It’s tricky to find the right title for this one. This January has been affected by new arrivals, and an unexpected departure.
Many of my colleagues came back to work on 8 January, to the news that one, K, who also worked in education, had died the previous weekend. K had beaten cancer once, but it came back over 2006. She worked right up to late November, and wanted to be treated like everyone else.
We also came back to news of two babies, one born to a colleague now on maternity leave, the other to the wife of a colleague who works in Aberdeen. In the last few days, we’ve also heard about the arrival of a second child for friends of ours down south.
It’s a strange feeling, particularly finding out that this second child was born the same day that K died. We know that people are born and people die, daily, even every minute - we’re perhaps just not reminded of it so clearly.
This particular week is seen as one of the least cheerful in the calendar - post-Christmas blues, not yet pay day etc. I’m grateful at least that there is new life to encourage us at this time.
The order of service from K’s funeral also included verses which suggested that we should look forward - new arrivals help us do that, but it proves more of a challenge to work out how we look forward when someone is essentially missing from parts of our lives.
January 23rd, 2007
So yes, I’ve been letting Dan catch up a bit on posts, but thought it was time to write another one myself.
It’s my birthday today, and although it’s not a significant one, it does tend to make me stop and think what I’ve been doing over the last year, and what I’d like to happen this birthday year.
Over the last year: a lot of the same, in terms of work, home, time with family, travel etc. Managed to start spending a little more time with friends again. Another 4 chicken recipes under my belt…etc. (Not the actual chickens, that would be messy.)
Actually, one main change was in the area of work-life balance. 2005 was really busy; I took time over the last year to use the flexi-time I have, and even used up all my leave allowance for once, which normally doesn’t happen.
And the coming year? At the moment, thoughts are rather dominated by finishing the assignments remaining for the counselling course I’m on. We have one more session left - early March - which includes a practical, plus 4 more written assignments. It’ll be nice to look forward to getting my evenings and weekends back.
I haven’t really planned much else - but I’m sure there’ll be plenty to be getting on with. Perhaps it would be good to do more that relates to this category: imagination. I used to do a lot of creative writing, playing music - the creative skills section of the counselling course gave me some ideas to try out further. I’ll let you know how I get on.
January 23rd, 2007