Please note this is an automated transcript and as a result it may contain errors

Katherine May: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Cold and Flu season with Catherine May. For the next few weeks, I will be coming to you with an increasingly croaky voice. As just as every year I succumb to every single bacterium that is floating around in the air around me. Oh, I think probably a lot of you are feeling the same at the moment, or instead wondering how you can prevent it happening to you.

And there is a certain amount of surrender in this season isn’t there, where you just have to let it all wash over you and try not to be too croaky and try not to spread too many germs. I am indoors today [00:01:00] because, um, the outdoor seems very hostile to me right now, and I am in fact busying myself by re shelving some of my books, which is an ongoing project for me.

I always have more books than shelves, and this year I had some new ones built in, which I’m very, very proud of, but I still haven’t quite yet managed to get everything in the right place. And I spend an awful lot of time just rearranging things. There’s a whole load of other ones in the living room that need to come in here too.

I dream of having a beautiful library that would allow me to roam through halls and halls of books, uh, but I do not live that kind of life. And even if I did, I’d become overwhelmed by it extremely quickly. So here we are, just. Moving books from shelf to shelf and trying to invent categories in my own head as ever.[00:02:00] 

I hope you’re well. I’ve got a really. I think incredibly relatable podcast episode for you today. A couple of days ago, I interviewed Sam Baker, who many of you will know from her brilliant Substack The Shift. Um, Sam is a reformed magazine editor having. Edited many of the glosses and she writes most frequently about midlife, uh, about the changes that come in our lives around about the time of the menopause, but also recovering from years of.

Living within a working culture that never stopped. Um, and that caused Sam multiple episodes of burnout, um, but which also is kind of embedded in the way that we live at the moment. I just think she is such a generous and fascinating [00:03:00] voice, um, who really captures with great honesty the stuff that many of us feel all the time.

And it is no surprise that in her interview she touched on that in her own life feeling, I think really challenged by the idea of retreating at all. And I, for me, I think it really ran true that. The idea of ever stopping, of ever having a kind of cessation in the constant battle against emails, social media messages, tasks to do, things to write creative instincts is actually.

Quite difficult to imagine for loads of us, and I think for me, it’s taken me to the [00:04:00] heart of what I’m trying to explore with this podcast, which is not. How can we just simply do a nice thing and only talk about nice things? But actually what comes up for us when we begin to think about stopping, what does it mean to us really to be in this cycle of work and how.

Embedded in us is it to have our identity entangled with work and caring and, and simply doing. I think you’re gonna find this a really interesting one. I certainly did. Uh, and I will be checking back in with you afterwards to see what you think. Sam Baker, welcome to The Clearing. It is lovely to have you 

Sam Baker: here.

Oh, I’m delighted to be here. Although a little bit anxious, say, oh no. Why anxious? Well, you know, I’ve discovered that. Retreat sends me into a [00:05:00] spiral of overthinking. Who knew? 

Katherine May: Oh, that’s interesting. So do you try to do it often or is it something you tend to avoid? Tell Oh, avoid, avoid, avoid. Okay. Well this is, this is gonna be a fascinating process and I wonder.

If we can imagine a retreat that wouldn’t send you into an anxiety spiral, but I do get that. Um, I always ask people what brings them to retreating today, but it sounds rather like you’re being dragged kicking and screaming. Yes. Yeah. You bring me here, Catherine dragging me by my feet. Oh my goodness. Do you, I mean, do you generally find it easy to switch off or are you someone that’s always like on and ticking over?

Sam Baker: I think I’m always on and ticking over. I’m better. I used to be, um, but I, yeah, I’m always doing something. Yeah. Even if you’re playing Candy Crush. And I think when I was looking at your questions, [00:06:00] kind of, sort of preparing, sort of avoiding, I, it really made me think is this, do I have to be on my own? Is this just gonna be me?

Katherine May: Ooh. So what’s, yeah, well, what’s your attitude to solitude? Do you enjoy being alone? 

Sam Baker: Um, I enjoy being alone, but alone usually involves the cat, the phone, Netflix. Right. So, alone. Alone. If someone took away my phone and dropped me on a desert island for 48 hours, even leaving aside all the survival stuff, mm 

Katherine May: mm 

Sam Baker: not, not sure about 

Katherine May: that.

This is gonna be interesting then, and I, and actually, I don’t think you do have to be alone. I think, you know, a, a retreat with other people is definitely possible. Um, and it would be, uh, yeah. I’m gonna ask you about your phone, about where your phone is in all of this. ’cause I’ve got a feeling you might still be tapping away.

Is this a kind of hangover from. [00:07:00] Your days as a magazine editor. I wonder, because that must have been, I mean, you’ve written about the burnout that came from it, but that must have been a pretty much 24 hour a day, everyone talking to you at once kind of a job. 

Sam Baker: Yeah, but it’s a, I think it’s a question of what comes first, doesn’t it?

Does the job make you like that or do you go for the job because you’re like that? 

Katherine May: Yeah, 

Sam Baker: and I remember, uh, one point changing jobs from. Cosmo to red and saying to my partner, oh, this will be better. It won’t be so crazy. It won’t be so full on. And he just looked at me and said, are you not taking yourself with you?

Katherine May: Yeah. 

Sam Baker: And he was completely correct because the crazy and the full on and the 24 7, that’s me. I mean, the job lent itself to that, but I think I have to take the blame to be honest. You are all 

Katherine May: in. Yeah, I get it. I mean, I’m, [00:08:00] I’m actually really similar. I mean, I, you know, I like to live at a fairly slow pace and I like to not.

