There is a light

Back in September 2018 I wrote this. It was superficially about cycling. But of course, as a friend said to me this week, my blog posts are full of coded messages and hidden meanings.

Mostly directed at, and hidden from, myself.

But it turns out my prediction was right. Something bigger has come along. My brilliant job in a great organisation turned out to have less lustre and grace than I realised, and a new professional challenge has come along to tempt me away. Before you ask, yes, a gold guitar is involved, as well as bright lights right in front of me. But as it turns out, I've been waiting to get home a long time.

Whisper this very, very quietly, I've found a friend to lend a hand to in return for grace. So I'm not letting it get away. Even if that doesn't ring true. So I'm off to pastures new.

Always the second chorus. Because I'm not a hopeless case.

I told a few of my cycling friends I was changing jobs, and told them it was for a fresh challenge. One, a Scouser obviously, said "what the bloody hell do you want to do that for?". Empathic lot.

It will be a wrench to leave behind so many great colleagues, but in this day and age you are only an insta or tweet away. You can't hold onto every little thing so tightly. In any case, my new base is about four minutes from my old one. So we have no excuses, if you don't keep in touch it's because you didn't want it that much anyway.

It's a new job, almost invented for me, so I'm packing a suitcase for somewhere none of us has ever been. It has been a wonderful eight years. But I've got to leave it behind.

Someone at my current place mentioned that it was the end of an era. Which is troubling. Sounds like someone old is now past it. Which is definitely not true.  That said, big and fragile as my ego is, not even I'm irreplaceable. No, I mean it.

Coming up in September I'm off to Bretagne to cycle a few byways with Monmarduman himself. Taking the ferry again, with the ship that stole my heart away. Overnight, in the darkness. On the cycling front it's been a quiet and somewhat frustrating year. But I have embers glowing for 2020, ready to turn into a conflagration. If you think you're done, you've just begun.

 

Because there is a light, don't let it go out

 

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