Spotify playlist here

In June, in my notes I started writing a post with a provisional title “From Eden to Land of Confusion”. It was originally continuing my “self-discovery journey”, building on the previous posts about starting a new job, and mental health in Hi Esther and Who’s they anyway.

The new draft was covering my experiences and thoughts from a couple of very busy weeks that followed, with occasional soundtracks as has become my custom here. It included Eden festival, quite a few day meetings or conferences for proteomics/UCL/CRUK, and Refugee Week where I was organising a city tour with Elliot and Karam. In the background, I’ve had a complete emotional rollercoaster with news of critical family illnesses, big argument with Elliot on our anniversary (including me crying uncontrollably all through the dinner at an expensive restaurant, being one of THOSE couples), and believing for a moment that it all doesn’t matter as the world is on the brink on nuclear war anyway.

I did not have time to finish writing that post, and the calendar rolled over: at the end of June I was doing more cell ag outreach in schools, my parents were visiting over a weekend and a bit with a pretty packed travelling schedule, there were more meetings and more conferences (at some point I’ve even added a tracker to the home page here), and then I was off to Latvia. “Have a relaxing break!” said my colleagues, and off I went to my summer camp with an average of 4h of sleep for a week. That week indeed was a great and immersive break though, and felt like much longer. Returning to the UK, I was still not even close to finishing the post, which was now renamed “8 weeks of madness” (counting from the start of the new job). Another busy week with work, other family visiting London, Science Museum exhibition opening, and working on the second interdisciplinary residential event I’m co-organising, and 8 weeks in the draft post title are now 10.

At the moment it’s been 12+ weeks already (e.g. photo at the very top from a week ago in Winchester), and I haven’t finished everything I started writing for June, let alone talking about what’s happening now mid-August, but who cares. I’m giving up on the text, but I do want to have a record of some it here, and I also still want to finish at the week 10 for now, just because of the symbolic happening at the end of it.