Older, but no wiser

“Without self-knowledge and genuine connection, relationships at work can only go in one direction. They can only become more political, power-based, superficial and bureaucratic. They can only focus on "the task," without the everyday genius of creativity, context, meaning -- and joy.”

Wise words from Dan that I appreciate only too well.

This is where I'll be in just over an hour from now, in that seat just below centre, with my right ear about a foot from that timpani. Last night was the opening night of the show; four more nights then just maybe life will return to some semblance of normality and I'll have more than just a passing moment for blogging. Hopefully.

I spotted this at Andrea's and couldn't resist...

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Cult Classic

Quirky, offbeat, and even a little campy - your life appeals to a select few. But if someone's obsessed with you, look out! Your fans are downright freaky. Your best movie matches: Office Space, Showgirls, The Big Lebowski

I nearly didn't stop. Rushing through King's Cross station this morning, the row of lamp globes, lit by the sun streaming through the huge window at the head of the concourse, caught my eye. Just a detail, but on the offchance, I'd put my camera in my bag since it was a cold, clear morning and I had an errand to run in a potentially photogenic spot. So I backtracked, stood in the midst of the bustling crowd until an opening presented itself, snapped a couple of times, and strode on. It wasn't until I saw the result that I realised how the great iron arches give a cathedral-like feel to the space.


Later edit: At Andrea's suggestion, I thought I'd enter this one for the Thursday Challenge theme this week of Patterns.

No words of wisdom; but by way of an apology for the silence here lately, this is one of the things on my mind at the moment.

I have the opportunity for what could turn out to be a rather dramatic life change. Give the finger to a meaningless job, sell up, move out, start again somewhere new. My employer is looking to shed staff, and if I applied for voluntary redundancy there’s a good chance that I’d get it. After all, I’m over 50 and such skills and knowledge that I have are out of date in a business whose focus is exclusively high-tech. The pay-off would keep us going, at a pinch, for a year or so, and in that time we’d have to swap one lifestyle for something very different.

I say have to, because, regardless of whether I could get another job along the lines of what I do now, the fact is that I don’t want one; it would be utterly pointless to go through all the trauma of change only to end up back where I started, but surrounded by a different set of walls. Why walk out of one prison straight into another? No, if I’m going for change this has to be The Big One – a change to find a lifestyle and a way of spending the years that are left to me that is of my own choosing. Or more accurately, of our choosing – a complete family decision.

So I could quit, and survive for a year. But then what? If I’m not going to work for a Corporate, I need to find a way to live on a much lower income, hence the need to relocate, partly to lower the cost of living, but mostly to realise the equity tied up in the house.

And the knock-ons of such a move of course impact on those nearest and dearest to me.

It would be a dramatic change…


So why have I been keeping quiet about it all?

I had an unusual email several months ago, from a reader of this blog. Neatly wrapped in the compliments was the suggestion that I was becoming self obsessed, and the less time I spent focusing on my own problems, the happier I’d be. It sounded like good advice, but in opening the door to that thought it seems to have taken up residence in a way that neither I, nor I’m sure the writer, ever imagined. I find that I'm blocked from writing about my inner journey; in fact I find I’m not even having much of an inner journey any more - I keep hearing a nagging, scolding, jeering tongue in my head saying “self obsessed, self obsessed”, and so thoughts that centre on self die still-born.

So there we are. I said I’d talk about one of the things on my mind; that turned out to be two. There are others as well, but for now that’ll do.

Having a dental appointment this morning has its advantages - it means I'm at home with enough time to record scenes like this:



At the time I snapped, I had no idea that a bird had kindly chosen to pose for me off to the right. In the camera viewfinder, it could only have occupied a couple of pixels and was only revealed in this centre crop from a much larger image.

A slightly different crop from the same original is also on Flickr.