The Quiet Mind

For a long time, I didn’t think much about coping mechanisms. Life just moved. Things happened, and I responded. I grew up in a loving family. My dad worked hard, my mum was a housewife, and while we weren’t extravagant, I never felt like I missed out. School wasn’t easy, but it was manageable. I played sport, went on holidays, got a job, paid my way. I’ve never been unemployed, and I’ve always taken pride in that.

In the wider context of the world, my life has been pretty easy.

That isn’t a judgement. It’s context. When life feels steady for long enough, you don’t tend to look underneath it. You don’t question what’s holding things together. You just keep moving.

I stayed busy. For years, that felt like balance.

Relationships were never something I found particularly easy, but they followed a familiar rhythm. A few girlfriends when I was younger, then I met the woman who would become my wife when I was nineteen. We were together for nearly twenty-five years. Over time, though, something shifted. We weren’t talking in the way we should have been. Day-to-day life felt harder than it needed to be, and the distance between us grew quietly rather than dramatically.

The decision to end my marriage was mine. It wasn’t made lightly, and it wasn’t made suddenly. It came from a long period of reflection and the realisation that staying would mean choosing familiarity over honesty. We were both still young enough to find happiness elsewhere, and I knew that stepping away, painful as it would be in the short term, was the right decision for the long term.

That choice didn’t collapse my life. But it did remove a structure I’d relied on for decades.

Not long after, the world shut down. Covid arrived and, for the first time in my life, I found myself living alone. Not as a preference, but as a condition. We were told not to leave the house, not to see friends, not to gather. Days blurred together. Structure dissolved. Isolation stopped being something I occasionally enjoyed and became something enforced.

I’ve always liked my own company. I still do. But that period taught me something I hadn’t fully grasped before. Enjoying solitude doesn’t mean you don’t need people. Connection isn’t a luxury. It’s essential.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, my mum passed away.

Even when you know someone’s health hasn’t been good, the call still lands the same way. One sentence that redraws everything around it. I remember being half an hour from heading out on a bikepacking trip when my dad rang. That trip never happened. Instead, I stayed home, trying to work out what to do with the weight of it.

What I did was move.

I started riding more. Long days on the bike. Quiet roads. Familiar thoughts looping and slowly unravelling. I now do a memorial ride every year for my mum, and those days have become something I protect. Time to think. Time to remember. Time to sit with things without having to explain them.

That wasn’t new, really. Running had played a similar role years earlier. There’s something about repetitive movement that gives your mind permission to wander and process. One foot in front of the other. Forward motion without decision-making. Space, without stillness.

Around the same time, another structure quietly disappeared. Racing stopped. Triathlon, which had given me direction and purpose for over a decade, vanished almost overnight. I’d already begun shifting away from chasing results towards exploring for myself, but losing that framework still mattered.

Only later did I understand that movement, challenge and routine were never just hobbies. They were how I kept myself steady.

I’ve always been someone who initiates. I make plans. I get out and do things. Independence has never scared me, and it’s something I value deeply. But independence has a side effect. When you’re always moving, people assume you’re busy. Self-sufficient. Sorted. Invitations don’t always come, not because people don’t care, but because it looks like you’re already elsewhere.

Most of the time, that’s fine. I’ve grown comfortable doing things alone. But every now and then there’s a quiet awareness that comes with it. Not loneliness in a dramatic sense. Just the sense of being slightly removed from the picture by your own momentum.

I’ve learnt that loneliness isn’t always about being alone. Sometimes it’s about being unseen.

In 2023, I was involved in a serious car accident. I was pulled from my truck by the fire department, strapped to a spine board and taken to hospital. Physically, I was lucky. Whiplash. Damage to my hands. Things that healed. Mentally, it stayed with me much longer.

When your life flashes before your eyes, certain thoughts stop being theoretical. Time feels different. I stopped assuming tomorrow would always be available. Not out of fear, but clarity. Fragility has a way of sharpening things.

Since then, I’ve pushed myself physically more, not to prove anything, but to feel present. Long rides. Big days. Choosing effort because it reminds me I’m here.

Not long after that, I left a job of over fifteen years to work for myself. Agency life had shaped me, taught me speed, discipline and craft, but it no longer fit the way I wanted to live. I didn’t stop caring about design. If anything, I cared enough to give it a different place in my life. I work to live now, not the other way around. If money didn’t matter, I’d still design, in the same way I’d still ride or run. It brings me joy.

This is roughly where things have landed.

My partner, Lou, lives in the UK with her boys. I spend close to six months of the year there. Life in the UK is full in a very different way. Family routines. Shared time. Being present. I still carve out space to move, to think, to disappear for a few hours, but the balance shifts. When I’m there, I’m part of something larger than myself, and that matters deeply to me.

When I’m back in Canada, life quietens again. More independence. More space. That contrast isn’t a problem. It’s intentional. I’ve come to understand that I need both. Solitude and connection. Freedom and responsibility. Time for myself and time for the people I love. When either side dominates for too long, I start to feel off-centre.

With more space has come awareness. Writing this chapter has made me realise how much of my life I moved through on momentum alone. Things happened, I adapted, I kept going, but I rarely stopped to look at why I responded the way I did or what I was quietly building to keep myself steady. It’s only by slowing down and pulling these threads together that I can now see how each experience shaped the next. I notice things I never questioned before. My need for order. Symmetry. Clean numbers. Things having a place. These aren’t quirks I try to justify. They are small ways of creating calm in a world that doesn’t offer much of it by default.

My mental health still moves around. Some days are easier than others. My social world can feel quieter at times, but it isn’t empty. People come and go. Seasons shift. Winter closes in. I fill my days with movement, the mountains, snowboarding. The things that remind me why I chose this place, and this way of living. I don’t have answers, and I don’t think that’s the point. What I do have now is awareness. And awareness doesn’t fix things, but it changes how you respond. Gently. Gradually. Over time.

The quiet mind isn’t somewhere you arrive.
It’s something you learn how to return to.

And learning that has changed everything.