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Solar Orbit 55 Complete
Jan. 20th, 2023 12:13 amToday marks my fifty-fifth orbit around the sun and it provides an opportunity for reflection and celebration. As is my style, I have already provided reviews of my vocational and non-vocational lives over the past year. Of course, there has been a major life change in the past few weeks as well; as mentioned in the last entry for the fifth time in three years I have been subject to my on-again/off-again partner breaking up with me (also, why January? every damn year it's January). This time, however, I have closed the door to a tragic and abusive cycle of idealisation-incident-devaluation-discard, rinse-and-repeat. Sympathetic as I may be to their affective and emotional instability, it is not emotionally healthy to allow myself be subject to such continuing behaviour; "symp not simp", I guess, to use the modern parlance.
Anyway, in the longer perspective, those who know me would also know that I had a challenging upbringing as a State Ward, although I did have the unfair benefits of being male, of European appearance, being born and raised in the first world, and the good fortune of educational opportunities. Even at this age, I still look back in remembrance of the fellow children I was raised with and wonder what difficulties they must have faced in their lives. I'm a "self-made man" perhaps, as the saying goes, but certainly not one to forget where he came from or turn his back on his origins. The fire burns in me, very brightly, and to the end of my days, to abolish the conditions of poverty and its painful effects for all. As Labour peer Lord Griffiths expressed in a very moving speech, "We remember not in our heads, but in our whole bodies".
An old friend said to me a few months back "The years have been good to you", and they're not wrong. I am, thankfully, in surprisingly good physical condition. I am happily ensconced in The Rookery, my large inner-city apartment which doubles as a small library. Six enframed stiff pieces of cardboard adorn my walls with even more coming. My gainful employment for the past fifteen years as a supercomputer engineer and educator pays the bills and is also emotionally rewarding. I must certainly count my past seventeen-year relationship with Erica H as a success as well. Much more could be said, but one thing I do feel fairly confident about is that I have very good years and decades to look forward to - and I intend to carry them out with the same passion and purpose as I have done in past years. Happy birthday to me.
Anyway, in the longer perspective, those who know me would also know that I had a challenging upbringing as a State Ward, although I did have the unfair benefits of being male, of European appearance, being born and raised in the first world, and the good fortune of educational opportunities. Even at this age, I still look back in remembrance of the fellow children I was raised with and wonder what difficulties they must have faced in their lives. I'm a "self-made man" perhaps, as the saying goes, but certainly not one to forget where he came from or turn his back on his origins. The fire burns in me, very brightly, and to the end of my days, to abolish the conditions of poverty and its painful effects for all. As Labour peer Lord Griffiths expressed in a very moving speech, "We remember not in our heads, but in our whole bodies".
An old friend said to me a few months back "The years have been good to you", and they're not wrong. I am, thankfully, in surprisingly good physical condition. I am happily ensconced in The Rookery, my large inner-city apartment which doubles as a small library. Six enframed stiff pieces of cardboard adorn my walls with even more coming. My gainful employment for the past fifteen years as a supercomputer engineer and educator pays the bills and is also emotionally rewarding. I must certainly count my past seventeen-year relationship with Erica H as a success as well. Much more could be said, but one thing I do feel fairly confident about is that I have very good years and decades to look forward to - and I intend to carry them out with the same passion and purpose as I have done in past years. Happy birthday to me.
