I returned to Spain to help a Swiss woman build her dream –a finca that would one day become a meditation center.
The work was real and unglamorous. We fixed rooms. Started building an outdoor kitchen. Mended sprinklers. Watered plants. Cleaned the chicken coop. Hauled gravel. Dug layers for a new pool floor. The days stretched long under the Costa del Sol sun –some climbing to forty-four degrees Celsius.
We started early. Always early. We stopped at lunch, when the heat made further effort unreasonable and the body demanded mercy. Lunch was communal –we took turns cooking, chopping, stirring, sharing whatever energy we had left.
There were four of us –workawayers. With that many people in close quarters, drama was inevitable. I chose not to participate. I stayed in the middle –a Swiss of sorts– neutral, observant, passing through.
After lunch came the pool. Relief. And then, something unexpected.
Because of FISM, because of bubbles and wonder and permission, I started writing again. Children’s books. A play –maybe Fringe-worthy, maybe not, but a beginning either way. The point wasn’t polish. The point was momentum.
I laid my plans out casually to the two Germans I worked alongside. They nodded, unbothered. Later, I realized they had assumed I was an artist all along. We had never spoken about occupations. No résumés. No explanations. Just who we were, right now.
And for the first time in a long while, my creative juices didn’t feel like something I had to force. They flowed naturally, in the quiet hours after labor, after heat, after shared meals.
I didn’t want to lose that feeling.
Under the Spanish sun, with dirt under my nails and stories on the page, I understood something simple:
Creation doesn’t require comfort. It requires space.
And I was finally making room.