See many people in the course of my day. Um, but I don’t stop and, and when I go around and retreat, I might put my current project aside, but it only just opens the door for like 20 other things. Be like, oh yeah, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that. And oh yeah, that would work really well. Like, you know, it’s, there’s a certain type of brain that exists in our mm-hmm.

In our world of work, isn’t there? That just doesn’t ever shut down. 

Sam Baker: Yeah. It’s like I, I can’t remember where I read it, but I read an article about people who don’t have that inner noise. Do they exist? Apparently they do, and I don’t think they’re even that rare, but I just couldn’t imagine what that would be like without that constant chatter.

Katherine May: Mm. I think I’m married to someone like that actually. I don’t think he’s not, he’s just not terribly troubled by. Anything that isn’t in front of his nose. He just, he’s really [00:09:00] happy for life to just proceed and he just, you know, rides that train and I am like, how do we improve this? You know? Which drives him crazy.

He doesn’t, he doesn’t understand why I’m so dissatisfied as he sees it, whereas I’m like, no, no, just, everything can just be massaged into something a little bit more. Why not? 

Sam Baker: I guess. Yeah, it’s, I think Im hard work. It’s not satisfaction is it? It’s just a kind of a. Compulsive doing, I suppose. Yeah.

Constant process 

Katherine May: of reform. Hmm. Well, welcome to my clearing in the forest where your dream retreat awaits. And it is yours. It’s not mine, so don’t worry about how I would do it, but tell me, first of all, what landscape are we in for you here? Where are we in the world? What does it look like? 

Sam Baker: I think. I mean I’ve, I dunno if I’ve said this to you before, but I’ve definitely written before about the [00:10:00] conjunction if, is that the word?

I dunno, of mountains and sea that I really like and really feel at home with that. I think that’s partly to do with. You know, mountains are big,

in case you hadn’t noticed. Um, and I think that, I dunno, it’s that bigger than me, more important than me, more solid than me, more permanent than me. Um, and the sea. I find something very, very reassuring and comforting and relaxing about water. Um, but also I like to see the edge.

And I don’t know whether that’s a recent thing. It’s something I’ve recently become aware of. And now if I have to go away for work, um, and, and, you know, and, um, in the center of the country for a week, yeah, 10 days, two weeks, [00:11:00] I find I get really antsy. I need to see the edge. So I definitely need to see 

Katherine May: the edge.

So you’re on the edge of somewhere. Are we, I mean, are we in Scotland? Because I remember you saying to me about moving to Edinburgh. Like the lovely thing is it’s a big city, but it’s by the sea, like the best of all worlds. And you can see mountains. And you can see mountains, which is, I mean, that’s really perfect.

So are we in Scotland or would you, I think, would you fly somewhere 

Sam Baker: in Scotland? Or We could be. I’m increasingly taken with, I’m increasingly realizing I’m quite northern. So if it wasn’t Scotland, I think it would be a Scandinavian country. Yeah, but not a really flat one. So, sorry, not Iceland too flat.

Sorry. Iceland. Except for your volcanoes, 

Katherine May: which are very pointy. 

Sam Baker: We are very pointy. But no, I think it was gonna be more. Somewhere with lots of trees [00:12:00] and, and lots of, you know, so Norway, more Norway, Sweden sounds lovely. Or Scotland. 

Katherine May: And are you in the summer for your retreat or are you preferring something a little chillier?

Sam Baker: I like chili, actually. Mm-hmm. I quite like the, I mean, I say this as someone who’s a bit SAD, but I do, I do like the dark. I like, I mean, I’m not about to talk to you about wintering because you are That’s okay. That wintering expert, but I think. Do you know what? I like the extremes and that’s one. Another thing that I like about Scotland is I like the extremes of light.

Mm-hmm. So I like having 20 odd hours of daylight in the summer. Yeah. And I don’t mind having only five in the winter 

Katherine May: because I, I feel very intense though for a long period of time. 

Sam Baker: Yeah. I mean, it’s very disorienting when it starts to get dark at help Two. It’s 

Katherine May: amazing, 

Sam Baker: but it’s, but I like it as well.

Like I, I like the extremes of weather [00:13:00] and I used to think when I was probably 20 odd years younger, I used to think, I’d love to live in LA where there’s no weather. You know, theoretically, I mean, obviously they, they seem to be climate change, plenty of weather. Right now they’re having plenty of weather now.

Yeah. But that kind of solid 70 degrees theory. 

Katherine May: Yeah. All the way. All the way around the year. Yeah. 

Sam Baker: Um, I used to think I would love that. And now I think now I like a season, but probably winter. ’cause my very favorite weather is cold but bright. 

Katherine May: Okay. 

Sam Baker: Yeah. 

Katherine May: So mountains, cold, bright. This sounds actually really lovely.

So tell me about the retreat venue itself. Are you a cabin girl or is this a spa hotel? Definitely not a tent. 

Sam Baker: Definitely not a tent. Yeah, definitely not a tent. No, we’re not going, I don’t care how posh your tent is. I’m not going anywhere near it. Um, I don’t really like, oh, I sound like such a nutcase. Um, I’m not a [00:14:00] massive hotel fan, actually.

I find hotels, and again, I think it might be to do with my job. Mm. I find them a bit performative. 

Katherine May: Yes. It’s very hard to switch off in a hotel, isn’t it? You are constantly kind of interacting with someone or being polite or wondering if you’ve gotta tip someone. Like there’s a lot, I get a lot of hotel anxiety.

