Hi Everyone,

I’m sat in the Eurostar terminal in Brussels waiting for the train. I’m going back to the house in Hebden Bridge today. I really enjoy living alone and haven’t had the chance since I left Belgium in 2016 so

I’m glad I get the chance again even if it is only for 7 weeks. Once I close the door that’s it. My way…..absolute bliss!!!! I can honestly say that I really enjoy being on my own and feel that it’s what I need right now.

When I start thinking about what to write in my blog there are so many things I could talk about and if I started writing it in a few hours it could be a whole different blog. I stayed at my friends all weekend in a place called Dilbeek in a posh house so I could sing in Brussels all weekend but after my gig in Antwerp on Friday my voice said a big fat ‘NO’. It had had enough. I started to sing in Brussels on Saturday and knew within 30 seconds it was not happening so I had to stop. I have had a cough for the last two weeks and although it’s now gone it wiped me out a bit and last week I sang when it wasn’t quite right and I shouldn’t have done because it messed me up even more so it’s time now to really just ‘shut up’ until it’s working properly again. Nothing I can do. Ride the wave of shutting up. Plan b was buying baguette, cheese and pate (love this kind of stuff), seeing friends, seeing art and drinking a beer instead (which I would have done anyway).

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January has been a bit of a write off singing wise. I had my cough so had to ride that out and haven’t been able to practise my arias for when I go back to America at all. This week will be just getting my voice back properly and next week will be singing for the charity Lost Chord again to get some cash in. After that it’s full steam ahead to hibernating, living alone and getting the work done I need to do. If not, it’s going to really start doing my head in, and the fear will come in that I won’t be ready and things won’t happen. This is my biggest fear. That I won’t do the things in life I feel like I’m going to do.

I did have a nice time in Belgium though. It’s always good to go back to a place you haven’t been to for a while to see how much you’ve changed inside. I used to come back and think ‘yep, I did my time here and it doesn’t really do so much for me now’ to going to some of my favourite spots and really appreciating them again.

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I saw friends, did my concert which went really well (thank god my voice was ok for that as I hate to let people down) and went to an art exhibition in Brussels. Belgium is where it all began. I started singing on the streets here. I was terrified. People reacted well to it and moved me on in life to the next chapter. I got amazing experiences and appeared on the TV doing my ‘opera for the people’ thing. I owe them a lot. I love that they are cultured people and it’s like Elton John said in his gig in Madison Square Gardens ‘there’s nothing a musician likes more than having direct contact with their audience’. I totally get that. It gives me a lot of happiness to see people’s reactions and know I’m doing something good. I’ve filled my rucksack with Belgian beer to bring back with me, had a few jacuzzi baths at my friend posh house (the bath dried itself too), and am not sure when I’ll be returning. Let’s see what happens with the carnage that is Brexit first and how difficult it will be to pop over the Europe.

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It was sold out, I shared my stories in Dutch and English and shared my heart with everyone. I can say that the more I do it the more I learn to just be myself with it. I listen to myself chatting on some videos and think ‘god, I sound so common’ and start to question myself and then think ‘being me is the only way it works’. I even got told twice from people, that after seeing Angela Gheorghiu in Antwerp recently they preferred my singing and concert. That may be the best compliment I’ve ever had, especially when it was said to me twice and completely separate to one another. Definitely doing something good.

My mind has been full though. Full of self doubt in general. Full of needing to love myself right now and not if I am slimmer or this, that and the other. Full of the fact that I judge things and people so much but know it’s only because I’m judging myself and am hard on myself. I feel myself doing it. I see the not so good things before I see any of the good. I criticise myself for not being perfect and I just don’t give myself credit for what I have actually achieved. I’ll look back and be like ‘Nick, you just didn’t see what you had done’.

I can be listening to a YouTube video of self love affirmations and be saying them in my attempt to learn to accept myself as I am, and then I can look in the mirror or see a photo and think my face looks fat, I’m too fat and I’m ugly. A friend took loads of videos of my concert and all I could see was that my tummy looked so big in the dress. The dress was a mistake.

I’m actually becoming aware of it and am going to face this shit this right now because this year is about building a stronger and better relationship with myself and the love has to first and foremost come from me and not from others. I learnt that last year. Continually looking for acknowledgement from others to feel validated. I wasn’t really loved by my parents so I became little Miss make myself perfect and people pleaser extraordinaire so I would be loved. No more. It’s time to do it for myself. I’m not going to carry on being mean to myself on the inside.

My mind is full of America and this year too. It’s 8 weeks until I go back and I’ve spoken about it with friends this weekend who asked about it. I’m scared. I can honestly say I have absolutely no idea what to do this time when I go out there. I’m not thinking ‘can’t wait to go back’, but more ‘shit, it’s 8 weeks and I just have no idea what to do this time’. It’s a really lesson in ‘no choice but to go with the flow’. I’m tired of pushing out of fear and I’m tired of the continual trying to work it out so I’m going for the

‘I don’t really know what I’m doing so let’s let the universe and life sort it out this time’ theory. Worth a try because I have no answers. Fear says I’ll never find a way to stay and what will I do then?’ ‘How am I going to make money in general to keep all this going?’ ‘Will I get any work?’ ‘Will the agent do anything?’ ‘Faking it until I make it’ thinking says ‘just go and carry on and it will sort itself out at some point. Just trust’. ‘Faking it until I make it thinking’ tells me to look to the positive, see myself there, see all this becoming clearer, to trust that I am guided and helped, that I am good enough and that I am beautiful both on the inside and out, and that what I am doing is just so exciting and what life is about.

I’m not saying I can think that all the time but it’s all steps in the right direction. I heard Esther Hicks on Hay House radio this morning saying ‘you create your future through your thoughts’, so sticking in the fear is ultimately not going to help. ‘I’m still standing’ as Elton John said.

So it’s back to Hebden Bridge and a bit of simpler living. I keep going for walks in the forest literally at the back of where I live. Great to be back in nature and my bestie Joe from Canada is visiting later this week for a few days (on the photo above). He’s never been to the North of England so I want to show him some of my ‘real turf, back to my roots and all that’.

I’m also singing at The Fielden Centre in Todmorden on Friday for a charity called Molly and Bill. A mix of Scottish songs and some opera for the people. Always good to help others.

I had some good sessions in the stations in London too. I always start in my head thinking ‘will anyone be interested’, singing over the noise of the announcements and thinking ‘tired of singing over noise at times’, and then I get good comments and people say ‘I’ve had a shitty day and you’ve cheered me up’ or they send me things like this

and you know your little bit of ‘faking it until you make it light’ is making a difference to people. I even got chatting to Kate Royal’s dad in Waterloo. She was an amazing singer (top of her game) until a few years ago when she’d just had a baby and got slated in reviews at Glyndebourne for looking tired and washed out (written by a man of course, and what a prick he was). He said she knew her voice wasn’t quite right so she cancelled all her work for the next three years and was just starting to get back into it. He was really emotional about it and we both chatted over how much singing means to me and for Kate too.

I’ve had a look on YouTube at some of the videos of her singing that caused some of the dodgy reviews and she looks stunning. She was the Marschallin in ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ and she looks nothing but elegant and her singing is lovely. Good luck to her I say…..

I’m boarding my train in a minute….so it’s back to this I go……nature is calling (hope that clears my head a bit). Bye for now!!!!!

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www.iamnicolamills.com