It’s a little under 20 years since I last posted a write-up here. I keep coming back partly because I’m still attached – I was introduced to E2 when both young and in love (I think it’s OK to say that – the person I loved is long gone from here, as far as I can tell), and imprinted on it fairly hard as a result. And partly because I like being surrounded by interesting people who care about writing and sharing the things they write, and I like at least contemplating the possibility of talking to them.
I’m 44 now and barely recognise the person I was last time I had anything to say here. The interests are much the same but the attitudes have changed and scars have accumulated, inevitably. I still want desperately to write, and it still refuses to come. My partner writes – beautiful things, awful things, silly things – and I marvel at the big picture of what they do and fret uselessly about the punctuation. I’m a translator, to the extent that’s possible as the industry implodes, and reshaping other people’s words is probably what I do best. My own usually read to me as verbose, over-the-top, generally Too Much (relatedly, my interactions with other humans tend to feel verbose, over-the-top and, yes, Too Much).
A former colleague (friend? work friend? person I spent a lot of time with in and out of work, liked and cared about, although we saw some things very differently back then and weren’t particularly close? I need a word for that) died suddenly a few weeks ago. In amongst the shock and sadness, I keep thinking about what we focus on, how that changes things, who it makes us. My colleague was relentlessly positive and it wasn’t enough. I am a person who frets about punctuation, a mindset that has given me a career and contributed materially to quite the case of OCD, but overall I can’t say that it’s made me happy. If I could start again I’d garden, I think. But I can’t: for all the talk about it never being too late, sometimes health, obligations, geography and other limitations keep you on the track you started on, or very close to it. So instead I’ll create an elaborate succulent garden in the front window and keep messing around with other people’s words. I’m going to light a candle for my friend (I think I have to settle on ‘friend’: their loss is too painful for it to be anything else) on Halloween, and remember them.
I’m glad you’re all still here, and E2 is still here.