Sam Baker: Yes. Oh, I’m so glad that you don’t just think I’m nuts. No. Yeah. I find them quite confining. Mm-hmm. But I, I mean, I would always rather go. I mean, I’m sorry because I know Airbnb has its issues, but give me that act that, and I’m the person that was made for, because I don’t have to be in a room that’s, you know, nine square meters or where, whatever.

I’m not that my math, you are seeing how bad my maths is now. But that kind of, you know, when you, you book a hotel room, like if I go to stay to London, in London, I’ll book one of those [00:15:00] little tiny little pod hotel rooms and just like, is there a window? So find confining and I don’t like the kind of hotel bar.

Go down for breakfast, all of that. It’s tough. I just find it a bit well performative. 

Katherine May: Yeah. Yeah. It’s quite a relaxing, isn’t it? But are there, so, so would you have, you know, the archetypal cabin or like a port or a tree house, or would you, do you just want a nice little, little house? 

Sam Baker: Um, 

Katherine May: little, 

Sam Baker: yeah, like this is like to be very specific.

It could be a mansion. Can you imagine what I’m like trying to buy a house? Couple of rooms. I’d like a log burner. Yes. I wouldn’t have to do the log, I wouldn’t like to have to do the log burning myself, so I probably burn the place down. Okay. Fair. So, 

Katherine May: yeah. So are you alone or are you with a. I, well, it sounds like you could have a butler, but, um, that [00:16:00] might become performative 

Sam Baker: quite quickly.

No, be, I’m quite happy to be on my own. 

Katherine May: Mm. 

Sam Baker: Or, and if I’m with other people, I would need some alone time. 

Katherine May: Right. Yeah. 

Sam Baker: So, for instance, you know, when people go on writing retreats. And they talk about, oh, we had this great dinner and we spent, you know, we hours and we had, and I always think, oh no, I don’t want to, what if I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna do 11 hours solid with people.

I don’t know. Yeah. So it’s a mixture. I don’t want to have to spend too much time in my own head. Mm-hmm. I’d like to be able to get out and talk to people, but on my own terms. Okay. I’m not selling myself to anybody, am I? 

Katherine May: I don’t think we need to. We we’re past that age. Now we, we can just, we can just be little hermits that we’re so maybe, maybe close to a nice town.

Maybe you can have a little wander into some lovely little, little place with a good deli. Yeah. [00:17:00] So, and coffee. Yes. Important. Definitely coffee. Are you the kind of person who would cook for yourself or would you like us to deliver via stalk, if necessary? Baskets of wonderful food. 

Sam Baker: Hmm. Gosh. I mean, it’s hard to turn down the baskets of wonderful food delivery, isn’t it?

But I am. I’m a person who would bother to cook for myself if the mood grabbed me. 

Katherine May: Yeah. 

Sam Baker: Yeah. And what and what would comfort food be for you? What would that feel like? I think this is probably more revealing than I want it to be. I’m finding it very hard to say, this is what I want.

Katherine May: Do you feel like that in everyday life though? Because it seems like you’re someone. Who really knows their own mind and who’s a, you know, in many ways a thought leader. It’s interesting to hear you say, well, I’m [00:18:00] not sure what I want. It’s quite fragile. Um, 

Sam Baker: I, yeah, I dunno that I’m fragile. I think, um, do you know what I used to in my previous life, I used to find it very easy to make decisions in a public capacity, right?

But then in a private capacity, and I have, I did right about this. I think in the shift I found it would find it very hard to say, you know, Chinese or Indian, right? I would kind of go, oh, what do you want? But I would never have done that in my public life. 

Katherine May: It’s almost like there’s a sort of decision fatigue there from Yeah.

Having to make so many. Your job was to make decisions and to know the direction of everything. 

Sam Baker: Yeah. I think it’s what you’ve run out. I’m out on my retreat is for someone to be psychic. Okay. And I have just worked it all out and me not have to [00:19:00] do any thinking and just wander in. And it’s 

Katherine May: still gonna be perfect.

Sam Baker: Yeah. Yes. 

Katherine May: That’s, that’s the dream. Well, we’ll, we will try and find that person for you. We’ll start interviewing for that role now, and I’m sure we can.

There’s something very maternal about that in a way that craving like the person who knows you better than you know yourself and who relieves you of the burden of making choices in a way that feels nurturing rather than bossy, I think. 

Sam Baker: Yes, and I think it’s also relieves you of the responsibility, isn’t it?

Katherine May: Absolutely. I mean, we. Shoulders so much responsibility in our day-to-day lives. I mean, you are, you are the expert in this, you know, women of a certain age, as we used to say, but women at midlife who are carrying everything for everyone. Quite often I think [00:20:00] the fantasy is not thinking for a while. It’s the, it’s, it’s not the actual doing that’s the problem.

It’s the thinking that I find very fatiguing. Yeah, the 

Sam Baker: planning ahead, I mean, the number of people who have to, who say to me over the course of any given week, I just don’t wanna have to think about what’s fatigue again. Or, you know, when I was writing the shift and I had this focus group of about 50 women when we were on this theme, the number of women who said.

I know how bad this sounds, but I would just like to be in hospital for a couple of weeks. 

Katherine May: Mm. 

Sam Baker: Nothing really bad. 

Katherine May: Nothing really serious. Just maybe something contagious, but Un un, yeah, un unpleasant. No contagious, but 

Sam Baker: fine. Where I can’t be got like how most women also like being on planes on long haul journeys.[00:21:00] 

Katherine May: Love a long haul journey or even a train because I, I don’t think I can reasonably be expected to do much on a train. Honestly, it’s too patchy for the wifi and too wobbly. 

Sam Baker: Yeah, I’ve got a four hour train journey tomorrow and I’m quite looking forward to 

Katherine May: it, I have to say. 

