Yesterday I did nothing, and it was glorious. However, really, I worked from home and that was the glorious bit. I still did stuff. As such, my saying that I did nothing is a lie, and this is the truth.

I want to talk about the weather and this is how I’m starting things off. Fantastic.

My life slips into the realm of the banal, or perhaps I’m just more firmly cognizant of it having always been in the banal, and that’s okay. I’m at Duoly Rob once more and it’s raining outside. This could be worse, and it likely will be worse later, the weather that is. This place is fine. It’s pleasant in all the right ways. Nice to sit and rest, and take it easy here.

But outside it is raining, and I’m more aware of being close to the rain. Yesterday it also rained and it was a bit vicious, and not really at the same time. Yesterday the rain fell and the wind blew, and the winds were strong. I saw branches bend in ways that perhaps they shouldn’t, or rather I saw them bend in ways that I wasn’t comfortable with, mainly due to my not knowing enough about trees, really.

No branches dropped so I was lucky. So were many others, and a good few weren’t.

We have a habit of taking bad weather for granted. A lot of loss and devastation can come with it, and we don’t do much in the way of reacting to it. We might not see it happen, so we are indifferent. And sometimes that’s a difficult thing to deal with. Sometimes it’s difficult to reckon with how uncaring we can be because something didn’t happen to us.

You try. You try to improve and get better with these things, but you also have to recognise how much is not enough and how much is too much.

It’s raining and it’s windy, and some people are worried and I’m comfortable, and people shouldn’t have to be worried. I’m not advocating for removing trees here, just to be clear. We need more of them in a lot of areas. What I’m trying to think of is how we can develop in ways that are ecologically sustainable whilst maintaining safety and comfort with shelter. I don’t have the answers. I don’t know the best ways to go about these things, but it’s something to think about. It’s something to consider. Not enough people do, I think. Or maybe enough people actually do.

I will soon be outside again and dealing with the weather, and I’ll deal with it however I can, which will be in a minimal manner, I think. I don’t know. I’m not sure yet. There’s still time before I’m out there. But for some they’ll be dealing with it all day, and I most certainly won’t be. I’m just going from one safe place to another. In a sense, I’m fortunate. Too many people are not.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 07:59:93

I wrote this yesterday, and it got a bit more serious than I’d hoped. I was hoping for serious, but a relaxed seriousness. This is what came forward though, and it’s fine.

Written at Dirty Red.