In the meantime

It has been about a month since I returned to the UK. A long month. A short month. Strange how elastic time feels for me at the moment.

I went away to find space. And I did. Both internally and externally, there was expansion. As a result, so much has changed. Is changing. I'm still processing a lot of this but it's fair to say that as my sabbatical draws to an end, things have been set in motion that mean life-after-sabbatical will be very different. I'm trusting that it will be better, fuller, richer - in all the ways that are important to me - but I know that it will certainly be much harder before that is true.

In the meantime, life continues, not quite normal and yet, in some ways, very. It's good to be back in familiar space and I need to be here to make the changes and make them stick. But it's not all a good thing. It's been disturbing and unpleasant to feel the tug back into the sludgier aspects of the everyday I left behind.

There are many reasons for this and I was naive to think it would not happen. Actually, I didn't think about it at all. It did not occur to me. That was a mistake. I've realised that it will be a project in itself to preserve the clarity. To deal with the practicalities whilst keeping a sense of the possible. To hold the space and, at the same time, narrow the focus. And to do it alone.

Escaping the city with a friend, even for a few short days, has helped. She too is going through some significant personal and professional changes and needed some space and support. So we went south. To the sea. We walked, we talked, we plotted and planned. We ate good food, we soaked in the art and we breathed in the salt. We stared at the horizon and we watched the gulls dive and soar against a deep and very unBritishlyblue sky, which showed itself on more than one day in three, something that I took as a sign in itself. We worked together in the sunshine to draft ideas for her projects into something slightly more concrete. It was good.

As for me... I sat there, with my toes in the sand and the sun on my shoulders and I was reminded not to let go. Not to let the fear overcome me. To keep hold of my heart and to maintain the momentum. However hard it gets... in the meantime.