Sam Baker: That would be nice. 

Katherine May: I also, I think it’s the same thing that when you catch a cold and you know it’s nothing particularly serious, but you think, oh, I get day to watch movies, feeling mildly uncomfortable.

This is great. 

Sam Baker: Yes. And eat beans on toast. Yeah. So nice. See that when you ask me about my comfort food, that’s probably what it would be. But I don’t know. I think I’m having like a bit of a disconnect between a retreat and comfort. Mm. I think retreat has kind of summoned up all these things, all these shoulds.

Interesting. Yeah. 

Katherine May: Yeah. And that is, that’s part of [00:22:00] modern life, isn’t it? The, the sort of idea that we’ve commodified rest and that even something that’s supposed to be for us, we worry, we worry now about doing it right. And whether we are. Retreating in a, in a beautiful enough way, whereas actually sitting in jogger bottoms and eating beans on toast might might just be the thing.

Yeah, 

Sam Baker: yeah. But it’s, it’s like, okay, I’m going to go on the retreat. I should be doing something, I should be writing, I should be reading an improving book, or something really big on fat that I haven’t, that I’ve always meant to read. You know, I, I did. Immediately the shoulds came raining in immediately.

Interesting. 

Katherine May: So we’re here, let’s think about what you might do if the shoulds could be pushed back for a little while. That would be generally, you know, actually restorative rather than, [00:23:00] um, improving, which I think is, is what we’ve, we’ve all kind of lent to do. We invited you to bring a kind of significant object with you on retreat, something that might be comforting or familiar or, uh, contemplative even.

What is the thing that you would bring with you onto your retreat from home? I have my cat. You can have your cat. Yes. Tell me about your cat. 

Sam Baker: Well, I don’t really know why I want my cat ’cause he’s an absolute bloody nuisance, but he’s very cuddly. I think he would like, if we are thinking like of a, a cabin bit of, bit of a very comfortable cabin with lots of blankets and a wood burner.

Um. Trees Sea. I think he’d like that. He liked the outside space, but he likes to be cozy as well. Me, someone to talk to and he’s cozy and warm [00:24:00] and we like watching TV together. Um, we, you know, we like hanging out. We’ve got one of those kind of a big or not that we would have this sofa. But we’ve got one of those big, it’s a big kind of like corner chazy sofa thing.

Oh, lovely. And it’s a bit like a big boat. And I always feel like we’re on a raft, which I quite like. It’s like a little, our little island and we’re on it. So I’d take, I would, yeah, I would definitely, I’d take sausage. Is that his name? Sausage? Yes. That’s a lovely cat name. And what color is he? Oh, he’s black and he’s got no tail.

Oh, sausage. Yeah. See he’s a re he’s a rescue and I think that’s how he got his name. ’cause they, I think they probably went, oh, sausage. You poor sausage. Yeah. So do they know how he lost his tail? Um, I think he had an accident. So they had to, they had to amputate his tail, um, and rebuild his hips. Oh, bless him.

So he’s got this little Phil stump [00:25:00] that kind of twitches an annoyance occasionally. He’s still using it to 

Katherine May: the best advantage. He’s trying, bless him. 

Sam Baker: He’s trying, how much energy goes into that little twitch? I don’t know, but quite a lot. Oh, 

Katherine May: well that’s lovely. So sausage is gonna come with you for company and snuggles, but he’s gonna live his best life.

For most of the day roaming through the, the beaches and the mountains and he’s gonna, you know, hopefully not catch anything, not bring me any gifts. That was, I was just about to say that. Sorry to interrupt you. That’s fine. Alright. Well-behaved sausages with you, keeping you company and so. What do you think you are gonna do here?

If you could put aside trying to somehow advance your work during this time or, or maybe, maybe you would work, but what, what are you gonna do with your time? I dunno about you, but I work all the time. 

Sam Baker: Quite, yeah, quite a lot. Yes. Yes. Pretty much the time. And if I’m not working, [00:26:00] I’m thinking about working or.

I’m catastrophizing about working or you know, that there’s always a work process and even when I’m reading, which is how I have always, has always been a source of relaxation for me now. I read so much for work. Even when I’m reading a book for relaxation or fun or or whatever, I’m quite often thinking about the other books I should be reading.

Katherine May: Yeah. Yeah. How, how, like what’s the percentage that you get to read for fun compared to for work? ’cause you run a book club obviously, and you also just interview lots of authors for your, you know, for your newsletter. What’s the split? Do you, do you actually get to read for fun very much? 

Sam Baker: I try and do two for work, one for me, right.

I try. Okay. But it depends, you know, if I’ve got, if I’m in the middle of a recording, a podcast series. [00:27:00] It just depends how many interviews I’m doing in any given, you know, in any given week. Mm-hmm. Um, and most of the things that I read for myself end up being crimey or ghosty or something completely other, because so much of what I read for work is, um, well the book club is a real, a real mix, but the podcast tends to be nonfiction.

Yeah. Yeah, often, not always, but often. 

Katherine May: So. So you’ve got some time to dig into those like crime series that you haven’t begun yet, or some like chillers? Yeah, as they used to say. I don’t think anyone calls a book like anymore they should. So it’s good. It’s actually, it’s. A lot of the time, kind of what you want from that, that kind of reading.

Isn’t that you wanna feel like a little, like that tingle? Um, I think 

Sam Baker: I’m one of those people who quite likes [00:28:00] to read something that’s set in the location where I am. But if I’m on my own in a cabin in the forest or on the edge of a forest or by the sea, that might not be a good idea because I might scare myself out of sleeping.

