I am ruminating on Con’s entry yesterday and not sure I quite have the words yet. A familiar space has gone and I’m not sure if it’s me or the space. I commented on an absence of conversational engagement but that’s not quite right and I want to say some sort of silo-ing but I am unclear where the silos are, or even if they’re generational of sorts.

10 years ago, 15 years ago, perhaps more, there was the fun of the new and a large bunch of folk all trying out new things together. It started out slow: 1 then a few, then a few more, then at some point or other it hit critical mass. It seemed to be cross generational and by generational perhaps I mean to say cohorts or tribes rather than age specific as groups picked up and came on board.

Newgrad stuff took off too. None of those original bunches are newgrad anymore: some are mid career, some top career, some retired, some moved on entirely. Twitter is sort of a bunch of familiar faces with occasional new folk but nothing revolutionary.

Perhaps the wave of social media excitement has crested and folk are tired. Then again, #blogjune seemed to start initially as a means to revitalisation. Recognition then, that we were falling off. The number of friends I have on facebook doesn’t change a lot whereas twitter is more public with chopping and changing. I keep trying instagram but it lacks traction for me. I initiate stuff on facebook but mostly respond on twitter. 2-3 forums seems to be about my limit.

Other folk do other things. Perhaps we now are the “old folk”, “old guard”, the folk we railed against and our approaches are less relevant. Perhaps we didn’t rail at all and that was a convenient ploy. An aspect of me and who I am is the struggle to easily establish new friends; friending people takes years. Perhaps that limits my ability to engage these days.

We are more careful these days, watching what we say, what we do. Comments in jest can be misconstrued, quoted out of context later. Everybody is in our spaces now, everything recorded. It’s tricky to find the right size space; a space sufficiently large for conversations by multiple players but not too large that conversations get drowned out and forgotten. Large enough to have a flow of people without being a quickly flowing river.

The fun has gone, but habits of community and communication remain. I have been here before. I had a decade or so swept up in the glories of usenet for online discussion across the late 80s and 90s. Then there was a pause for a while and then social media and public access took off. Different people for different times.

Perhaps pauses are natural as we stroll.

What even does that look like? Saw a post from a friend pondering retirement, future and planning and it’s a space I occasionally wonder about and whether I could indeed afford to retire. If I did retire what would I do, what is life like without the job I have.

Privilege blah blah blah plays a part in this conversation of course. I’m almost 53 and I have a good job and own a flat with mortgage paid off. My super is ok but not fab, previous jobs paid much lower and a decade as a professional student barely paid at all. I cannot envisage retiring; I like my work and remain passionate for it and the industry I work in. If I stop working I’d probably have to stop buying pretty books – on the other hand, I have plenty to read.

Post 65 is a tricky space as my dad died at 65 while working fulltime and doing a PhD part time. Mum did retire but her final years were physically painful with athritis and osteo. My oldest grandparent (great-gran actually) died at 93 and I suspect they had some form of dementia. I sort of figure my life expectancy probably maxes out at around 80.

I joke about wanting gaming consoles in the nursing home but wonder if I’ll be coordinated enough to play them.

I’m happy enough now though thinking about the future a little. I find comparing myself to others an exercise in anxiety and ultimately different people have different needs and different lives. There isn’t a one size fits all in this conversation. I don’t want a lot of things but I don’t want to end up homeless either.

Still at 52, I am happily surprised to find myself in a satisfying job doing things I love and associating with interesting people.

Slept in. Cocooned in the doona. Odd dreams about living and working from home in the outer burbs yet somehow some combo of Barcelona/Rome/New York was a 10 minute walk away with a grand central style train station. A large place with a spooky cellar. An itinerant chap was living in the cellar. Was spooky initially but we chatted and I was fine with him living there. A big backyard and I had no idea how to mow it. It seemed to be a temporary place; all my stuff was in the other house with my partner and we’d spend weekends together. There was some sort of techerie that needed addressing somewhere. The house was empty yet there was a wheelchair in a spare room.

It reads a little like the start of a horror story, yet felt relaxed and comfy.

