Quiet Unfiltered Notes: From the Fire

Yesterday a song came through my Spotify that I was not prepared for. Concrete Blonde . Joey . I have heard that song more times than I could count. It isn't new to me. It isn't some song I discovered yesterday and suddenly decided was profound. It has history with me. Too much history, probably. It belongs to rooms I don't live in anymore. Versions of myself I sometimes struggle to recognise. People I loved badly. People who loved me when I was difficult to love. Alcohol. Regret. Long nights. Messy nights. Relationships I damaged. Things I should have said. Things I absolutely should not have said. Doors closing. Phones ringing. Phones not ringing. The strange loneliness that comes when you know you have contributed to your own heartbreak and there is nobody convenient to blame. And yesterday it just appeared. I wasn't searching for it. I wasn't trying to have some profound moment. Spotify simply did what Spotify does. The song started playing. And within minutes I...

It has been five days since my finger surgery. Five days. There is something strange about counting recovery in days. Before surgery, everything was measured by the date. September 11. The appointment. The operation. The thing coming toward me. Now I am on the other side of it, and time is measured differently. Five days since surgery. Five days of healing. Five days of adjusting. Five days of looking at my hand and knowing that something about it has permanently changed. And somewhere in the middle of all of this, while my body is slowly doing what bodies somehow know how to do, I purchased a book. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King . I haven't read it yet. Not one chapter. I haven't highlighted a sentence or underlined a paragraph. I haven't formed an opinion about King's philosophy of writing. I don't know which parts I will agree with, which parts will challenge me, or which parts might irritate me. The book is simply waiting for me. And strangely...

Tonight I sit here after my pinky orthopaedic surgery , and the pain is in full effect. There is no poetic way of saying that. It hurts. The kind of pain that makes you very aware of the part of your body you normally never think about. Every movement reminds me that something significant has happened inside my hand. Every time I instinctively try to use it, I am reminded that I cannot quite use it the way I did before. Even writing this blog entry is difficult due to my limitations. And yet, sitting here tonight, there is something else underneath the pain. Gratitude. Yesterday was a big day for me. I was blessed to have Professor Randy Bindra at the Mater Hospital looking after me. From the moment I went through the process of having surgery to the care I received throughout the day, I felt like I was in good hands. There is something reassuring about knowing that the person operating on you understands exactly what they are doing. So tonight I am sitting here with a sore hand, a t...

It is Saturday morning. I am sitting here with my first coffee of the day, trying to wake up properly, while Ember is causing complete chaos in the living room. There is something about cats that fascinates me. They can be completely relaxed one minute and then, without warning, decide that the entire house has become an obstacle course. A noise. A movement. Something that apparently only they can see. And suddenly there is chaos. Ember is doing exactly that this morning. Running. Jumping. Investigating things that have apparently been sitting in the same place for months but have suddenly become suspicious. And as I sit here watching it all unfold, coffee in hand, I find myself reflecting on the week that has just passed. It has been a huge week at work. One of those weeks where you get to Saturday morning and realise just how much you have been carrying without really stopping to think about it. Then, somewhere in the middle of everything, there was my orthopaedic appointment with Pr...