Tuesday 23 July 2013

New Views

DSC_5079 lines by Lillput
DSC_5079 lines, a photo by Lillput on Flickr.
So, after several months of thinking, planning, looking, getting exasperated and nearly giving up...we finally did it.

S & I bought our house in Eastbourne. We'll both be here part of the time as we still have lives in Hitchin and Bristol, respecitively.

It'll complicate our lives a little in some senses and make them a little easier in others.

S comes from here but I've never lived anywhere but Bristol(ish) so it's quite the adventure for me.

I already have a number of friends here and lots of adopted family so I'm hardly going to be lonely when I'm here on my own...nevertheless, some days it all feels a tiny bit daunting.

Our house is on the western fringe of the town. A couple of miles on foot from the sea, but 600m or so from the South Downs which, depsite their distinctly uppiness, I'm learning to love.

I've got a number of work/community projects I'm trying to get underway but I'm going to need more than that to get to know this place.

I'm thinking the best way is to do what I like best - take photographs. I haven't decided on the rules for this new project yet but when I have, I think I'll start a new blog to house it.

After all, this blog was started and was mostly about a particular period in my life and this move to Eastbourne (albeit part time) marks the end of that time. The time started with immense sadness...but working through it all, with old friends and new ones has forged new happiness out of the sadness.

To plaigiarise...
This is not the end, nor the beginning of the end...but perhaps the end of the beginning.

Saturday 4 May 2013

Lessons Learned

DSC_5838 Scorpion Fly by Lillput
DSC_5838 Scorpion Fly, a photo by Lillput on Flickr.
It's been a while since I last wrote a post here.

I've been busy.

Still trying to get a Martello Tower in Eastbourne open to the public, doing some house-hunting and working on a project to see how the historical landscape of a fine house in Bristol is reflected in the current ecology of the land now.

This latter came to a head this weekend when we put on an event called a BioBlitz. Find out more about that here: www.kwag.org.uk.

For me it was a project/event management job and though they're all unique, it involved applying tried and tested techniques I've learned over many, many years.

However, projects and events are still learning opportunities and we should make the most of them with a bit of quiet reflection.

I learned that male spiders have club-shaped palps, whilst females have smooth ones.

I learned that the fly in the picture above is a scorpion fly and that there are only two species of them so they are fairly easy to fully identify (unlike many other types of flora and fauna).

I learned that goldfinches usually travel in big flocks and when you only see a pair in your garden, like as not, there will be other pairs nearby in your neighbours' gardens since they'll have all travelled to your neighbourhood in one of those large flocks.

And I finally understood the difference between shyness and introversion.
In a number of psychometric assessments and personality typing exercises in my old job extroversion/introversion were explained to me but I still had in mind that introversion=shyness.
Apparently this is not an uncommon mistake.

I've always said I was shy/introverted...but was aware that the manifestation of this trait had become less obvious and less inhibiting over the last couple of years.

This latest project has required me to work with quite a large number of people who haven't known me for many years (which was always an advantage in my old job). It's meant that I've had to go and meet strangers, work through the project tasks with them and, ultimately, meet and greet members of the public as part of the event itself.
Once upon a time, any one of these tasks could strike terror in my heart - giving me feelings of anxiety for hours or days beforehand. But not this time.

I've been perfectly happy to chat with the other people on the project team, with the naturalists and volunteers on the BioBlitz itself, with school children and other people attending the event.

And yet on Friday, after a full day of being surrounded by people I went home feeling totally overwhelmed.

Suddenly it hit me. It wasn't the shyness thing...it was the introvert in me who was over-stimulated by such an "peopled" environment.

Today (the second day of the event) I made a special effort to take myself off to a quiet corner from time to time - just for 10 minutes or so (little jobs like checking the loos for toilet roll, or taking out the rubbish), and then accompanying a very small group of people hunting for spiders.
And it worked.
I was still really tired by the event - and definitely needed a bit of space afterwards - but I didn't feel stressed at the end like I had on Friday.

And that's when I finally got the difference between introversion and shyness. I've got past my shyness: new people, new situations no longer scare me but the introversion will probably always mean that big groups of people overwhelm me if I'm around them too long. And that's fine. I just need to remember to absent myself from time to time to chill out.

That's the most useful lesson I've learned in a while.

Wednesday 16 January 2013

...and the sun sets

L1002987 Sundown by Lillput
L1002987 Sundown, a photo by Lillput on Flickr.
This week I passed another milestone. I locked my house and left it for the last time.
All things being equal, the completion of the sale will happen tomorrow when I'm out doing other things.

It turns out that the almost painfully slow transition of moving out of the house and into my new flat did me some favours. When the time came to lock the door, I'd said my goodbyes and although I had a little quiet moment in the room where my life was turned on its head, I wasn't sad or sorry to leave.
It was the right time to go.

Thankfully, the neighbours - well, now they're "ex-neighbours" - were on hand to feed me and we giggled over some old tales and they reminded me how, with help, I picked myself up and dusted myself down and that this day has been a while coming.

I'm reminded again what a big part of my life internet-based social networking played in getting me to take an interest again...and whilst I'm not as active in those networks as I used to be - it's not lack of inclination so much as time because I filled the void with new interests, a new business and new projects.

Last week a bunch of us went to the pub. No longer a monthly FlickrMeet with a flimsy veneer of camera-talk - since that stopped for most of us following some on-line unpleasantness - we were a bunch of pals...real people having a beer and a giggle. Once again I felt quite blessed to have this splendid group of friends around.

Tomorrow I'll be lunching with some old work friends, and then I'll be jumping on a train to Hertfordshire to spend the weekend with someone who I'd never had met were it not for all the social networking I got myself involved in. Once I'm there, there will likely be little tweeting, or checking of facebook...since we'll be planning what's next.

I hate that my life was turned upside down nearly six years ago. I hate that someone I loved decided that the world was no longer somewhere he could cope with being.

But there's a paradox.

I couldn't be any happier with how my life is just now.

Thank you everyone who helped me get from there...to here.

x