Lord of all i survey

For 26 years I was a roofer. For about 15 of those I was a specialist lead worker. On site I could earn £30 an hour, take home £1,000 a week. I was physically very strong, highly skilled, relatively personable, very experienced. And what I didn't know I would ask.

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth

This was because the first lesson I got as a roofing labourer was that if I ever I thought I had arrived it meant that I hadn't arrived at all. Humility, not knowing- the Taoist calls it the beginners mind- is the prerequisite to all learning.

It has taken a long time to apply this lesson to other things.

Roofing is one of the most physically demanding "trades" there is. Traditionally, roofers have bad backs, bad knees and quite a disproportionate number have bad drug habits. Because of the last of these, I managed to ignore the first and after 15 years it brought me to my (still quite good) knees.

Nine times out of ten, two out of three is not bad.

That first humiliation was mental, emotional and spiritual, and I changed a great many bad habits, but I continued to neglect my spine and 5 or 6 years later it said enough. It had been bad for years but two prolapsed discs wasn't something I could just walk off.

So I got off the tools and built a nice office and got a nice computer. Bought a fancy 4 wheel drive.

But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

For another 5 years I expanded the roofing business,  a great many opportunities came and went and fantastically large (for me) sums of money passed through my bank account. I got busier and busier and the problems and challenges got bigger and bigger. I tried to make big money and took some big risks.

But if I was honest, (which for the most part, especially with myself, I was not) my heart wasn't really in it. And success, like my heart, wasn't in it either. I became a slave to it, I worked hard to pay my overheads and to keep men in work. I lost myself in the stress and the details of it.

A master reputedly once said, "what shall it profit a man who gains the world and loses his soul?" My reply to him would be, "how much more empty then is it for me to lose my soul and not even be able to pay off my overdraft?

And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

This year I have mercilessly cut my overheads, got rid of the vehicles that weren't already paid for and laid off the guys who worked for me. One by one I have been shedding the excuses I made for not doing what I must do, but which tears me apart and then puts me back together in some hitherto unknown form.

I've made a decision to let inspiration and creativity guide me. To reconnect with my essential nature- Find out if I even possess such a thing.

Every time I stop, get a chance to breathe, tears well up from deep inside of me. I suspect that it's because I have fucked up so badly that there is no way back. Or maybe it's because my heart is calling me to lead me back home.

As my dad might have said, I'll be buggered if I know.