August 2018 – turn the season

Written on 14.08.18

I found it hard to say goodbye to my friend Rohan last night and it made me think about why. I’d not seen her in so long. We’ve been friends for over 10 years and a lot has changed and keeps us physically apart in that time. We’re very different but spending time with her feels so easy and nostalgic but fresh at the same time. She challenges me and supports me in the right ways.

She’s going away in a week or so on an indefinite adventure. This probably made it slightly harder to let go of her when we hugged goodbye but I can visit her wherever she might be in a few months time or she’ll come home.

She said something like “it feels so good to spend time with someone you really want to, who you have a genuine affinity with rather than the people you’re close to only by circumstance.”

It makes me realise how although I feel I am creating new relationships at work they still feel uneasy and I don’t feel secure in them or like they can be trusted just yet. Don’t get me wrong – I love the forced collision of our lives in my job but it’s still early days for me.

I know this comes with time but I think that this also contributed to the way I feel about the work and how secure I feel in it. If you have a tight group of people around you who can depend on each other the job can feel much more manageable and joy can be found in the camaraderie despite the awful situations you may be in. Day to day and in the bigger picture. But without that it feels unstable and as if the ground is shifting under foot.

I miss Rohan as well. I know that’s a reason. Geographically or just logistically I am far away from most of my close friends but I know that pales in insignificance compared to people who have loved ones half way around the world, although I have that too but not for the distressing reasons that others do.

I think when you’re missing some of those trusted relationships you probably put more weight on the few that you do have around you. My boys here are very good to me.

I just read an artical, essentially about taking the rough with the smooth and accepting that sometimes you feel like shit, on The Pool quoting Pema Chödrön. I did a bit of reading about her and found this:

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest

I don’t feel like shit bit I do feel thrown from the nest in the professional(ha!) side of my life. I think this is making me want to hunker down with those I love and trust to feel safe in my personal life.

There is a plan to see my old team next weekend but it’s logistically quite hard to achieve. I want to see them very much but this specific date is planned for a town further away than they usually are and would mean leaving the dog behind.

There was talk of them coming to me or me to them when they’re not going to be in Brighton and when the plan isn’t for them to go out and get drunk and I want those other plans to come to fruition more. I know it takes me doing work to make it happen and our shifts aligning but I’m not sure of the coming weekend plan is going to be fulfilling in the way I’d like it to be. (Update: I didn’t go and instead spent a lovely day in Worcestershire with people & dogs I like a lot too)

I’m also starting to see my productivity wane in my free time and this might be in part because I spend some time gazing at the hound at our feet. (walking him is pure positive use of time so that’s not quite what I mean)

But it’s also due to me getting sucked back into my phone especially when I am also worrying about work. I’ve noticed I use it as a switch off and I don’t like that. There are much better and healthier ways to solve those issues. The phone has become the new CSI. If I had a stressful day I’d just come home and put an old familiar episode on and switch off from the concerns bobbing around my brain. I’d rather read bad books in the search for a good one than waste my brain on that.

If I don’t go to Brighton i won’t drown in my phone screen or CSI.

I’ll do some chores.

I’ll bring the loaned books home and at least get a clearer idea of what I need to be learning and focusing on in the next year or so.

I’ll work on the application for the extended attachment in the department I want to be my future. (Update: This is pretty much done already having found some time at work)

The thing i’m most looking forward to is a little time to finish the novel I’m reading, although at the same time I don’t want it to end.

I’ve listened to the book shambles podcast with Ricky Gervais since writing this and he talks about wanting to go back to university and study so many different topics and then realised that he can learn what he might on a degree course just by reading so he rarely reads novels. But I think the education I take from good novels, be it emotional, anthropological or just some lyricism and poetry is reason enough to keep reading good novels.

This post is a bit of a shambles itself but it helped to write it down. The dogs curled up beside me with his heavy breath on my arm as I write this. I think that’s a reasonable use of my time.