The Walk

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1. The Month I Made My World Smaller

   31 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 2 min

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   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. Lees meer

   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.

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   The retreat I didn’t go on

   Originally, 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 worki…

2. My Hobbit Hole Needs an Upgrade

   21 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 11 min

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   Of all the rooms in my house, I spend most of my working day in what is basically a closet. Lees meer

   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 on

   The 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 …

3. My Fantasy Novel Sent Me Back to Seminary

   14 oktober 2026 · 55 min

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   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. Lees meer

   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.

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   Walking without going anywhere

   One 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 retreat

   What 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 g…

4. I Think I’m Suffering From Time Travel Whiplash

   9 oktober 2026 · 57 min

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   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. Lees meer

   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 write

   October 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 fascina…

5. I’m Excited to Be Writing Again

   3 oktober 2026 · 59 min

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   October has finally arrived, and I’ve been looking forward to it for quite some time. Lees meer

   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 blinking

   I’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 October

   On 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…

6. You Don't Have to Finish Everything You Start

   23 september 2026 · 50 min

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   At the beginning of this year, I decided I was going to read 100 books. Lees meer

   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 obligations

   There’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 project

   I 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 avo…

7. How to deal with a disturbance in the Force

   16 september 2026 · 1 uur

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   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. Lees meer

   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 Force

   As 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 lost

   There 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 some…

8. What Season of Life Are You In?

   13 september 2026 · 1 uur 2 min

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   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. Lees meer

   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 place

   Last 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 roles

   That 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…

9. Back in Medieval Ireland

   6 september 2026 · 58 min

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   Home again Lees meer

   Every weekday morning this week, I’ve found myself back in early medieval Ireland.

   The morning mist still hangs over the valley as monks make their way across the monastery grounds. The bell has just called the community to prayer. In the scriptorium, novices bend over their desks, learning to shape letters and illuminate manuscripts. Outside the walls, old legends are stirring, and somewhere in the distance a young novice is about to stumble into a story much bigger than he could ever imagine.

   Then I look up from my laptop.

   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 producing

   Only 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 a…

10. The Version of Me That Doesn't Exist

    30 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 2 min

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    A decluttering expert said something this week that I haven't been able to get out of my head.We often buy things not for the person we are today, but for the person we hope to become. Running shoes for the future athlete. A bread machine for the baker who’s definitely going to make fresh sourdough every weekend. An expensive sketchbook for the artist who’s just waiting for the right moment to begin. Lees meer

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

    Not just with possessions.

    With my life.

    For years I’d been making plans for someone who always seemed just around the corner. He somehow had enough time to keep half a dozen YouTube channels alive, maintain every hobby he’d ever enjoyed, answer every email the day it arrived, write books at remarkable speed and still have time left over for everything else.

    The strange thing is that I’d started measuring myself against him.

    No wonder I always felt behind.

    Learning the craft

    That realisation changed the way I looked at almost everything. I no longer felt guilty about projects that no longer fit the life I’m actually living. I stopped worrying that I wasn’t moving fast enough. Even my fantasy novel began to look different. Instead of asking why it still wasn’t finished, I found myself enjoying the slow process of becoming the writer who can tell this story well.

    That reminded me of one of Tolkien’s favourite ideas. He described artists and storytellers as sub-creators. God alone creates from nothing. We receive creation as a gift and shape it through imagination, craftsmanship and patience. I’ve always loved that image because it shifts the focus away from producing something as quickly as possible. Craft isn’t measured by speed. It’s measured by the care you bring to it.

    Perhaps that’s why I find so much joy these days in things that don’t seem particularly efficient. Painting medieval-style creatures in watercolor. Recording conversations with fantasy authors. Walking through …

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