Life-&-Living

It has been that sort of month since I was last here, the sort where the only possible response once the worst of it has passed is one of navel gazing self congratulation, at having survived without too much out of kilter, like a slight limp instead of a compound fracture…Between two trips offshore, a sore foot which required a pitstop at A&E and busyness multiplied exponentially, the past three weeks have sped by like a blur. My continuum? 12 hour work days, deadlines coming thick and fast, and weekends spent trying to catch up on the week’s backlog in time for a fresh load of things to chase for the new week. ...

[ Source] Three chance occurrences over the space of the last month have done a lot more to unsettle me than anything else in the year so far. Not in a bad way by any chance, but in an ask-myself-hard-questions way. Of the myriad of questions bobbing around in my mind, ones that relate to authenticity, passion and faith and how these can be melded into a coherent practice have come to the fore, inspired by how the people in question are doing life in their real worlds, leaving marks in ways I can only aspire to at this stage. ...

In chess: a situation in which the obligation to make a move in one’s turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage. In real life: a situation in which one realises that life is speeding by in a state of unstable equilibrium with all the possible moves only likely to lead to more instability, or possibly a catastrophic event… The solution? To stop, tear everything up and begin again… Maybe..

For the first time since July, I have begun to run again. Once a week - I’d like to make it twice - I don my bright orange jacket, shorts and running shoes and begin at a leisurely pace down Urquhart road, up Links Road and then gradually pick up pace until my feet are pounding the tarmac on the long stretch that is the Beach Esplanade. Sleep, or more accurately sleeplessness, has been one of the drivers for running again. Once awake sometime between 2am and 4am regardless of when I hit the sack, I find my mind far too active to go back to sleep. That is how I end up awake till it feels like a less ungodly hour to hit the road and run. What running does is afford me time to think - headphones plugged in, I can focus on the rhythm my feet make and the beat of whatever I am listening to. I am not alone in the pursuit of running zen, sometimes I pass other runners in different phases of their own runs, walking a dog or on the odd occasion an elderly couple out and about strolling. ...

\https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries?list=PLYbuHzHoxFuCf8ksItOz6ZdGAL_L8PR1W&w=800&h=315\ The continuum: loss, numbness, turmoil, (self induced) heartbreak, surrender and (finally) finding a peace of sorts.. Here’s to Beginning, Again… The Playlist Mad World - Gary Joules Wish - Lighthouse Family This Too Shall Pass - Yolanda Adams Shadowfeet - Brooke Fraser Father Me - Rick & Cathy Riso Read All About It - Emeli Sande Airplanes - B.O.B Love Alone Is Worth The Fight - Switchfoot Volcano - Rapture Ruckus & Jonathan Thulin Redemption Days - Josh Ojo Something New - Axwell Ingrosso Shake - MercyMe

[Image Source] It has been a deeply emotive week for me, bookended as it were by Sunday’s Remembrance Service - a year exactly to the day since we lost H- and the quiet, deathly stillness of my office today as I stand here, cup of coffee in hand looking out at the lunch time crowd milling about. As the week has gone along, the flurry of phone calls, emails and messages of commiseration I have had to field from people has eased off, allowing me some time to begin to reflect on where I am, and how things have evolved over the past year. Not much has changed by all accounts, I still haven’t brought myself to delete H’s details from my phone or my FB page for that matter - deceased 19th July 2014 is the only addition I have made on my phone - which led to a birthday reminder from FB in my feed the other day, as raw a reminder as there could be of the keenness of the loss we still feel. ...

Amara U, Flickr It is perhaps indicative of just how activity-starved my life has been lately that all it takes is a week’s notice for me to drag myself across the 397 odd miles down south to join K, family and parents in celebrating 35 years of staying married. In fairness to her, Royal Mail had a hand in the late invitation; when she texted me frantically that Friday afternoon, it was with a mind to chide me for my legendary tardiness. Only my strenuous denials backed up by the fact that I had moved houses recently saved me in the end. Long story short, I ended up on Friday night in the comparatively upscale setting of South Harrow, the hub around which we all converged - from every nook and cranny of the world it seemed, Scotland ably represented by yours truly. ...

Photo credits - David Goehring, Flickr - - All I remember from the immediate aftermath of hitting the red button which terminates the FaceTime conversation I have been having with G is a feeling of reeling and of sinking, how I imagine the driver of a car suddenly swept off a road into the icy depths of a lake might feel - disoriented, numb and perhaps too taken aback to have any real appreciation of the import of what has just happened. There is good reason to feel this way, given the act - symbolic as it were - is one that brings to an end what has been a good year of sorts, and that only for the third time ever. To reach this place, where what is a painful, hard fought decision has been taken, has required months of agony and wrestling - weighing the pros of trying to save face against the cons of loss, of time and sunken investments. That G and I work, by and large, has made the decision even more difficult; that a milestone birthday of sorts for me has just passed complicates things even more. ...

For today’s Daily Prompt, Toy Story - - - There is a real sense in which play was a concept alien to the world in which I grew up. Being the son of two high achieving, austere academicians did that to me; that they adopted a rigorous, all encompasing asceticism merely underlined the near total absence in our lives of anything that didn’t fulfil a function of some sort. The Black & White National television set was the communal alter around which we sacrificed our evenings to learning and current affairs, the gramophone, the vehicle by which nostalgic memories where wheeled out and shared with us younglings. ...

From my notes at the end of March (which kind of triggered this) In Work: Greater clarity around my role going forward, and dare I say a staff role somewhere that allows me focus (almost) exclusively on developing my technical Materials and Corrosion skills. In Women: Resolution of my G ‘problem’ - we’ve stalled, we both know it but we’re letting the weight of third party expectations drive our actions. In Worldview: God and I need to have a proper conversation and make up. This cognitive dissonance is driving me nuts. In Weight: 8kg over my YE2014 numbers. MUST do better! In (Net) Worth: Stalled, no increases since YE 2013 inspite of net increase in earnings. Must rein in 2015 spend and take it from there. Hopefully SisiOnABudget comes up with the magic bullet for this soon!