Living in Scotland When Your Life Looks Nothing Like You Planned

There are boxes of second-hand clothes in my cottage, grapes hanging from the roof of my greenhouse and twenty-five eBay listings waiting to be photographed before I go to bed.

None of this was in the plan.

Then again, very little about my life now resembles the version I once imagined.

I haven't written much about that lately because I've been busy actually living it. Family came to stay for a while, the house was full, the dogs spent several days proving that love does not necessarily extend across species households, and for a little while everything felt wonderfully noisy.

I loved it.

Once everyone had gone home, I found myself thinking about something I'd been avoiding for a while: what exactly am I doing with my YouTube channel?

I just didn't know what belonged there anymore.

And I think part of the problem was that I was trying much too hard to turn my life into a niche.

I Somehow Became an eBay Reseller

If you had asked me at the beginning of the year what I'd be spending much of August doing, I would not have said:

trying to build an eBay shop with 1,000 active listings.

Yet that is currently consuming an astonishing amount of my time.

What started as something I wanted to try became something I genuinely enjoy. I like finding things. I like working out what sells. I like the numbers. I like seeing whether changing something makes a difference.

And apparently I also enjoy surrounding myself with clothing rails.

I'm now listing 25 items every day with the intention of reaching 1,000 active listings by September.

It is ambitious.

Possibly ridiculous.

But if I manage it, I'll have built something substantial in a remarkably short amount of time.

The more involved I became, the more I wanted to talk about the actual business of reselling: sales figures, stock, brands, mistakes, wholesale boxes, listing strategies and whether increasing inventory really does translate into more sales.

That deserved somewhere of its own.

So I've started another YouTube channel, The Rural Reseller, specifically for all of that.

If eBay reselling, online income and the less glamorous reality of trying to build a small business from home are your thing, I'll link it alongside the video for this post.

Separating the two channels has actually made something else much clearer.

I finally know what I want my main channel to be.

I'm Going to Stop Trying to Turn My Life Into a Content Strategy

My life is the content.

That sounds ridiculously obvious now that I've written it down.

I live in Scotland, in an old cottage close to the sea.

I grow things.

Sometimes successfully.

I run businesses from home.

I'm losing weight.

I write.

I make things.

I've started writing music again.

There are big things I hope to do with my life over the next few years and lots of smaller things happening between them.

Why have I spent so much time convincing myself that only one of those things is allowed on a YouTube channel?

So that's changing.

I'm going to share more of what life actually looks like here.

The garden. The cottage. Living in Scotland. Work. Weight loss. Music. Things going well. Things going spectacularly wrong.

And ordinary days where the most exciting event is discovering whether a pear is ripe.

Which brings me to today's pressing investigation.

Are the Pears Ready Yet?

We have reached that lovely part of the growing year where you suddenly realise that things are actually ready to eat.

There are tomatoes coming out of the greenhouse.

Courgettes have appeared.

The grapes are ripening.

And the pear tree is covered.

One useful clue is apparently inside the fruit itself. Cut one open and look at the seeds. Very pale or white seeds generally suggest it needs longer. Seeds beginning to turn brown are a better sign that the fruit is maturing.

So one pear is being sacrificed in the interests of research.

The grapes are easier.

They're just hanging there looking increasingly edible.

Tomatoes somehow seem reasonable. Courgettes seem normal. But grapes hanging inside a greenhouse a few minutes from the Scottish coast feel faintly rebellious.

As though I've managed to slip something past the weather.

I should probably avoid saying that too confidently. Scotland enjoys consequences.

Starting My Weight-Loss Updates Again

I'm also bringing my weight-loss journey back onto the channel.

This one matters to me far beyond having something else to make videos about.

When I first came here, I weighed around 137kg, the highest weight I'd ever reached.

I remember feeling frightened by it.

I could feel how far I'd drifted from myself.

There was no morning where I suddenly became incredibly disciplined and changed everything.

I wish.

There have been good stretches, difficult stretches, restarts and plenty of weeks where I could have done better.

With the help of GLP-1 medication, I have now come down to around 112kg.

That's approximately 25kg.

I still tend to look at the distance ahead rather than the distance already travelled, which is probably one of the reasons I'm going to start doing weekly weigh-ins again.

Public accountability has its uses.

There's something very motivating about knowing you'll have to appear on camera next week and explain what happened.

So there will be a weekly weight-loss video going forward.

And there are bigger reasons I want to keep going that I'll talk about when the time is right.

Carrot and Ginger Juice...

Today's attempt at making better choices involves carrot and ginger juice.

I haven't suddenly become the sort of person who believes one glass of juice will detox my organs.

I just like it.

Carrot juice is naturally sweet, ginger gives it a proper kick, and it's an easy way of getting something fresh into the day.

Ginger is also commonly used for nausea and digestive discomfort.

There is something satisfying about making juice from scratch while half the ingredients for dinner are growing a few metres away.

It gives the impression that everything here is terribly wholesome.

Please ignore the mountain of eBay clothing waiting in the other room.

I Want Music Back in My Life Too

This is probably the part I'm most nervous about putting online.

I've been writing songs again.

Music has always been there, but it's one of those things that's incredibly easy to keep private because there's always another excuse.

Need to magically become someone who isn't embarrassed by being vulnerable in public.

Eventually you realise you've been preparing to begin for ten years.

So I'm going to start doing Greenhouse Sessions.

Very simple.

Me in the greenhouse, playing one of my songs.

I'd rather have imperfect music existing somewhere than perfect music permanently sitting in a notebook.

Maybe the Unexpected Life Is Still a Life

When I was younger, I had a completely different picture of what my thirties would look like.

I think most of us do.

We collect these assumptions about where we'll live, who we'll be with, what work we'll do and which milestones we'll have reached by certain ages.

Then real life happens.

People die.

Plans fall apart.

Health changes.

Relationships change.

Opportunities disappear and completely unexpected ones appear.

Suddenly you look around and realise you're standing somewhere that wasn't even on the original map.

For a long time, I found that very difficult.

There is a particular kind of grief in looking at the life you thought you would have and realising you're not living it.

But I'm starting to wonder whether I've spent too much time measuring my actual life against an imaginary one.

Because this life isn't empty.

It's just different.

I'm living in a 180-year-old cottage in Scotland with my mum.

I'm growing food.

I've built an eBay business I didn't know I wanted.

I'm writing songs again.

I've lost 25kg.

I'm building things online.

There are enormous things I still want for my future.

And there is plenty I haven't figured out.

But I don't want to spend the years before those things happen acting as though I'm sitting in some sort of waiting room.

This is the life.

So that's what the channel is going to become too.

Less trying to work out what I'm supposed to post.

More simply documenting where life goes from here.

If you'd rather watch this little life update than read it, I've linked the new video with this post.

And if you've somehow ended up living a life that bears absolutely no resemblance to the one you once planned...

you're certainly not the only one.

Maybe we're not behind.

Maybe we're just somewhere else.