Yeah. So maybe not. I think if I, if I can reach a point where I’m like, okay, I am not going to work. Or if I am, if I am going to work, it’s going to be something that just comes to me and I’ll start making notes. I’m not going to beat myself up about the fact I should be working then I think I would, and I’m sorry, I’m slightly jumping ahead to your next question.

That’s fine. Which I think that I would take the entire two series. I know it’s a box set. That’s how old I am. Downloads of, there’s an amazing Japanese manga called the Apothecary Diaries. Okay. Which I am quite [00:29:00] obsessed with. Um, and it’s currently, there are two series of 24 episodes each. Right. Um, and then making a third series.

I mean, maybe we can really have a fantasy land where the third series finished. So I’ve got those 24 episodes as well. Let’s do it. Yeah. And so I think my real, like no shirts fantasy is just that I sit there and I watch the entire, the entire run of the APO Diaries. Amazing. 

Katherine May: In a, with the cat on your lap.

Nice. Comfy sofa. Cup of tea in hand. Yeah. Cup of tea. 

Sam Baker: Coffee. Tea. Mainly tea, chocolate, you know, beer walking, wander into town. Coffee bun, you know, get a bit of air, a bun move. Yeah. And then apothecary diaries back to back. It’s incredible. And the storytelling is [00:30:00] amazing. I mean, I’m on my second watch through at the moment because.

It’s like the layering. And you go, you notice now I’m kind of like halfway through season one and you’re like, oh my God. So literally that one little scene where you saw a hand hand someone a pipe six episodes later. 

Katherine May: Wow. 

Sam Baker: And it’s so, and that goes right the way through. It’s in incre. I mean, if you are interested in, you know.

I’m writing it down actually, ’cause I, it’s Japanese, but it’s set in a kind of a tang ty Wow. Ish. And it’s about a little, a young, well she’s a teenager called Mal Mao, who’s a trained athere and who she gets kidnapped and has to go and work in the rear palace. And it’s honestly this, just from a storytelling perspective, watching the layering and how something will happen.

There’s a really big storyline halfway through the second series [00:31:00] that you can see now. They were setting up a third of the way through the first series, so just amazing. ’cause I often think, sorry, this is quite boring. I think those things are. They’re not, it depends. I’m always interested in whether someone retrofits Yeah.

Or, or whether they plan a long way ahead, whether it’s just luck 

Katherine May: and this 

Sam Baker: clearly is a, or whether they go back, it’s clearly very finely constructed. This is incredibly finely constructed, so it’s neither retrofitting nor luck. It’s, you know, 

Katherine May: yeah. 

Sam Baker: Planned and layered and. It’s incredible and it’s beautiful animation as well, and not doing something else ’cause it’s subtitles.

So not doing something else on my phone, not focusing on other things, not waiting for the washing machine to finish, not feeling like I should be doing something else. Just completely immersing myself in that world. 

Katherine May: It’s so rare to actually do that, isn’t it? I think I remember thinking five years ago about [00:32:00] like, you know, young people, multi-screen, and now I just multi-screen as well.

Honestly, I really, I’m often watching TV with the, with a crossword in front of me, for example. Like, it doesn’t, it doesn’t feel like enough doing somehow just to, to watch something, which is new in my life, honestly, like it’s, I’ve been changed by this technology. I 

Sam Baker: Absolutely, and I think that’s one of the reasons I really like things for subtitles is because I can’t do that.

Right. I have to. So I’ve, I never watch, um. I do really like Japanese cartoons, and I, I never watch and, and Scandinavian crime, it won’t surprise you. And I never watch it with dubbing. I always watch it with subtitles because it makes me watch it. 

Katherine May: Right. You 

Sam Baker: know, instead of sitting there on my, with my phone playing Sudoku or Candy Crush or whatever, or checking my email or looking at social media, well, the TV is going on in the [00:33:00] background, which, you know, like you say, it’s completely normal now.

Yeah. Yeah, me to do other things. And the other thing I was thinking about this the other day is that instinctive looking up of things. Oh. Whereas I, I know I drive myself mad and where you used to go, oh, what’s that word that’s really annoying? Or, oh, who wrote that? Or, what’s that song? And you’d mulch for a bit and eventually, nine times outta 10 it would come to you.

Now you’re straight on, I’m straight on Wiki or Shazam or something like that. And I’ve got the answer Within a few seconds, 

Katherine May: we, it’s almost like. You, you know, the knowledge is there and so you cannot just let it rest anymore. Like I, I think I used to just be more comfortable with knowing that I didn’t know things and now I find myself reading a book and I’ll put the book down to look up if they’ve made a reference to another book.

And I’m like, well, I dunno what that book is. Well, I, I must suddenly know all about this other book. [00:34:00] And so I’m, I’m googling it on my phone. It’s, I do that, which in a way is kind of, it’s not necessarily bad because it’s, it’s, but it’s all about building up a big web of information rather than actually immersing yourself in contact with the thing at hand.

Sam Baker: I think that’s the thing, isn’t it? With book, I mean, I did that. We went to Osler a couple of weeks ago and I. Was reading a book that was set in Oslo, because that’s what I do. Um, and I spent ages like keeping on, going back to the map and looking at, on my phone, obviously, um, looking at where I was in relation to it, looking at the history of, you know, and whilst that’s interesting and like you say, you are learning things about the place or the history of the place.

You are also just not having the immersive one-to-one experience of reading. Yeah. The damn book. 

