Couple of probably unrelated things · 10:23pm Jan 20th, 2019
Ok so, first things first. Any of my long-term followers will remember my ongoing struggles with the twin forces of Not Having Blood and Being Terminally Bearded. I can't fix the latter (doesn't matter how often you cut it off, it always grows back) but the former is theoretically curable.
I thought it'd been fixed. Turns out that was a premature celebration, because I'm still ill, I just didn't realise it. My GP managed to lose all my notes, which is quite impressive considering they're stored in a remote database somewhere, so I've got a scan coming up to confirm what I already knew - that my insides hate me. Fortunately no snaky cameraboys this time. Just an overly friendly consultant who liked to maintain eye contact.
The upshot of that is that, as of the end of december, I quit work. Now don't worry, this isn't going to be a sudden launch of a new crowd funding campaign (though I always appreciate the pennies, BUT THIS NOT THE POINT OF THE POST), because I'm in a reasonably good position as far as finances go. It's probably a positive thing of anything; I should, in theory, have more time to write. If only I had the energy. Working on that anyway.
The other thing. The other thing...
Excuse me getting all sombre for a moment.
I've been watching the news about Zimbabwe recently. I've been watching it for a long while, in fact, and lamenting the ongoing idiocy over there. I have good reason to. I have friends there, or I suppose I should say by now that I had friends there, Hezekiah and Priscka. I lost contact with them nearly 15 years ago, when the Mugabe regime was climbing towards its worst excesses and the economy was falling apart. Any efforts I've made to find them have been fruitless, and every time I ready stories like this, I find myself wondering if they're doing ok. Or if they're even alive. I suspect neither.
They came to visit us once, in the 90s. We took them to blackpool and showed them a roller coaster (they refused to go on it and I don't blame them), and then they stood on the beach, in the shallow water, and stared at the horizon for nearly an hour because neither of them had seen the sea before. When they left us, we sent them away with an iron and an electric kettle, and a few weeks supply of chocolate.
When I think of how my life has gone, I (and it's a personal blog, so it's always about I) thank my lucky stars that I live in a society where my anaemia is something that is easily treated and considered relatively benign. They live in a society where my disease was a death sentence - even in what was at that point the relative affluence of Zimbabwe, it was a dire state of existence.
Decades ago they showed me, by their wonder at things I took for granted, that I live in an incredibly fragile set of circumstances. They showed me that taking these things for granted was, at the very best, indecent. That I live in a world that most people can't even begin to imagine.
The freedoms I have. The access to medicines I have. The opportunities I have.
I'm alive because I have that. They may not be alive because they didn't have that.
It would be easy to be depressed because of that.
But rather than be depressed, I choose to remember that one moment of simple happiness, of Hezekiah on a that beach, with his feet buried in wet sand and a smile on his face.
There's no way to end this, so I'm just going to stop here.
Well. That was a sobering dose of perspective. Here's hoping they can recover your records without having to retake literally every test.
You're a better person than a lot of people I know. Stay good bro.
You're definitely in my thoughts. Good luck on fixing what ails you.