Going

The pandemic has ended many lives and changed innumerably more.

It has killed and will kill firms of all sizes, and has taken and will take many livelihoods. As I have no upcoming work to speak of, and have had no real work for the past month, and have been operating below capacity for months, it seems now certain that I will not be afforded an escape from the oncoming, ravening tide.

It’s something to be a participant in history, although a negative and passive one, and no longer a student of it. It’s a little like growing up, and learning that the cost of directing a life is the knowledge that all life is finite and frail, full of petty failures and minor humiliations, with limits imposed not by the weaknesses of youth and intention, but those of time and fate.

A powerful taste of failure, unnecessarily deferred by the kindness and indulgence of others, cannot be dodged for ever.

This time at least, it’s brought on by widespread disease and painful death, not so far for me, but for enough poor souls to shake the world.

An exercise in perspective. And a little reminder that time passes, that nothing can be guaranteed, that the rot sets in before we see it arrive, and that though there is nothing new under the sun, there are always unpleasant surprises to be found and grimly treasured.

As such, I doubt I will have much to write, or be writing very much at all, for a number of months, either here or elsewhere.

Anyone wishing to offer paid work in the spirit of charity, or to laugh, can very easily find my email address.