Katherine May: There’s a, there’s a, there’s real kind of anxiety behavior [00:35:00] behind it as well. Like, what if the moment I don’t look at my phone, something happens to someone in my family, like there’s, there’s that terrible sense that, that that thread can’t be ever let go of now because it exists and it used to not exist and we were fine, but because it exists now, we can’t not see it.

Yeah, it’s 

Sam Baker: like you can’t, I don’t think that you can go back to how it used to be. I was watching, um, rewatching Edge of Darkness a few weeks ago, which is a amazing, amazing crime series from the eighties. So it’s kind of crime thriller environment. Conspiracy. It’s really incredible. I would really recommend you watch it.

But it’s set in the late eighties and it’s all, you know, answer machines and the big box TV in the corner. And he stays in a [00:36:00] hotel in London and the people phone him in his room and it creates a complete, I just can’t imagine it anymore. Different dynamic. Everybody doesn’t know where everybody is. Um.

You know, he’s meeting someone somewhere. You just have to turn up. You can’t text and say, I’m running 10 minutes late. You know, all of those things that now do I sound like an old fart? It just really made me think. 

Katherine May: Yeah, I think we’ve about that. We’ve been through the looking glass and we are all wondering.

If we could adapt backwards now, I mean, I, I don’t know if you know anyone that’s got an old Nokia 33 10 Now they’ve gone back to that. I’ve read about it in the papers, but I dunno anyone that’s actually done it. But I do have a very close friend who has never ever had a social media account, and I, I can’t imagine that life.

Sam Baker: That’s terrible, isn’t it? I can’t, I mean, [00:37:00] it’s difficult, isn’t it? Because in our jobs, I can’t imagine we’d be allowed to. She works in the media. Really. I know. I need to know who that is. How on do you manage that? I think. Yeah, I mean, I was reading an article recently about how our generation, I mean I’m a bit older than you, but Gen X are the last generation, the only generation actually with a foot in two camps.

Katherine May: Yeah. 

Sam Baker: And how, what the impact of that is on us and that, you know, there’s a versatility to having lived a substantial amount of your life. Before, before, and then a substantial amount of your adult, adult life after. So you kind of can see both sides and you can, yeah, straddle both sides. But I also wonder, well, whether 

Katherine May: it’s like a one way process really.

I mean, I think what it. Kind of means for a lot of us is that we have [00:38:00] this nostalgia for the time before that is, I, I think I, I don’t, maybe I’m wrong, but unfulfillable in lots of ways and I, yeah, that foot in two camps is actually quite painful sometimes because I know that I spent my entire childhood and teens without any of it.

I know that my first contact was in my first year at university, and that’s a really clear threshold that didn’t have email, didn’t have a mobile phone until that exact point in in time when I was changing from being someone that lived at home with my mum to being an adult out in the world. And I don’t, I don’t think I know how to do adult life without tech.

I also know that I really want to escape it a lot of the time and it overwhelms me and I’m ugh, so sick of being contactable [00:39:00] constantly in many different locations. And that balancing that anxiety of like missing something with the desire to not come in contact with it. Um, yeah, 

Sam Baker: yeah, yeah. I mean, FOMO and comparison culture and all, that’s all so much worse now because, you know.

No. And if you didn’t, you didn’t know where everybody was. You didn’t know that you weren’t. 

Katherine May: Yeah. 

Sam Baker: You know, I mean, I saw a thing on social media, um, where, so basically I want to be invited, but I don’t want to go. 

Katherine May: Yes. That’s, that’s my eternal 

Sam Baker: Yeah. And that absolutely sums me up. 

Katherine May: Mm. 

Sam Baker: I want to have been, wanted to go, but I don’t.

Katherine May: I, I am, I’m trying to turn up to things more though. I did go through definitely like a, a decade of, no, I’m just not, I’m not doing that anymore. And [00:40:00] now I think, well, you do kind of get forgotten if you don’t show up, but you also miss that lovely randomizing effect of being put in a room with people you don’t.

That you wouldn’t have actually met in person. You do make connections, but it’s so exhausting. Yeah, it’s just completely flattening. 

Sam Baker: This is my whole issue. One of my issues with the whole retreat thing is it would be really good for me to be put in a house in the middle of nowhere with five complete strangers.

Not big bug brother style. Like, just like life real. Life like-minded, I hope. Ideally. Yeah. But my instinct is to go me the cat box set. Mm-hmm. You know, kettle constant on constant boil, making tea without me actually having to get up to make it and disturb the cat. But [00:41:00] I would probably be. Really glad if I went on a, if you said to me, no, you can’t have a retreat on your own.

You have to have a retreat with these five people or six people or whatever. But then like you say, I would come back and I wouldn’t be, even if I had a brilliant time, yeah. I wouldn’t be, my batteries wouldn’t be filled up by that. My batteries would be absolutely drained by it, even if I had a fantastic time.

’cause that’s just the way my. 

Katherine May: Psyche. Yeah. Works. It’s that kind of introvert profile, isn’t it? That if the way that you tell is, you know, does being in a room full of people charge you up or run down your battery? And I think most of us have got a very clear response to that. Mine is definitely that my battery would be run down by that.

Yeah. Okay. So you are going to enjoy the solitude aspects of this retreat, but maybe. There needs to be [00:42:00] some kind of balancing factor to keep you a little bit in contact with the world. I’m curious to know, actually, are you, because it, this is all very kind of cozy and, and indoorsy. Are you an indoorsy person or do you, are you someone that likes a bit of fresh air as well?

Like will you be going for long improving walks? Oh no. I love 

Sam Baker: a walk. I’m a big walker. And I think one thing is I like about winter is I like the contrast. 

Katherine May: Mm-hmm. 

