It's been a year now, since I put down my pen after completing my under-graduate degree in Arts, majoring in Literature. I am indulging in some self reflective assessment of this past 12 months, since I had vaguely thrown out to the universe some suggestions as to how this year might be best lived. I'm not sure I have really done it justice, however, and I have a sense of regret about some aspects of it. Yes, I have had plenty of opportunities to reconnect with family in meaningful ways, and this has been largely fruitful. But how I have spent my days at home, and how I have conducted my relationships back in my home town of Geelong, demonstrate that I have been lazy and disorganised at the best of times. The other times I have been either disabled to an extent by various illnesses and injuries, or have suffered bouts of depression, or, often, suffered both at the same time.
I thought this year was going to be about gardening, cleaning, sorting, and taking charge of my home environment and about reconnecting with friends that I left along the roadside as I scrambled the last year of my degree together. I have failed to do any of it. I thought I might have written copious blogs or expressed myself creatively through painting or craft, and I haven't done those things either. I've picked up, and discarded again, ukelele and my guitar playing. Typically, when I'm at home, I am lost and unmotivated. The dust is settling even more thickly on all my course materials and writings from my degree, sitting in the bookshelf.
However.... read on below...