Had a late brekky and there’s something about a 1pm brekky on a sunlit afternoon with shadows stretching away. I hit a mental moment of relaxation…happy thinking on things and ideas and directions. The travel section of the paper had a nice suggestion for a place to stay in Stanley, Tas. We may visit Stanley and that may work…or perhaps we’ll stay in Burnie – a few days in Burnie and a few in Launceston. Perhaps a distillery visit. Quiet towns and walking. Dunno. A nice dinner in Launceston would be good and there’s interesting options.

Bought more Zooom today. So so good.

Blogging without blogging about work is a little tricky. Work is such a large part of me and what I do and often what I like to do. But blogging about work requires caution – I don’t mean that in a sinister way. Work is an institution and things are known and unknown. I don’t do a lot in public spaces, my work is more back room, supporting those in the patron facing spaces.

Most of my work conversations are with staff or with suppliers, there’s not a lot of reason for me to talk to non library people. What I do is a mix of spreadsheets and budgets and stats and tech and negotiations and planning and preparing and exploring and evaluating. Talking about my work needs to steer a path away from selling my work I think.

I am unsure if #blogjune will be a thing this year, to be honest, I think I’m rather past it and the care factor. I suspect I’ve said variations of that since the beginning. Oh I forgot, my first post of #blogjune usually begins with:

Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh!!!!

or similar, perhaps less h and more r.

So 2021 here we are. Perhaps this I will try recycling ideas from the start of this instance of this blog ie the stuff that is still easily accessible. I have talked too much of older versions so I figure this might be the year to recycle the current version, but with new bits [narrator: unlikely] and new images [narrator: likely but they’ll just be more books].

There were murmurings last week of doing stuff for #blogjune. Someone even threatened I take up a variation of a suggestion of a Lem idea and write reviews of movies that don’t exist.

Though I drink whisky regularly [narrator: nightly] I think I’ve moved on from my obsession in that direction. These days I’ve moved back to books and collecting books [narrator: I warned you about the books] so I could chat about collecting I s’pose and post pictures of the pretty books I have [narrator: I warned you about posting images of books].

Mostly I don’t care. Some years I start with a plan. I still have lists of things to blog about from years gone by. Blogging every day is sometimes easy, sometimes hard, sometimes I just don’t care.

Some years I fudge day by day.

This year, Sydney filmfest has been moved from June to August depriving me of much content, and content about content. I might have to work a little harder this year to churn out daily posts. To be fair, even with filmfest, some years I struggle. If I am in the mood, there will be posts. If I am not in the mood, there may not be posts. Perhaps.

Anyway, #blogjune is off again.

Prior to lockdown, we purchased a head shaving kit just in case. I don’t have a lot of hair these days with a combo of bald spot (or expanse) and receding hairline. It’s how I look today. I miss having a full head of hair though I think miss having enough hair to colour. I miss purple hair and black hair and blue and orange. Someone commented that they remembered when I had green hair and I don’t even remember that one.

These days I have little hair and that’s not a problem; I am comfortable with how I look and the skin I inhabit. Due to the lack of hair I tend to get a head shave every 6-8 weeks, usually a No 4 though I did try a No 3, and only once – that was a bit too short. I discovered this week that the numbers refer to parts of an inch eg No 4 is 4/8 of an inch, No 3 is 3/8 of an inch. Which means I usually get a shave down to half an inch, or around 12-13mm.

This matters because yesterday I had a haircut. My first haircut since the start of lockdown and probably around 4 months since the last. I think this is the longest my hair has been in many years. It was getting a little challenging in odd ways and was affecting my hearing aids. I would brush hair off my ears and accidentally hit the volume control on my hearing aids – not fun. My family who really only know me with short hair were finding the new me increasingly “interesting”. Hair started to stick out sideways. The advantage of short hair is that you don’t need to comb it. My hair was needing more and more attention.

Yesterday, Ms19 offered to cut my hair. She read the manual and we discussed what the sizes meant and how to work out the correct blade. She watched a few youtube videos on cutting hair. At lunch we got down to business. We set up a chair in the kitchen and I wrapped a towel around my shoulders and off she went. I think we were both nervous initially but I certainly relaxed quite quickly.

Voila, in rather good time, I was back to my old self. Ms19 did a fab job. Admittedly I did stage the before shot but I am staggered at how different the two views are. I’d forgotten how nice it is to have a haircut. My head feels better oddly.