Sam Baker: I like that. Go for a long walk, get really cold. Yeah. You know, and then come back in this warm and you have a warm drink and there’s a fire. I like those two 

Katherine May: things.

Yeah. Will you be going inland into the mountains or are you gonna walk along the coast? Probably walk along the coast. It’s so easy to find your 

Sam Baker: back then if I, yeah. I’m wondering how much of this actually is about control Freakery. I mean, I wrote [00:43:00] a post about this last week about the difference between control and power and my therapist kind of saying, you need to reframe it.

So that it’s your drained of power. Someone hasn’t got control of you. Right. But your power is drained. Mm. So it’s about interesting, you know, it’s so, it’s more about you and than about other people. But that’s, it’s interesting you say that though, ’cause things can’t go wrong. And if you’re walking along 

Katherine May: the coast, you can’t get lost.

I, that’s why I love coastal walking ’cause I, I get lost so easily and I get really disoriented quite quickly. But you keep the sea to your right or your left and you know you’re going the right direction. It’s, it’s full. You can’t get lost. It’s not possible. Love that. It takes all the worry out of it, I think without feeling tame, you know, you still can feel quite wild and lovely, but not.

It scary. 

Sam Baker: I think we’re quite [00:44:00] similar, which is why you are being so tolerant of my rubbish. No, no, I get it. 

Katherine May: I, I totally feel it and I bet loads of people listening will feel it too. That sense that a true retreat is a sort of impossible dream. 

Sam Baker: I mean, I really want to know what your, because you do retreats a lot, you run them.

I really want to know what your idea of a perfect retreat is. 

Katherine May: Well, it’s interesting because I. I’m learning to take myself off on my own regularly, and I do, you know, I’ll hire myself like a little cabin. I’ve got a, I’ve got a favorite place, um, that I go to that’s just a really nice, well equipped cabin, but it has access to the sea and it has, uh, a hot tub.

Love a hot tub. I like, I just like being neck deep in water, whatever temperature that water is, I think ultimately. Um, but I do, I also go away once a year with some other writers. Um. And I never thought I’d say that, that I love that kind of thing, but I [00:45:00] actually find it so nourishing. I think the, the exact right people are there.

We’re all quite introverted. We all take our own space very happily. Um. I think, I think the writing life also leads, leads me quite desperate for that context. Mm. And that kind of, that ability to talk frankly, with other people who are immersed in the same work that you are, you are in. Because I think we all spend a lot of time speaking in public, and you have to just be a little bit careful what you say.

Obviously, you know, you have to never complain, never explain in the words of Kate Morris. Mm-hmm. And be, you know, be mindful that. What feels hard to you looks like privilege to other people. So I, I think the ability to actually be with other people who just understand it and don’t feel belittled by, by the, the challenges, you know, as I see them [00:46:00] is, is just massive luxury for me.

Sam Baker: So do you go with the same people every, every year? Yeah. 

Katherine May: Yeah. It’ll be hard to change that group actually now. Yeah, there’s, because trust builds up as well, but when I, when I run retreats, I always really surprise people by saying, you know, you’re gonna spend a lot of time on your own. We are not gonna be in group all the time because although we tend to think that’s what we are paying for, almost like contact with mm-hmm.

The group. Mm-hmm. It will be horrible for you if you’ve got contact with the group all the time. And it, at the end of my retreats, people always say, God, they were, they turned out to be so grateful for that time. So I think, I think it’s about structure quite often. Um. 

Sam Baker: Yeah. That’s really interesting. ’cause I think in my head a retreat is like a management training course.

Oh God. But about but, [00:47:00] but about a subject you’re actually interested in. Yes. So lots of, lots and lots of, when I see them advertised, I always think, oh, that’s just lots of compulsory being in the group activity. Yeah. 

Katherine May: It’s why I don’t enjoy writing based retreats. You know, where, where we actually, ’cause actually with my writer friends, we don’t write, we just talk to each other and sometimes have a little walk or a swim or whatever.

But I do not enjoy leading writing events. Um, because actually I think it’s just really hard for people to get out of their heads and, and, and really be writers in that space. I think that’s too hard. Okay. So. You’ve had a slightly itchy, like uncomfortable retreating time, although some nice moments. How do you know when it’s time for you to go?

Like how long would this go on for you before you started thinking, oh no, I’m, [00:48:00] I’m done now. I’m cooked. 

Sam Baker: I’m thinking back to the beginning of this year when, uh, a friend of mine let me stay in his cottage, which is up on. Further north on the coast in Scotland, in a small town, very, very small town. Um, and I went up there to finish ’cause I thought I was at a point in the book I was working on at that point where I needed to, to deliver X words by y, you know?

Right. So I thought, well, and I went for, I think it was four days, including the travel, either end. And when I first got there, I thought, oh God, this is too long. I want to go home. That first 

Katherine May: day can be really hot, I think. 

Sam Baker: Yeah, I mean it was very, it was a bit very tempting just to lock the door and turn around and que back.

Mm-hmm. Even though I was like looking out of the room I was working in, I was looking out at the North Sea [00:49:00] and, you know, it was gorgeous, beautiful. It ticked all my boxes. Um, but by the time it. I was like, oh, I could definitely do with another day too. So maybe five days. I think after a week I would be like, get me out of here.

But three actual days with travel wasn’t quite enough. 

Katherine May: Yeah, 

Sam Baker: it was just almost just enough to really get into it. So five you days I think are work, or are you missing people by that point? Uh, well, in that case I was working. It was, it was okay. Yeah. So I wasn’t really missing work. I think I really got into the work at that point and were like, actually I could do with one more day, but I was missing having someone to chat to.

