Thursday, March 6, 2025

Don't Write March...

I feel like this should be a "music free" post, but I'm also in the middle of a nostalgia-dive on YouTube so have a belated "Vale Peter Steele": Type O Negative - I Don't Wanna Be Me 

I'm tired. 
And sick. 
Sick and tired, in fact. 

The cost of doing business... took a lot out of me. For most of January I was convinced I'd never finish it and just wanted to purge the lot, but whether through deadheaded determination, or belligerent bloody-mindedness, I got there in the end and... I'm actually fucking proud of what I created. 

It says what I wanted to say, and more besides, with both depth and nuance that I've spent the last couple of years practicing how to deliver. In conversation recently, Ian described the way I write as "meaning-dense", his way of acknowledging how much meaning I try to load into a sentence by way of reference and repetition. Scott mirrored that sentiment beautifully, in his own way, when he told me "it's obvious how carefully and intentionally you pick each word to say all the things you want them to mean." 

It's so nice to be 'seen', isn't it? 

But... this used to be fun, and it's not any more. It used to be an escape, and now I feel trapped by it. What used to bring me joy (which is something you can share the taste of, and is indescribably more valuable to me than pride which no one can really stomach when it's anyone else's) has gone a long way past the point where it started to hurt (and in doing throws into sharp relief how well correlated "the things I'm proud of" are with "the things which hurt me to do" in my personal history). Now I'm somewhere in a zone where (all the session-drinking and chain-smoking I do to keep me) doing this is causing me actual damage. 

A week ago I closed the tabs I've had open to this site for the first time since I moved back to Canberra, and spent the time (between then and shortly before I started writing this) both sober and nicotine-free. I've decided that I'm going to spend the month of March not writing (much). I've long-since gone past the point where I'm "on" edge to the one where I'm on the verge of being "over it", so I decided to take a break before I do. 

Or more than I already have. 

Today I found myself winding up a punch I almost didn't throw and while it didn't connect, that moment (which I'm far from being proud of) was connected to more than a thousand words could graph. It might not be enough to Save Me, but the only way I know to start means that first I need to Stop; 

Thursday, February 13, 2025

The cost of doing business... (Part III: Aphelion)

I want to use 3 Doors Down, but you know it's Enter Shikari all the way down... 

Enter Shikari - Redshift

Have you noticed that everything I say goes around in circles? Just like everything around us,
Drawn together by chance or circumstance, revolving; 
Ships in the night falling into and flying out of each other's orbit.
Points of light, dancing amongst the stars. 
Repeat after me... 

It's said that you can't cross the same river twice. The silt you kick up and the ripples you cause change it forever; it can never be the same again. Likewise, the you who crosses the next time around isn't the same person, they just remember being the person who did it the time before. 
The name of the river might be the same but the river itself has been changed by your passing, and so have you. 

Names are important; they help us to identify one person from another in the stories we tell. Our names can be the shape we pour ourselves into, or the one that grows around us as we reach our final form. Laika tipped her hat to her Russian heritage, and adopted The First Dog In Space when she declared her old name dead and buried. Jason was given a good, strong name, which he never saw the point of changing because it suited him just fine, and me... I have a name I chose to adopt because, in part, of all the people who refused to call me by anything else. Some people are born to a name, some have a name thrust upon them, and who am I to deny the wisdom of crowds when the one they formed around me fits so well? 

In Pete's Apocryphal Pocket Dictionary there's a girl with an angelic smile you might have glimpsed when you were flicking past the letter A. I never did find out what name her Persian parents gave her; I called her خواهر کوچک, but she introduced herself as Anna V----, and that was how I greeted her the day she called me at my desk to ask for some information about [Civil Construction Client]'s servers. 

"What's it say in the doco?" 
"There isn't any, that's why I called."
"Oh?" I replied innocently, but with an escalating growl, "are you sure about that?" 
"..." 
"Remember who you're talking to here. 
"Were you not able to find it, or did you just assume?" 
"Oh shoot. 
"I'm sorry, I didn't think.
"I should have checked." 

Not gonna lie, that sort of honesty buys you a metric-fuckton of my time. 

"I just looked and it's right there.
"I'm so used to [Allied Health Client]'s KB, it's so out of date. 
"I'm SO SORRY!" 
"I'll let you off," I said, because kicking puppies is the antithesis of my idea of a good time, "but it's going to cost you. 
"Your penance will be getting [Allied Health Client]'s server pages up to the same level of detail as [Civil Construction Client]'s." 
"... Oh fiddlesticks." 
"Have fun! Let me know if you need a hand..." 

