The month of January 2019 has been one of joy and sadness,
with challenges and unpleasant surprises that have left me shaken and at times
deeply distressed. The month started well as I had enjoyed a very memorable
time over the Yuletide and I had begun to write up my experiences ready for
this blog.
I am eagerly awaiting publication in the next work from Anathema
Publishing Limited and at the start of January the pre-order facility went live
on the website. To say that I am honoured to be a contributor to PILLARS IV
(Vol.2, Issue.1) ‘Circling the Compass’ which should see publication proper in
February, barely encapsulates my feelings. I am ridiculously excited as I recognise
the remarkable prestige that publication by Anathema represents. This announcement
is a moment of pride and naturally a cause of celebration. Please view the
Anathema Publishing links below for details of this publication.
The joy has however, been short and tainted. During the
course of the month four persons that I know in real life, have all suffered
bereavements. One such loss being close enough that I have myself, been touched
by the deep sorrow such events entail. The cold winds of January have swept us
in a way both undesirable and unexpected. They have left those of us affected
by such losses, chilled to the bone, frozen in thought and in our emotions.
Many of us have been left numb.
Towards the latter half of the month I faced a double
disappointment, a personal catastrophe. The failure of the hard-drive on my
laptop has resulted in a shocking loss of work. My thoughts on this are
explored elsewhere (see the link to ‘Our Electronic Dependence’ below) and I
will not go into details here. I will merely recapitulate that the loss of work
is great. Although I have spent a considerable amount of time tracing work and recopying,
much still remains lost. Many deadlines are no longer achievable.
Then as I was slowly losing my mind as I attempted to assimilate
the loss of my written work, a charity event I was involved in organising was
cancelled. An announcement by the venue on the 23rd of January took
us all by surprise. There was an element of disbelief as we heard the news that
the ceiling was unsafe and that the theatre would be closed until September. The
Northern Witan 2019 is one of over one hundred events cancelled; the closure of
the Guildhall is a major blow to the arts and entertainment scene in Derby.
Despite our wishes to find an alternative venue, it is clear
that doing so with only eight weeks’ notice is impossible. The decision to
cancel was a hard one to take and the loss of twelve months work has been a
great blow to all involved. Although we hope to be able to reschedule the event
for later this year or early next, we are at this time unable to state clearly whether
the Northern Witan will take place or not.
As the month came to an end I felt that I could not cope
with anything more going wrong. January has been the darkest of months, stained
by death, equipment failures and personal disappointments. What more could
possibly go wrong? Truly, I felt broken.
The winter is a testing time, an endurance of hardship and
challenges. I sincerely hope that February will be a month of greater happiness
and joy than January. The coming of Candlemas heralds an eventual return of
light, despite the foreboding harshness of winter that is still yet to come. We
can all look forward in hope towards those warmer days that are expected, once
the cold and bitter winter has ended. We would all do well to remember that where
there is the promise of light, then there is also the promise of hope.
ANATHEMA PUBLISHING
ON FACEBOOK
ANATHEMA PUBLISHING
WEBSITE
OUR ELECTRONIC DEPENDENCE
Please consider paying for PCloud to backup your data into cloud storage
ReplyDeletehttps://my.pcloud.com/
You can get a lifetime price, and it offers secure encryption of files held on your local computer and only accessible with your password.
I can highly recommend it - and this is the sphere I work in for a living.
Best Wishes, Peter