As I sit on the terrace now at 6:30am, looking over the rooftops, soaking in the gentle morning light as it sheds that almost ethereal quality over the bay while the mountain dips its toes in the still water (having been planning and writing the blog for for the last five hours), it strikes me that I only seem to get inspired when I’m on holiday.

Perhaps this is because I’ve got so much going on in my head when I’m at home – all too often I talk about the continuous noise in my head – be it work1 (busy corporate days), work2 (underlying desire to figure out how to make holistic work, work) or life in general (moving house, adoption process, settling in Buddy [our adorable new cat], grieving for Bob [our previous and much beloved cat]…)

Or perhaps it’s because I only allow myself the time to quietly think think rather than busily think while I’m away from the things that occupy my mind on a typical non-holiday day.

In fact, I realise this morning that, even without any sleep (OK, so I did have a couple of hours…and several more during the day yesterday), I am able to summon ideas (and exciting ones) from the depths of somewhere when I put my mind to it.

I say mind because the thought has just occurred to me that only yesterday, several days into the holiday, I was feeling a bit frustrated, restless and not knowing what to do with myself except play Patience (a game my Grannie taught me as a child when I complained of being bored) that I hadn’t come up with a holiday plan yet.* So, I said it out loud to myself that I would find the plan if I tried hard enough.

I say tried hard enough but I guess I mean, I spent 15 minutes after making the statement putting together the what it looks like mind map (desired income, strengths, weaknesses, themes…) and then left it to the inside cogs and levers of my intuition. And now, several hours later, I’m here writing the seventh post for a blog that I created almost a year ago and, until now, has been home to just three entries.

Perhaps inspired by Owen’s creative exploits (several TV and film ideas in the offing, one being represented by a US agent) and my enjoyment at contributing (even a little) to the stories, perhaps by my own desire to tell stories or maybe just the coin dropping – finally – to let the inspiration flow.

Who knows if this is the cunning plan, or whether it will lead to it but at least I feel like the holiday headspace has finally opened up and that I’m getting somewhere.

And so, as the sun continues to melt the blanket of overnight clouds, I wonder how many more stories I can pen before sleep, and the searing heat of an July day in Kalkan, inevitably catches up with me.

I realise that the real trick is going to be how I keep a little bit of holiday headspace open for business at all times…any and all suggestions welcome.

* During almost every holiday I’ve taken over the last few years, I’ve come back with a notebook full of ideas and lists of To Dos for the latest cunning plan.