In the same way that a magnet attracts and repels, I have been both missing and avoiding 43Things (missing the process of writing and the people).

My birthday left me with a quiver of existential doubt. The quiver turned into a shudder and, as with many uncomfortable feelings I want to ignore, I pushed it down, deep into my belly. The problem with ignoring emotions is that they don’t always go away, and you also tend to ignore the things the emotions are associated with.

(Plus you end up bloated and round with all the feelings inside you, as if you are pregnant with a dragon.)

I was avoiding Time and the future. I realised that I was 25, still in the wastelands of M.E, and in five years I am going to be 30. What then, Zeus or Jesus?

It is scary.

The future is like a sinister shadow in a child’s bedroom, and you don’t know if, when you turn on the light, it will turn out to be a benign blanket over a chair, or if it really is a lion in waiting.

I have been thinking a lot about hope, and what hope is and the environment you need to create in yourself in order to grow it. Hope is a future orientated mood, and you can’t have hope until you are willing to face the future, to face yourself and your fears. (All hope involves fear because it involves risk. Hope always risks itself in order to be.)

If the future is a lion, then I will learn lion taming.