The renewal for this account and the attached url were coming up and seeing that I hadn’t posted on it since June of 2020, I was wondering whether I was just keeping it because I was overly attached to the url. As I began removing the old posts, I knew that I would be renewing the account and url and using it to document a new phase in my life that was about to begin. This is the third time I have started a writing project on this site to document what was going on in my life, despite owning both the account and the domain for many years. Perhaps third time is the charm.

I get to see some spectacular sunrises across the ocean from my apartment. I was hoping that I would get one before the end of the month that would capture the literal ‘dawning of a new era’ in my life and was very pleased with this one (in its original glory, no adjustments or filters.) Apart from being dramatic and spectacular it is also mysterious and enigmatic – much like I am thinking the new phase in my life might be.

The new beginning relates to a person who is about to arrive in my world (no, not offspring.) A most unexpected relationship, probably the most unexpected relationship I could possibly have imagined. Certainly not a relationship I ever expected to be having. However, as I am becoming more comfortable with the notion that “I do not know what anything is for”; following my intuition over my logic; and trusting that in the end everything turns out fine; I find myself both excited and a little nervous about ‘what happens next’.

At the end of October 2021, on a language exchange website, I found myself teasing a young man about his knowledge of jazz. A Korean student, in his mid-twenties, and 30 years my junior, he was, in my opinion, he was far to youthful to have any serious knowledge of a genre of music that was decidedly unfashionable. Little did I know that niche was the new fashionable. I was also completely unjustified in my mockery as his knowledge of jazz was quite considerable. Though I knew that jazz was still popular in Japan I didn’t realise that Korea retained a similar interest.

Thus began a friendship which is culminating in his arrival in to my life next week. The last 9 months of our online, message and phone have developed me in some particular unexpected ways and I am intrigued as to whether and how our ‘in person’ relationship is going to continue to do this.

I intend to write in a more in depth fashion about the nature of our relationship, the costs and benefits as well as development and learning, but I also wanted to track on this blog, once a month, a lesson that I have received from the relationship that I don’t want to forget.

This month’s lesson is all about apprehension which goes on in your head. There is no point expecting the worst or expecting the best: things will be what they will be and the only way to see the true colours of any experience is not to bring either the light or the dark with you to it, but evaluate it, in the now with the feelings that you feel at the time.