Unwind with… is a regular column that explores the simple ways interesting people take care of themselves through periods of change or upheaval.
Robbie Arnott is an award-winning author who juggles parenting, a part-time job and writing.
The 36-year-old lives in Nipaluna/Hobart and has written four novels set within Lutruwita/Tasmania, most recently, Dusk, published in 2024.
But Arnott isn't someone with a strict timetable and romanticised rituals.
"I always get confused by this idea of routine. I don't have a routine," he says. "It's all just chaos and I try to get everything done I need to get done."
He works at an advertising agency three days a week, cares for his two-year-old daughter one day, and has one weekday set aside for writing.
Robbie and his wife, Emily, are also preparing to welcome their second child very soon.
He says caring for a newborn and a "rambunctious" two-year-old might mean he'll be "less stressed out but more exhausted" this time around.
Moments when I feel my happiest…
When my wife and I get to be together without just talking about logistics and nappies. Those moments sneak up on us.
For example, when one of us needs to catch a plane and we drop our daughter off at day care, and then the plane gets delayed. We get to spend an hour just talking to each other.
I go for a walk at least once or twice a week around the reserve that runs off Kunanyi /Mount Wellington into West Hobart. I feel contented and happy there.
It's probably where I get most of my work done. Letting all the ideas sift through my head. Staring at the mountain, the trees and the yellow-tailed black cockatoos. The work will kind of figure itself out in the back of my mind as I trudge around.
And, maybe once a week I have one really cold beer at the pub and then I run back home to be Dad.
At my most exhausted it helps to…
Be in nature. Walking around the reserve is the most helpful thing to me. Leaving my phone at home and just going and staring at the mountain or a forest or getting in the water.
I find it really tempting to just have a couple of drinks, because that's a shortcut to relaxation. But, it's a very shallow form of being relaxed.
So, the best thing I ever do is I go for a stroll — sometimes late at night.
I don't listen to anything while I'm walking, because I really need my brain to be bored and just kind of subconsciously sift through things. If I'm listening to a podcast or an audiobook it's a distraction.
It's too important to be bored, so there are always wonderful podcasts I'd love to listen to that I just can't. I just never know what anyone's talking about. But that's the only way I can stay sane.
What I find most helpful when it all gets too much…
Occasionally I feel like my head's going to screw off and I can't really cope with the pressure.
I take a day off writing, and I drive to the east coast [of Tasmania], to a beach no-one really knows about except locals. I swim out and I go underwater, and I just stay out until my head stops hurting. I come out of the water and stare at the blue gums.
As I've gotten older, I really like swimming in the ocean to relax. It calms you in a way that I don't experience elsewhere.
Other things I do when I want to relax…
I'm a writer, but I'm a reader of fiction before that. It's the great pleasure of my life. Reading can make us forget about ourselves for a while and live in another world, and someone else's mind.
This is really helpful, because not only does it calm us down, it kind of expands our consciousness.
