It’s been many months since I posted a blog. I could say ‘I’ve been so busy’ but I really hate it when people say ‘I’ve been so busy’ because ultimately, we are all busy all the time. The competition over who has been busiest is never ending and hmmm…pathetic? Often being busy is an excuse for not contacting people, not wanting to divert time away from what we consider important to those more difficult, emotional or perhaps demanding relationships that we don’t feel certain of, or can’t control or may lead to even more commitments or demands. It’s the same when I hear ‘I’m knackered’ or ‘I’m tired’. We all are. Some of us just don’t think it is a worthwhile topic of conversation.

I only have one friend who can get away with saying ‘I’m too busy’ and ‘I’m tired’ – yes, both – because she is working umpteen jobs all the time to keep the mortgage paid on her house. It’s just her. She has no one else to rely on or lean on or be supported by. She is hoping to be able to lie down and not to get up for awhile in the last two weeks of January. She doesn’t complain though, so she very rarely says ‘I’m so busy’ or ‘I’m tired’.

But, back to me! I have been busy but I can only recognise this in hindsight. I have been juggling writing with teaching and research and traveling for work and research. This week is the first week in a very long time that I don’t have to go anywhere at all and I think the travel is the element that tips me over from ‘busy’ to ‘too busy’. It is draining to be constantly working out leaving and arrival times, to be considering what I need and what I don’t need to take some place. To really think about how many books I will read in the few days I am away. The continual negotiation in my head makes me wonder how others travel as part of their job. I don’t think I could manage it. Today feels as though I have exhaled a long held breathe.

This is also the week where I have realised (again) how lucky I am. I am lucky to be able to write my doctorate full time – time being the luxury. I’m lucky to be able to plan ahead for the next project due to a grant from the Australia Council which means for the first time in a very long time, I am not anxious about where the next pay check is coming from. University teaching has finished for the year and the down hill run to Christmas has begun. The jacarandas are in full, dazzling, purple bloom.

All this makes me feel extremely lucky to be living in this time and space.

Lately, I’ve been lucky.