Hm, nearly a year since my last post here. Back on 6.viii.23 I titled my post “A lot has happened … back in my eyrie again” and I could have used exactly that again. I am back here …
I’ve been loving seeing Mont Blanc beyond my monitor again …
So what has happened?
I became a grandparent back in January, something our daughter had very, very much wanted but it ended, belatedly and with an emergency Caesarean, what had been a very hard pregnancy for her. That she and her son survived was wonderful but it led into a horrible January for her, and vicariously for everyone around, as she had horrible first month mostly in hospital. While that went on the cat we had fostered had to be put down. That wasn’t so hard for me as I’m not a pet person and hadn’t loved Lily at all, but it was tough for J and the others in the family.
After that I was back up here for much of February, March and April and we planned a week skiing for myself, J and a friend of hers. That was lovely in many ways but I did something that pretty much ended my skiing after two days. However, it was fun having people here, eating more interesting food than I usually do (though I do OK!) and having lots of great conversations. After some time on my own up here getting a bit fitter again and getting some work done moderately successfully, then it back to the UK catching up with the family.
Then off to Latin America!
Then the big event was a month long work trip to Latin America from late May to late June. But more on that in other posts. I hoping to make time to put one or more posts about the work aspect on PSYCTC.org but I’m also hoping to put some posts here about the tourist bit which was mostly having a binge on pre-Columban art and artefacts in all three countries I visited: Ecuador, Chile and Costa Rica. I’m going to do that in reverse chronological order.
So how am I? How are things?
Well I’m aware of ageing! For some reason I have some nerve/nerve root compression which has led to some real pain and sensory disturbance in my right leg and some significant loss of power. That’s been true for about horrid though I think I’ve been a better invalid and better tolerator of pain that I would have said I am. It seems it was triggered by pulling the lightest piece of luggage in all my travels this year and pulling it the least distance. Go figure! Otherwise I know that all the events of the last couple of years have prompted me into some serious reflection about how I live my life and this issue of my “work/life” balance. I don’t like that term but I’ll accept that it’ll do for now. The issue is partly about how much work I would still like to complete before I hang up my keyboard but it’s also about having more pleasure outside of work (yes, I do get real pleasure from quite a bit of my work!) Perhaps I’ll come back to that in some later post this year. Now back to Costa Rica!
Created 20.vii.24. As usual, everything, text and the images, released under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).