Katherine May: Yeah. 

Sam Baker: Yeah. When you reach point where you start going into [00:50:00] shops just to talk to someone, 

Katherine May: that’s when you know everything’s broken and you’ve gotta turn around and go back again. That’s quite interesting. I mean, it, that’s not long really is it? It’s so, I, and I, I kind of experienced the same cycle. I, I spend my whole life thinking, I just want time on my own.

I want everyone to leave me alone. I want, you know, complete silence. I want nobody to demand anything of me. And then I go away on my own, and that lasts like, I think maybe three days before I start feeling pangs for home and, and wanting to just, you know, return Loved.

In the flow of other, of other lives. It, yeah, it pulls very quickly. I think for me, 

Sam Baker: if you spend a lot of your day writing, um, and you spend a lot of time in your own head, but for me it’s important and it’s one of the reasons I love podcasting ’cause it’s compulsory to [00:51:00] talking to other people. I, you need to get out of your head too.

I need to get outta my head. 

Katherine May: Yeah. Yeah, you can get very deep into your head, I think, when you do the kind of work we do. And really, yeah, it, it can be, it can really transform your mood just because you haven’t spoken to another person 

Sam Baker: and real people. As well. You know your characters actual person Yeah.

In the room with you, not because, you know, yes, you can go on social media and chat to people and, but not the same. It’s definitely not the same. And also that’s where, if you’re already deep in your head, that’s where the, they’re a bestseller, you know? Yeah. They’re this, they’re that. If you’re that way inclined into my shame, I am.

Yeah. That’s where that. Starts to kick in. Whereas if you are in the, you know, in the kitchen having a cup of tea with a real live person talking about [00:52:00] real life mundane, that kind of switches off all that noise. 

Katherine May: A final question. What do you bring back from your retreat with you? Do you bring a souvenir or do you bring a thought or a feeling or an idea?

Like what, what comes back home? Cat. Ideally. Yeah. Don’t cat the cat. 

Sam Baker: Um, well, in an ideal world, some of that calm,

if I haven’t. Because the flip side of having spent five days, that days of my own is that I could have gone completely inside my head and I could need to come home to get calm. 

Katherine May: Yeah. 

Sam Baker: Um, so yes, fully, fully basket case, but I’m very likely to have picked up, you know, pine Cone or, yeah. Shell.

[00:53:00] Particularly nice worn pebble, something like that. And then I’ll carry it home and it’ll be rolling around the bottom of my bag and I just carried a 

Katherine May: rock home for You need a desk beach? That’s what I have. Like I have a little wash of stones and shells at the side of my desk. Oh, do you? Oh, I’d love to see that.

The desk, it doesn’t look like much, but it just, otherwise, what do you do with all those little, little lovely objects that you can’t help but bring home with you? Sam, thank you. That has been lovely, and I am so grateful for your honesty about how hard it is to retreat. I think it’s really easy to perform retreats and actually, I think yours is probably one of the realest set of answers we’ve had.

So thank you so much. I hope you managed to enjoy it a little bit, even despite being in your head. 

Sam Baker: Oh, well, thank you for letting me in. I’m, um, I’m sorry I didn’t, um. I didn’t come conjure up a beautiful spa with, you know, papaya and, which of course now I’m thinking, oh my God, I should have just gone to [00:54:00] Thailand and, you know, eaten fresh fruit and wafted.

Would you have 

Katherine May: enjoyed it though, or would you have been on your phone secretly, under the table? 

Sam Baker: I wouldn’t have enjoyed it because inevitably somebody would’ve been doing yoga and I can’t touch, I can barely touch my knees that lower my toes. I would’ve immediately. Identified my own shortcomings and that would’ve been that you’d have spent the week in great annoyance.

I think 

Katherine May: you chose the right one for you.

Welcome back. Hope you enjoyed that. I have a strong feeling that lots of people listening will have found a lot to relate to there. It always bothers me a little bit that in my work. I’m called so often to talk about the need to take rest, the need to retreat. It’s in the subtitle of my book after all, but it’s very easy to get [00:55:00] into an unreal conversation about those kinds of issues.

One that is devoid of the reality of the obligations that loads of us have, the genuine restraints rather than the habits of thought that we like to talk about. You know, we like to say, oh, that’s just a mindset issue, but not everything is, and I. I was so grateful for Sam’s willingness to just be honest about how this actually lands.

For her to really voice that belief that comes up in many of us, that we just dunno how to do it. That conviction that. We are not sure who we would be if we stopped working, but also the very stark reality that we often work in industries where [00:56:00] things would carry on without us and forget us very quickly, or at least that’s the sense we have now.

That doesn’t mean to say that change isn’t possible, but I love that Sam let us meet her exactly where she is and. Really dug into the minutia of those thoughts and feelings of resistance that comes up. It is not lost on me that I’m recording. Best discussion just as I am in the middle of a cold and I’m carrying on anyway, because that’s what we do, isn’t it?

That’s what we all do. I love to think that as in my twenties, if I had a cold, I’d take a day off work and lie in bed with the duvet pulled up to my chin. Watching movies, but in fact I am just keeping going because there’s lots to do before Christmas [00:57:00] and I can’t afford to get behind right now, so I’m croaking at you instead.

And sending solidarity to everyone else who is carrying on despite feeling under the weather at this time of year. We can dream though, right? And that’s what we’ll carry on doing. Take lots of care of yourself. Wrap up warm. Drink lots of hot honey and lemon and I will see you next week with another dream retreat and more hopes that one day we’ll be able to rest.

Take care.