So today is my
birthday, YAY go me!, I have made it once more around the sun. Aparently the sun has
gotten a little hotter since I first started orbiting it, but to be honest I've not noticed it.
After reading the experiences of alex.tan over the last few days I am reminded about the
strangeness of circumstances, the contingency of our lives. I don't want to dwell on thinkiong about
the many people I have known well that have died, before their time, because of terminal illness.
I'm alive and that is nothing more than a fact. I have a capacity to remember them, to make or form
some meaning from my life. It seems that it would be wrong for me to abondon that capacity through
grief. I have known times when abondoning that capacity was all that I wanted to do, clearly usually
when engulfed in grief. I am happy that this is not one of those times in my life, but the account
of alex.tans current experience brings a sharp reminder that the shattering of our normal lives
can be so close, that we live so closely to others who are living through such events and such
times. I wrote most of the following earlier while offline so the tonse changes somewhat. Life has a
tendency to be like that.
I am 29 today. Two days ago I was filled with a huge amount of opimisim for what th next 30 years of
my lfe are going to be like. Can't say why for ceartain, just was ya know. The weather was lovey, it
was sunny, warm. I was about to go climbing with a good friend, things were in a good place for
feeling optomistic. Since then its been pissing rain, but you'll get that (as a good friend of mine
likes to say).
I like e2, I like this place a lot, it amuses me, informs me. I really like the sense of community
about this place. I once even met a few noders in real life. They were as diverse as you might
expect from the diversity of writing to be found here.
I've not participated much here in the past year or two. Circumstance prevented me but a lot has
happened. Much water passed beneather the bridge of my life.
- The teaching gig that I mentioned in my last daylog only lasted a few weeks. It was an inense and
hard experience. I learnt a lot from not, not least of which was the fact that I don't want to teach
children. I spent another few months in Ireland and then I got a new job in Germany. So here I am in
sunny Heidelberg working for Springer-Verlag. We make science books. Get that, I work for a company
that makes books, how cool is that. I'm a copy editor. I make sure that the language our authors
write makes sense and is clear. I imagine its a bit like being an e2 editor but with deadlines and
money.
In Germany there is a custon. On your birthday you bring cake into the office for everyone to share.
I brough in a Linzer torte and a choclate nut rich big thing, they are both very nice. One of my
colleagues told the other people in the office that I do most of my grocery shopping at train
stations and petrol stations (the only places in Germany open late on the weekend), so for my
birthday the people in the office bought me a bag of grocies. They even hand sowed the grocery bag!
I kid you not. It has an internal pocket for a botle of beer, they know me well.
I have not written much in this place for the past while, but now I have daily access, I have to be
carefull. My intention is to purchase a computer soon and do all of this from home. Today is my
birthday, I will allow myself to write for a little longer than I would otherwise. Two years ago my
grandmother died. I had grown up with her since I was 4 years old. Lived with her. She was the last
of my direct family in a strange way, its more complicated than that, but my family unit consited of
her and my father, he died a long time ago. There are cousins and aunts and uncles. It is a good
family and I like it. I'm not going to exchange it any time soon. A few months ago we decided to
sell the home, the house I grew up in. It has been sold, and now I am living in another country and
I have no longer my home in Dublin. Its a strange sensation and I suspect that it will take a few
more years to get used to. I am expecting to recieve a small inheritance. I will buy a computer (for
the first time in my life) and perhaps then I wll participate here a little more.
Its my birthday, YAY! go me, one more time round the sun, seen Dublin, Edinburgh, New York
and now Heidelberg. Watced people come and go, felt the sun on my face, clean rock under my
fingers. Breathing with life, joy of working, loved and been loved. Its my birthday, I am a little
older, oldly going onward. All that is past has moulded me for what is to come.