Back in my very early days as a lowly graduate at Lloyds Bank, I started a “newsletter”.

It didn’t involve much writing or editing or anything like that.

Instead, I hunted round on the internet to find a baffling Zen story I liked the look of, copy & pasted it into an email and pinged it round to my fellow graduates.

What they made of this I have no idea, but I enjoyed it.

Ultimately my boss started giving me work to do, so the newsletter died a timely death.

But in some ways those few weeks of Zen emails were a foreshadowing of what was to come 15 years later when I started this merry newsletter. 

A newsletter which has been humming away for over 2 years now.

It strikes me as at least a coincidence that a jovial activity which drew me in, absorbed me and gave me a good deal of satisfaction has repeated itself 15 years later in a slightly different form.

It makes me think back to one of my old school teachers who left me with some parting words as I packed my bags and trotted off to uni to study Maths:

“I think you’ll come back to English one day”

Thing is, I’d seriously considered jacking in the calculus & differential equations to study English at uni. There was something about English which felt tempting, even though I couldn’t put my finger on what that was exactly.

And while the maths won out, there’s no doubt that writing a newsletter for 2+ years is firmly planted in words, language, expression, creativity and storytelling

i.e. is “coming back to English” just as my teacher predicted.

This English/Maths dilemma and the Zen emails does make me wonder if life nudges us in a certain direction and then KEEPS nudging us until we finally decide it’s time to listen.

Clearly we can ignore any nudge whenever we want.

And yet as the years roll by and my hairs gets greyer (I’m 40 soon – where does the time go?), the more it looks to me as if the nudges we get along the way aren’t just options but are actually the answer.  Almost like the nudges know best, are leading us in the right direction and our internal battles, struggles & strains are a result of our logical brains trying to overrule these nudges.

I can already hear the cynics & sceptics muttering “codswallop” under their breath.

But we’ve all got examples of our gut pointing the way or our intuition leading us in an unexpected yet helpful direction.

Perhaps you have a sense of this as you read this email.

And I’m curious – what’s your gut telling you right now?  Are there any nudges you’ve been brushing off or nudges you’ve followed down a surprising path?

Hit reply and let me know.

That’s all for today.

 - Tom