miscellany
I've posted a couple of times recently about how bittersweet it is to be confronted with the reality of your relatives as people, but mostly with emphasis on the "bitter". This weekend, staying with my dad, I think I saw more of the sweetness of it. I went for a drive with him on Saturday, and we talked (as we always end up doing - I've lost count of the number of times I've sat in Dad's car until hours after we've stopped driving, because a Serious Conversation got started) about the fact that, if all goes to plan, I'll be moving out at the end of this month, and how I'm going to negotiate my relationship with my family when I do. He talked to me about his decision to leave Gibraltar and his family, about managing the informal joint custody arrangement he's had with Mum since they split up, about how he sees my relationships with people and how he thinks moving out's going to work for me - and I could see with a clarity I've never really felt before, my dad not relative to me. My dad at the same age as I am now, with me and my sister 7 years away and having just started seeing my mum, figuring out where and how and with whom he's going to make a life for himself. My dad now as someone who doesn't just love me and support me, but who negotiates a relationship with me through the filter of his own experiences, his own personality, his own opinions of what I'm like and what I do.
Sunday afternoon, I watched him and my sister play squash, after a week or so of half-hearted bets, cocky challenges, and mutual promises of arse-kicking. Which was duly delivered by Dad (although Sis put up a bloody good fight), because, well, he may be 53, but he's been an amateur tennis player for probably getting on 40 years now, and played at a pretty high level when he was young (not that that means too much when you're Gibraltarian, given that the entire population could fit comfortably inside most major sports venues elsewhere in the world). And as he played, he gave Sis tips, and didn't go easy on her, and you could see what a big part of him that talent is, and how happy it makes him, and how it's part of the relationship he has with my (immeasurably less athletically inept) sister - and it made me happy to see that.
It's been nice, I think, to see that getting older doesn't have to disillusion you about your family, but can give you a sweeter perspective on them too.
*
I am teaching my first class ever in two weeks' time, before which I will have had a grand total of one morning's training. I am CRAPPING MYSELF, but also very excited. Yesterday I finally saw the lecture syllabus that I'll be running my tutorials alongside, and already I have Plans and Ideas. I also spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to settle on when I was going to hold the damn things, anxiously cross-referencing campus maps and first-year lecture schedules and trying not to make them hate me from the off by scheduling anything first thing on Monday morning or last thing on Friday afternoon or immediately after a lecture taking place half an hour's walk away from my teaching room. I am already overthinking this, Y/Y?
*
Relatedly, from now until the Christmas holidays, I will be not only teaching, but a) moving out (touch wood), b) presenting at two conferences within two weeks of each other, and c) trying to get a decent draft of thesis Chapter 3 finished. As such, fair warning: although random personal crap posts will probably keep coming, the fandom content of this journal is going to be limited to my sporadic tl;dr reviews for the next while.
*
Idk what it is about the weather that's producing them, but there have been some gorgeous sunsets around here recently.
Sunday afternoon, I watched him and my sister play squash, after a week or so of half-hearted bets, cocky challenges, and mutual promises of arse-kicking. Which was duly delivered by Dad (although Sis put up a bloody good fight), because, well, he may be 53, but he's been an amateur tennis player for probably getting on 40 years now, and played at a pretty high level when he was young (not that that means too much when you're Gibraltarian, given that the entire population could fit comfortably inside most major sports venues elsewhere in the world). And as he played, he gave Sis tips, and didn't go easy on her, and you could see what a big part of him that talent is, and how happy it makes him, and how it's part of the relationship he has with my (immeasurably less athletically inept) sister - and it made me happy to see that.
It's been nice, I think, to see that getting older doesn't have to disillusion you about your family, but can give you a sweeter perspective on them too.
*
I am teaching my first class ever in two weeks' time, before which I will have had a grand total of one morning's training. I am CRAPPING MYSELF, but also very excited. Yesterday I finally saw the lecture syllabus that I'll be running my tutorials alongside, and already I have Plans and Ideas. I also spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to settle on when I was going to hold the damn things, anxiously cross-referencing campus maps and first-year lecture schedules and trying not to make them hate me from the off by scheduling anything first thing on Monday morning or last thing on Friday afternoon or immediately after a lecture taking place half an hour's walk away from my teaching room. I am already overthinking this, Y/Y?
*
Relatedly, from now until the Christmas holidays, I will be not only teaching, but a) moving out (touch wood), b) presenting at two conferences within two weeks of each other, and c) trying to get a decent draft of thesis Chapter 3 finished. As such, fair warning: although random personal crap posts will probably keep coming, the fandom content of this journal is going to be limited to my sporadic tl;dr reviews for the next while.
*
Idk what it is about the weather that's producing them, but there have been some gorgeous sunsets around here recently.