Last week was crazy. And I am saying that in the context of a sequence of weeks over (being honest) the last 2 years which have each outdone the last in their level of intensity. Every single time I think that a week cannot get more stressful or fast paced or mentally challenging it just does. At this point I am forced to actually appreciate the week I am in, however batshit, because the likelihood is it will ramp up a further (inconceivable) notch the following week.
I am looking back at things I wrote this time last year or the year before and laughing hard at what I considered to be challenging back then. Because right now I would take those weeks in a heartbeat over the levels of unrelenting chaos we now find ourselves in.
Last week I read a blog post by one of my colleagues (and friends) which summed up well the level of disparity between what normal used to look and feel like and what normal (genuinely) is right now. He spoke (so eloquently) of blog posts started and abandoned, an intent to write as a release being repeatedly thwarted by exhaustion and distraction and reflections on what a standard workday looks like - and man did I relate.
The sad and difficult element in all of this for me - a person who writes specifically to enable release - is that I cannot, at this juncture, write openly about the situation and set of circumstances that have brought us to this period at work where the whole of our time (predominantly mine and that of my management team) is taken up with incomprehensible drama and our attempts to navigate said drama. I am certain that day will come, and I will be able to look back on this period and draw a breath and reflect without it feeling like a gargantuan task of biblical proportions. I will have learned things, I am sure, that will carry me through future periods of disruption and provide me with the reassuring safety net of knowing I have the resilience to power through it. One day. But not now. Right now we must just keep on fighting the good fight and dragging ourselves through each week and remembering to keep making each other laugh while we do it for the sake of all of our sanities.
It is not just me feeling this stress either - everyone across our University (and our sector) is in a holding pattern of coping and doing more with less resource thanks to the pandemic and the economic impact on higher education.
There has been a lot going on personally in the last 12 months too, and right now I am also trying to just breathe through a grief trigger which I know is just around the corner, that being the first anniversary of the loss of a good friend, which is made all the harder by not actually knowing what the actual (or at least what the Coroner's verdict on) date of death was. But I do know the date he was found and that I took that fateful phone call, and that is all I can mark it by for now.
I miss Gilo - his daft and sometimes poignant comments on my Facebook posts (which regularly come up in Memories), his messages asking my opinion on things or offering his, just knowing he would be there and reliable as ever when I next went home. At our old house his photo hung in the hallway over my candle shelves, I nodded to him each day as I left the house and it helped somewhat, at our new house he is opposite the open plan kitchen and I often glance up and see him and smile, he was into cooking and our conversations were often about methods or tips or ingredients one of us was trying and so it feels apt. It still helps.
And yes - we have also moved house, around 6 weeks ago, and it was the usual levels of stress, chaos and (because of the wretched and Landlord skewed rental market in Australia) financially challenging activity that you would expect. The awesome thing was that we were MASSIVELY lucky in securing pretty much the perfect property for us in the location we wanted in a completely insane rental market right now (the new house was only viewed by 6 people, all of whom had already applied and been shortlisted) and also that my ever generous parents in the UK helped us out financially with juggling two leases for around a month and also with insisting on paying for removals on the day of the move (OMG what a game changer that was!).
So now we are moved, the lease on the other house is all paid off and the stress of getting the deposit back was successfully navigated - no mean feat in Australia. Things are starting to calm down and we couldn't be happier with the new house which has all the mod cons our last place didn't have (heating and cooling! a very good shower! a modern and functional kitchen with a dishwasher!) with the trade off being that we are no longer 20 metres from the esplanade - we are all of 250m away instead, which is a very manageable compromise.
On Sunday I finally watched the Friends Reunion (hence the title of this post) and my goodness I had forgotten how connected I was (am) to that show and the dynamic of those six characters, and yes, hindsight is 20/20 and I realise looking back that there were some problematic themes in that show and the cast is hideously non-diverse - but it was a show I leaned on for so many of my formative years through late teens and early twenties. It has underpinned and influenced so many references and weaved it's way into my conscience in such an innate way and it still a show that soothes my soul when I am tired, low or stressed - in fact reading back through the earlier parts of this post, maybe I should prescribe myself some downtime and Friends sessions in a bid to escape the pace of work and amount of general noise right now.
I genuinely want to take moments out to appreciate the good things, the people who make it all worthwhile, my wonderful boys who keep me sane and make me laugh at home and the opportunities I get to decompress with them, but it is so hard to have the energy to do anything except collapse and rest in the moments outside of work right now. I know this is on me, that self care is in my control and that running a business (yes, I also set up an online business in the last 12 months!) is a difficult thing to do whilst working full time but it is a choice that I made. At the moment the creative release that I get from my candle based endeavours and the satisfaction of the odd sale replenishes my soul enough to make it completely worthwhile but at some point I might have to revisit that.
I feel like things might never go back to 'normal' in the work space - or at least not in the near future, and I am asking myself big questions about what that might mean for me and the remaining years of my career. I still love working in a University and especially on a vibrant campus, I know that Partnership working is where I thrive - and that inter-University partnerships give me the greatest joy. I know that leading creative teams is a skill set I bring and that I don't want to move too far from using it. A Director role will likely be what I go for next, but I don't want to run a team so large that I cease to have an authentic connection with each individual member.
People matter to me, and I have reached an age where I don't flinch at all from being the 'warrior' leader - running straight into confronting situations to protect the team I have as best I can from strategic noise and high level stress. That behaviour pattern is exhausting though and I am physically and mentally tired from the amount of noise right now but I hope that my team know I will never stop fighting for them while I am able.
God, I miss my family in the UK so much and have done so since the international borders shut in March 2020 and visiting them was removed as an option. My Covid jabs (Pfizer) are booked in for a couple of weeks time and I finally feel like I am able to do my bit to combat this bloody virus and take an active step back towards a time and a situation where I can board a plane and head off to see them all. I have a feeling there will be tears of appreciation on reuniting now that we have all spent some time without the convenience and freedom of international travel.
This is the longest period I have ever gone without a Mom hug and that alone is horrid. I want to meet my newest niece and congratulate my brother on his recent marriage and have a beer and a chinwag with my Dad and I want to banter with all my siblings and sibling in-laws in the way that only we can and I want to spend time with my precious UK friends who I have always treasured but who I perhaps now treasure with a newfound understanding of loss.
And I need to grieve for Gilo in the place where we grew up and celebrate his life together with friends in a way that we have been prevented from doing so to date by covid and distance.
If nothing else the craziness of the last 18 months or so has absolutely made me appreciate the wealth of amazing people I have the privilege to know and that I will never take for granted ever again.
In a few weeks we will (hopefully, state borders permitting) fly up to Brisbane for Christmas in July with some of our Aussie family and that will sustain me through the next few weeks - all we can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and breathing and try to leave work on time.
So there you are, a snapshot of my life right now, a blog post I finally finished and a cathartic release achieved. I really do need to make more time to do reflective writing - it helps so much.
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