Back where I started...

I suppose that I should edit my profile now that I am no longer working as a Mobile Malware Threat Researcher, or living in Oxfordshire, or channel hopping between England and France. I sent my resignation to my solicitor last Monday for him to handle on my behalf, posted hard copies last Friday and am awaiting the confirmation that the agreed severance settlement has been completed.

So I am no longer working in IT which, forty years after I wrote my first line of code, is a little difficult to comprehend and that makes me smile because I never intended it to become a career, it was just a well-paying job to support me while I decided what I did want to do with my life.

It's so much easier for people now, I think, this whole work/life thing.

Now, as I tell The Ragazzo, it's possible to work from anywhere, on one's own terms, when one chooses, and if things do not work out well, move on to something else. People may shake their heads at that and say that the job market is tricky, that there is no longer job security/final salary pensions/guaranteed pay rises every year etc and that may be so but, but there is technology that has give people the means and the tools to do so much more than sit in an office or stand behind a counter as a wage slave. And there is so much information available at the click of a mouse, and free online courses, and videos explaining how to do anything from deliver a puppy to bake a cake to install solar panels etc etc, and all of that gives people the power to live their lives on their own terms. Or it should.

If I were starting out now I'd have part-time work that paid for my food, clothes and a shelter and I'd spend the rest of my time doing the things that make my heart happy; the writing, the reading, the teaching, the studying, the painting, the horse riding, the swimming in the sea, the kayaking round pink rocks.

I would not have the intimidatingly large mortgage that kept me chained to a job that, at times, was so stressful it probably contributed to my cancer. I would not have credit card bills that grew every month and that I feared I'd never clear, and I would not sell my soul to a corporate devil.

Easily said, I know, but being older and a little wiser, I would do it, somehow.

But here I am back in Brittany, in the home that I thought I'd left nine years ago and I am very grateful to have this place to return to for a saner, happier, healthier life and, I hope, a few more wild adventures!

I hadn't meant to say all of this. I'd intended to talk about a day out with a new friend and her son at Le Yaudet, or the birthday that Tashi and I spent yesterday playing at the pink granite coast, or one of the other fun things I've done since coming back, but hey, that's the way it goes sometimes.

Stay flexible. bend with the storms, turn your face to the sunshine and live a full life!