The first quarter of 2025

Easter is upon us at the end of the week - for me, it's always the dividing line between "early year" and "mid year". The first school term is done, the first work quarter is passed, and the year is turning, slowly, away from summer and towards the coming cold, but still lingering delightfully in my favourite of all seasons, autumn.

Since I returned to work on 20 January, it has been a full and sometimes challenging time, but also plenty of good stuff in it. I've worked, of course, some weeks more than others, and I've travelled interstate for work. Health-wise, I've had the flu (awful); I've been diagnosed with gallbladder disease and have consequently needed to change my diet (annoying); I've had, and have resolved, bursitis in my dominant shoulder (thanks osteo!). 

I've read 40 books, albeit 8 of them re-reads on my Agatha Christie project so they probably only count for 0.5 each given how fast I rip through them. I've worried probably more than I should about the health and wellbeing of those I care about, very much including my beloved elder animals, both of whom have had health concerns (the dog more so than the cat). 

I've written some poems and one short story, and revised a novelette I wrote years ago (and published it here). I've played games and gone on walks and upsized my weights because my trainer said I was ready. I've been happy a lot of the time, and sad some of the time, and anxious most of the time because that's just how I roll, but it hasn't drowned me this quarter, not the way it does when things are really bad.

Things I have especially enjoyed include:

- Seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra doing the score
- A long weekend away in Daylesford for our 27th wedding anniversary
- Seeing the Crash Test Dummies in concert with my husband
- Seeing the stageplay of And Then There Were None with my friend
- Seeing comedian Kirsty Webeck's hilarious show with my husband
- My monthly book club
- Catching up with friends and family in Sydney when on my work trip
- My baby's 16th birthday, both her celebration with friends and her extended family lunch
- My brother and sister in law's family birthday celebration
- Seeing the Kusama exhibition twice, once with my friends and once with my husband, and seeing the Cats and Dogs and Incan Gold exhibitions

The quarter ahead will be a much more hectic one work-wise for me, with two new contracts on the board - there will be no more weekdays just reading or life-ing because there isn't much to do in a work sense. (That's the freelancer's lot - the Goldilocks spot is rarely achieved, it's always either under or over load!) 
I won't be taking any time off until the winter school holidays in July, but there are still good things to look forward to, including more family birthdays, a weekend away with my girl gang, a couple of theatre performances, two concerts, and, no doubt, more books to read :-) 

I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep my gallbladder managed and that by the end of the quarter, I will at least have a surgery date even if the surgery hasn't actually occurred. I'm also hoping this will be the quarter that we buy our electric car as we have been planning for some months now.

Onwards and upwards! 








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hello, and why I am here

I used to blog a lot.  In the heyday of the Australian blogosphere, I was prolific, both in how much I wrote and in how active I was in the community. When I was a parent of very young children, back in the mid-noughts and early 10s, blogging brought me joy and connection and delight.  Times changed, as times have a way of doing, and the rise of the socials meant a decline in the blogosphere and in engagement with blogs. That was alright; change is inevitable, and it's not always a bad thing. I enjoyed the early days of Twitter, along with many of my peers. I had a stop-start relationship with Facebook for years, but from about 2016, I have been a regular user, due mostly to a number of Groups I am in there which have been very important to me. I have Insta (albeit private) for photos. I was part of the post-Musk X-odus and have been paddling aroound on Threads since 2023. TikTok has, thus far, passed me by, which speaks to my generational profile as much as anything else. And...
Read more

Book Review: Careless People - A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Image
I have just finished reading Sarah Wynn-Williams' book, Careless People, about her time working with the upper echelons of Facebook (2011-2017). I have more detailed thoughts (see below), but the summary version: it is a very readable and deeply troubling journey through a worsening landscape of dysfunction. I rate it 8.5/10. Caveats : First up, it's Wynn-Williams' memoir, and she paints herself in the best possible light - there isn't much taking accountability for the ways in which she also enabled, and in some cases actively engineered, some of the shadier stuff she talks about.  It's absolutely the case that she was the victim of a lot of truly execrable behaviour and decision-making, but one can be both a victim and a participant in the victimisation of others at the same time. Wynn-Williams was literally in "room where it happens", and her plaint that she thought she could do more good by staying and trying to influence people wears thin once things ...
Read more

Summer Leave in Review

Image
This is the last day of my 4 weeks of summer leave. It's back to work for me tomorrow (although this week will be a light one; not all my clients - I'm a freelancer - are back to full strength til after the long weekend, so I'm expecting to only do about 3 - 3.5 days worth of work rather than the full 5). It's been a pretty good time, and definitely had some wins in it. My eldest's surgery getting done and being a success has been a huge relief, and it was ideal that I was free to do the required running about and caretaking for that. I cleared off a bunch of medical/specialist appointments for me and the youngest kid too, which starts the year off fresh. My big kitchen clean-out, while not fully complete (I haven't tackled the pantry yet), has really transformed the experience of cooking and using the kitchen, and although I am sure it will devolve towards chaos again, starting from a clean baseline feels really positive. I have been able to do some creative pr...
Read more