the imaginary version of myself who always had enough time to do everything. Once I stopped measuring myself against that impossible person, something unexpected happened. The pressure disappeared.I no longer felt I had to prove I could write a novel, I could simply take the time to learn how to write one. And that tiny shift changed everything.Instead of trying to produce pages as quickly as possible, I’ve started treating these mornings as an opportunity to explore. Sometimes I end up reading about medieval pigments. Or I draw a map of the monastery grounds. Sometimes I realise an entire chapter needs to happen somewhere else.None of that feels like wasted time anymore. It’s part of building a world I’d actually want to visit myself.Becoming a storytellerAs I mentioned last week, Tolkien once described writers as sub-creators. I’ve always loved that expression. We don’t create out of nothing. We receive the world as a gift, then patiently shape it into stories of our own.Perhaps that’s what I’ve been rediscovering this week: writing isn’t simply producing words… It’s learning to see. Learning to listen. Learning to inhabit a world until it begins to feel real enough for someone else to step inside.Will it take longer to finish this novel than I’d hoped a year ago?Almost certainly.But that no longer bothers me.Because every morning I return to medieval Ireland, I leave my desk with something much more valuable than another completed chapter.I close my laptop with the feeling that, little by little, I’m becoming the writer this story has needed all along.Fr. Roderick VonhögenP.S.: This article is based on the latest episode of my podcast The Walk. If you’d rather hear the story in my own voice, you’ll find the podcast player at the top of this page.Fantasyfans.nl updateIt’s been exciting to watch my new Dutch fantasy podcast and community slowly find its audience. Just over a month after launching, Fantasyfans.nl has grown to around 350 Instagram followers, while the Facebook and YouTube communities are steadily growing as well. What I enjoy most, though, is the interaction. Every week I record a community podcast, and it’s wonderful to see the discussions continue long after the microphones have been switched off.Last week I published an interview with fantasy author G.J.G. Klaassen, whom I quite literally bumped into while walking the Four Day Marches of Nijmegen. We talked about his debut novel, writing fantasy and finding inspiration in unexpected places. You can read or listen to the interview here.This weekend I also spent a day at the Evermore Fantasy Festival in Ede, where I recorded a new community podcast and spoke with visitors, authors and creators. I’m editing those conversations now, along with plenty of photos from the festival, and I’ll start sharing them later this week. If you’re curious about the Dutch fantasy community, keep an eye on Fantasyfans.nl! Get full access to Father Roderick at fatherroderick.substack.com/subscribe