It's just a phase...

Busy, busy, busy, busy week.

Everything in my life has been almost overwhelmingly busy.

Building work; every day home things; work; photography; it's been all go.

A lot of all this is "the cost of doing business". The price of the pleasant position I'm in having a reasonable sized house is that it requires ongoing maintenance. Whether that's the garden or the appliances or the front door deadlock wearing out to the point of failing. I've looked at a lot of these jobs and never quite got around to getting them fixed.

So this weekend I made a list and worked my way through it. The hardest of these jobs in every sense was clearing out a room full of "stuff" ready for building work to start.

It took a total of about four hours, and pretty much every bit of mental stamina I had. In some ways it's disposing of elements of the past. This makes me feel like I'm not so much disposing of things but of a person.

In its way, this is also the cost of doing buisness. It's another step in properly taking over the house. It's hard but simply continuing to avoid the issue doesn't really help in the long term.

In the words of someone who understands better than most, it's not about obliterating the past but in recognising that the past and the future are different places.

When I finally finish I report progress to the friend who is overseeing this building project. Today he comes round and inspects my work. He approves.

Our usual chat and coffee on the back step's a little less riotous than usual. I'm pretty subdued. He's sorry he can't say anything to help - like he says, if there was an easy thing to offer, it would have been offered already.

Then he gently teases me for buying a new camera as a consolation.

I wonder how much these fine friends realise that no matter how insignificant it might seem, just showing you give a damn helps. It helps a lot.

Thanks guys.


As for the consolation...it's on its way. It won't make it better quicker...but it'll distract me whilst the passage of time knocks the rough edges off the feelings.


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