It has been a while, Reader. More than six months.
It's not that I've gone anywhere. I've been here, doing the same things in the same frenetically paced life. I've been thinking. Traveling. Observing. But not writing. I didn't want to write. In the deeper past, I would push through those feelings of not wanting to write until I wanted to write again. Because writing is connecting. But in the recent past, I decided I didn't care. Because I actually found I didn't care. I have become a person who decides they don't care and then they don't care. Sometimes.
So what brings me back now? In September?
Several things. Observations, I suppose, that I want to share, even if only with the emptiness of the internet.
For example, one of the headlines in my news feed this morning was that a professional Australian rules football game was delayed for 30 minutes while a snake handler removed a venomous red-bellied black snake from the field. That is such an Australian thing. It made me smile, and I wanted to share that smile a little more broadly. But where?
There is this blog here, where I used to host salons and parties and discussions. The furniture is a bit dusty, but it will be ok after a good vacuum. A real issue is that the highway has been rerouted. Few people stop here anymore. But that isn't a reason not to change up the artwork when I feel like it. Consider this post a refresh of the artwork.
So what has been happening with me?
In work, I've been in a leadership role. I've really liked meeting people, and lifting others, and being a part of something bigger than me and my little corner of work. Right up until I didn't like it anymore.
I didn't like it when the other leader guy stared at me while asking why the project didn't get up, and I owned it as a leader does, and responded by trying to chase the feral cats into the boardroom to drink tea. They're in the boardroom now, Reader, but they're peeing on the carpet, not eating biscuits with dainty gloved hands.
I didn't like it when the stochastic nature of funding put us up sometimes and down sometimes, and although none of it really had much to do with me, I had to speak to it, good and bad. And it was winter and I wasn't sleeping. And back in my own corner of my own work, I had a lot of people knocking on the door asking about cool things, and I realised those are the things I cared about and wanted to spend more time on. I noticed that I really really wanted to stop caring about the leadership stuff, and stop showing up with the tea service in the boardroom, just like I did with this blog here.
So I've asked to step down and step back from one leadership role, to spend more time in a place where I can build up my own work again for a while. Expected date of change is January 2024, but just knowing that the end is in sight has helped me to have a little more energy again. It feels good to have some energy.
Because I am changing, Reader.
Or maybe I have changed.
I think the silence here at this blog is a symptom of me, changing. Years ago I read that everyone plans to write a novel during retirement, but when they hit retirement they find they don't care. I'm not retired -- nowhere near. But I'm not caring about the same things that kept me awake for years.
I don't read novels anymore. I used to read dozens of novels every year. But recently I have found that I just didn't care, and I stopped.
I can't sleep past about 6:30am. I get up every morning and usually try to do something productive, and usually just read the news instead. That's how I know about red-bellied black snakes delaying football games in New South Wales.
I blame it on hormones. I'm getting old. Surely this must be peri-menopause? Tim sometimes gets frustrated with people, although the feral cats he is trying to herd need to go into a different boardroom. He doesn't read many novels either. Tim is the same age as I am. So I blame his frustration on peri-menopause as well.
Not sleeping well, Tim? That's a symptom of menopause. Aches and pains? Menopause. Variable emotions, ranging from happiness one minute to frustration the next? Menopause. Tim and I are so menopausal. He and I are each a perfect textbook picture of what peri-menopause looks like.
A good blog post ends with a good conclusion, and maybe some discussion points for the visitors to comment upon while sitting on the now-vacuumed furniture and sipping tea. I'm not counting this as a good blog post, so I shall end it instead with a photo I took on the train platform a couple of days ago. At the top of my shoe, look closely to see a large spider. This is actually a baby-sized huntsman spider, just chilling on the platform with me. It didn't hop on the train when I did, Reader. It just stayed there, contemplating leadership as one does.
