I am unwinding a life.  Two and a half years of self-employment comes to an end today and on Monday I am back to work.

I am excited for this new beginning; to have colleagues again, and the pattern of the school year, to release the fear of where (and when) the next contract is coming from.  I am looking forward to the rituals of sports’ day and seasonal celebrations.  It will be good to feel I am supporting an organisation and contributing.

It wasn’t expected.  I had other plans.  Sometimes things fall apart and you have to change direction, look at the stars, the sun, steer a new course.

Unwinding…

I have stopped several work streams which have been important over the past eight years, pulled back from others, I am cancelling websites and plans.  It is strange.  After so long of trying to make one thing work, to be folding it up and putting it away.

I can be slow on the uptake.  I repeat a pattern, only I don’t realise it’s a pattern because I have cunningly chosen to locate it in a different place, or with other people.

I am learning to paint a new pattern.  It is not even, or regular.  It does not “make sense”, it is not tidy or expected.  My teachers would shake their heads, grown-ups would look at it baffled.

But there is joy in it, simplicity, freedom, hope, beauty.

And a measure of grace.