last post

The last of 366 daily posts brings relief. I’m glad not to write another word of this blog. I ran out of things to say, if indeed I ever had anything worth saying, long ago.

At the beginning I was plotting the course of an intriguing year, navigating between the hazards of unemployment, Centrelink and making my business do the plain talking. Instead I stumbled into my ‘dream’ job only to have it turn into a nightmare.

In the second half of the year I suffered days and weeks with nothing positive to write. My mental health sank into Bunyan’s slough of despond. Better to be silent, I thought, but couldn’t be. Many apologies.

I can, however, report that I’ve learned much, a good thing at 61. My friend Carey says in his blog that 2012 defeated him on points. This year defeated me by TKO. But I'm standing again, groggily. More surprising still, I’m girding myself to fight again. A little more craftily, perhaps, in 2013. 

The thought of returning to my job on 8 January is surreal, not at all welcome. I start the year on probation again, with three months to prove my worth to my employers. I will. Nonetheless, I must remember that we work to live, not live to work. This year I will get that right.

Carey says all he wants is a bit of peace and quiet. I share his sentiment. And I am having it now. It’s doing me a power of good. And I have seven more days of it, most to be spent painting the front rooms of my house. Cathartic stuff.

I begin 2013 with two jobs—well, a job and a small business. The job will be better this year. Comrade S kept telling me that we would never work harder than we did in those first eight months. She’s right.

I begin the year owning two houses: the novelty of moving into a solid brick art deco in Carnegie will relieve some of the pain of leaving my beautiful and freshly painted cottage here at the foot of the Dandenongs.

I begin 2013 with two parents and two healthy young adult children in the primes of their lives, one pregnant, the other sure to become a father in the not too distant. I’ll be a grandfather of two in May.

I begin 2013 with two cars and two lots of two bicycles stashed under the loft bed and maybe a bit more time to throw a leg over each of them.

I begin 2013 with one good woman, though she’s twice the woman to me. We nearly fucked it up in 2012, but we got our act together after two months apart. We fornicated as the fireworks went off last New Year’s Eve, but it didn’t ring in the year of fornication promised by a Serbian proverb.

Second chance tonight. Better luck this time.

Rock on.