Revival

At the end of May 2019 the front-line team of two distinct roles at my workplace was restructured, leading to two to three months of panic, confusion and uncertainty. The restructure left me, personally, much better off, though the same cannot be said of many of the old team. In August, starting my new job, I felt I was exactly where I needed to be. Obviously the rush of learning new things and getting involved in as many projects as possible (not a recommendation) meant that months passed by with new priorities and developing interests. Naturally, I stopped writing this blog, though I still thought of it.

November and December were harbingers of chaos due to my own actions and those of my equally-mad family but I’ll not be going into that, for the moment at least.

I moved into a new flat with a close friend just before Christmas, and I brought in the New Year alone, looking out over the river Lune from my new, industrial balcony. I watched Jools properly for the first time, felt pleased with myself that I had made a healthy decision, and relished the departure from my usual New Year routine (get totally gazebo’d). I thought to myself, I have plenty of time to go out and see my friends (need I spell out the irony).

I have spent months healing from the multiple disasters of the end of 2019, but I don’t need to explain how the year has been since March. We don’t all experience it in the same way, far from it, but we are all going through it. Some more effectively than others (*Googles librarian jobs in New Zealand*).

At some point in the last few months I received a certificate which tells me that at various points in the past three years I have been studying for an MA. Honestly it’s a blur, and after the past few months wreaking havoc on our collective consciousness, the only proof that it happened is a pile of notebooks and printed out articles, and this certificate. Choosing, for my own sanity, to adjust from masters to postgraduate diploma and to eschew the dissertation writing portion of the degree, was one good decision I have made this year. Somehow it feels like it all happened a decade ago.

We moved again towards the end of August, forever tied to the rhythms of moving every academic year due to student property managers handling most of the houses in this town. The ceilings are high and the floors are laminate. It’s very fancy and I never want to leave – except when I dream about my own space, pets, a garden.

But not right now. Right now is about survival, about coping, about learning to self-soothe as the days get shorter and the lack of human interaction affects us in sharper ways than ever. Look after yourselves. I’ll try to be here, looking after myself too, and maybe we can look after ourselves together.