This is a bit of a test since I haven't used this blog for something like 7 years. I am starting it up again as I have a new book etc. coming out. It is odd reading the jaunty tone of the previous entries. So much has happened for me since - sudden death of a parent, miscarriages, ending of a 15-year relationship, getting a PhD - that I feel changed on an integral level. I'd like in some ways to re-connect with my former bounciness. This year with its artistic happenings for me pulled me back to my more customary optimism, even as the wider state of the world tracks on erratic and dangerous. It's the cognitive dissonance - ambiguity tolerance, if you will, which is what I studied for my PhD - of living with both the optimism and the sometimes-harsh realism that is the always re-calibrating juggle.