So. Here we are.

Surprise!

Bet you didn't expect a notification from this blog, did you?

Actually, let's be honest. The chance of there being anyone actually left out there to read this must be pretty minimal but, whatever. Let's pretend, shall we?

So. What the hell am I doing back here?

To be honest, I'm not sure. Last time you saw me it was 2016 and I'd just set up a professional 'Writer' blog over at Wordpress. That one is still there, if you're interested. Though I wouldn't bother going to look at it. I've not posted anything there in six years, either.

Part of it is the whole Twitter debacle. I've been watching the increasingly sad decline of the birdsite into anti-semitic, RWNJ hell and, I guess, I got kinda nostalgic for the days when social media was... I dunno... not easier (Let's face it, the fact that I got down to about two posts a year here is a pretty clear indication of the ease of keeping up with things). But more fun. Less fraught. Less depressing.

So I decided to see if Musings... was still here. And it is. Then I decided to see if my login still worked. And it does. And so here we are. Just me and you*

So let's update then, shall we?

Looking back at this thing, I couldn't help but notice that my third-to-last post, from 2014, was this one here. Well. Here is that same child about a week or so ago at their school fun run:

Millie, now 8 years old, wearing sunglasses and covered in paint powder.

So yeah. Time has flown. She's a bit bigger now. For the record, her first words (and this was a number of years ago now...) were "Millie do self", and that has pretty much been the state of play ever since. And her brother - who also featured pretty heavily in the early years of this blog - is currently out out in our back studio, twitch streaming The Cult of the Lamb,  so things have changed a bit there, too. My partner Imogen is also doing amazing things in the world of International Law, including publishing Large And Important books and getting cited by important international bodies and winning large grants and being just generally brilliant. The four of us have muddled through the last few years of pandemic-induced awfulness relatively unscarred, all things considered. I mean, it hasn't been fun by a long shot, and we've had the usual grab bag of stresses and worries, but we have it a lot better than many people, so can't complain.

And me? Well.

I turned fifty a few months back and, I won't lie, it's been weird. It's safe to say that, so far at least, I'm not a fan, but it's early days yet so we'll see how it goes. I'm still at UC, still teaching YA and children's writing and lit studies, plus a few other things. I've been supervising PhD students, doing quite a bit in PhD research leadership, have taken on the management of a couple of decently sized research projects in the Creativity and Wellbeing space, and have generally just been flat out keeping things ticking over. On the non-work front I've become the hopeless-but-enthusiastic coach of a girls under-9 soccer team**, I occasionally surf when my back/shoulders/knees allow it, and I've gotten very into gardening.

And I've done some writing. Three books, to be precise.

Two of them are unlikely to ever see the light of day, for various reasons which I won't bore you with. I've got hopes that someone will pick up the third, but tbh it's probably the weirdest, most commercially unfriendly thing that I've ever written, so I'm definitely not pinning all my hopes and dreams on it. But that doesn't matter because - and this was something of a revelation for me - I actually had fun writing it. Which was both unexpected, and refreshing. 

Let's not get into all that now, though. Perhaps if I build a little momentum back into this thing then we can revisit it down the track. I gather that one of the keys to success in the current internet age is something called 'content planning', so we'll call it that.

Also, by rights, I should probably be putting that stuff up over at my 'Writer' blog. It could probably use a shot in the arm too. We'll see.

So anyway - that's where we're at. Life continues on, in all its multifaceted glory. The news is full of the war in Ukraine, the floods in rural Australia, the heating planet and the rising seas. But outside today is a rare (for this year, at least) glorious Canberra spring day; the sun has just popped out from behind the clouds, the flowering gum out the front is alive with bees and wattle birds, there are a pair of crimson rosellas perching on the party lights over our back deck, a bunch of sulpher-crested cockatoos are screaming at something a few blocks away, and our garden is green and alive. I've got an idea for a new book in my brain - a good idea, about which I'm really excited - and so I'm going to take my writing journal outside, sit on the front porch in the sun, listen to the warm quiet morning, and make plans. 

I hope you're all well. I hope you also have a patch of sun in which to sit, and birds to listen to. Perhaps we'll talk again soon.

*and, as already established, 'you' most likely don't exist anymore. So if someone is actually reading this, I've got no idea where that leaves you, existentially speaking...

** Anyone who knows anything about my abilities with both team sports and ball sports will realise how terribly funny this is.