Anna was a ray of sunshine sat in the middle of the Service Desk, who somehow made the whole crew better just by being there, so when Rowan and I lit our respective rockets and blasted off in pursuit of our respective launch-windows we broke the gender-parity we'd achieved in the team and filled the vacuum we left by promoting her to Lead the Team who had come to revolve around her. 

Time passed. 
My mentor Row'd his boat into deeper waters. 
Boldilocks and Michael bounced over the fence into greener pastures, and Anna was headhunted to build the Service Desk for a competitor, because Service Desk is an incubator where IT professional careers are laid, not where they hatch; attrition and churn are a fact of life. 

When I was made redundant a couple of years later I'd trained up Jake to take my place, and served out my notice period winding things up with [Civil Construction Client]. I worked it all the way through to the end, and had just hung up from TNM after apologising for running out of steam on my last day when my phone rang again, this time with Anna's name on the screen. 

She'd heard through the grapevine that the chapter of my story she'd been a part of was coming to an end after all those years, so called to check in and hear me tell it. 
She didn't call to offer help, but was there to give it if I asked. 
She knew I wasn't short on friends; she wanted me to know that she'd be one if she could, whether I needed it or not. 

So we talked about what had happened, and my plans for what what I was going to do next, and she offered to put me in touch with some people who could use a freelancer to help with their clients in Perth. The grapevine works both ways tho, and I'd heard how she'd not been well, so I asked. 

I was prepared for the ovarian cancer diagnosis she told me about, and the less-than-positive prognosis she'd been given; it was the absolute absence of self-pity and -abnegation in her voice that left me on my knees on the side of William St when I hung up the phone. 

"Man, it's like you're Wonder Woman or something," I mused, "you're not going to let anything stop you, are you?"
"Would you?" she asked, "I learned from the best." 

Looking at the blank screen of my phone, I picked myself up, finished my day, and handed my laptop and other corporate accoutrement over to Jake before dragging him out for drinks with a bunch of my other friends. 

Anna and I kept in touch, and true to her word I picked up many billable hours to invoice her contacts for. Months went by with the memory of that conversation bouncing around between the bones of my head, and an idea formed which led to (an actual) pen clumsily meeting (actual) paper, which I tied closed with a ribbon and sealed with an enamel pin I found on eBay: 

خواهر کوچک

There's not a lot of people in this world I really like, and even fewer who I respect. 
You've always been one of the few who was both. 
As I got to know you, you became one of the rarest people in my life. 
Those I've found truly inspiring. 
I wanted to send you something you could carry with you as a reminder of how wonderful you are, and what a powerful impact you have on the people who cross your path, 
and that the world has been a better place with you in it. 

.صلح
Peter Raven

In the photo I took the last time I laid eyes on her in August 2019, Anna is sat to the left of the group because she'd arrived late and needed to leave early; chemo doesn't leave you with the energy to do much, but when I came to town and got Yael, Boldilocks, Gabe, Chris (and his adorable daughters), and Michael from her old team together, she spent what she had to come and see us: 

Six months before her journey ended, three months before that photo was taken, I sent her a 'heartbeat check' message whilst on another work-trip to Melbourne, and worked out that a meeting I had scheduled in Box Hill would be finishing up around the same time as her chemo appointment across the road that day, so I did what any good Agile-minded Project Manager would do: 

I managed expectations, adjusted commitments, made apologies where necessary, and ditched the client to make time in my schedule to be waiting for her in the plaza outside Box Hill Train Station afterwards. When she joined me I was sitting cross-legged on a concrete bench in the shade wearing my royal-blue suit, and she was wearing the Wonder Woman pin I'd sent on the strap of her satchel. 

She sat down in the vacant space I'd left for her, and asked me how I was. 

"Oh, you know, building stuff, fixing shit, surrounded by incompetent fucktards, doing what I can to make things better..." 
"The usual then." 
"Pretty much, yeah." 
"You'll get it sorted out, you always do. You're so good at it." 
"I guess," I replied, taking an embarrassed drag at my cigarette, "what else can I do? How about you?"
"Oh, you know; it is what it is. One day at a time, spending what I have with my husband and son, what else can I do? 
"But," she said, looking at me critically, "are you OK, really? 
"You look so tired, are you getting enough sleep?" 
"4 or 5 hours a night, I make do." 
"You really do need to take better care of yourself," she chiled me, her sternly maternal tone belied by the smile creeping across her face, "it's not like you let anyone do it for you." 
"..."

Completing its transit, Anna's smile lit up Main St so bright it darkened the sun as she affectionately patted my arm.

"You're not Superman, you know?" 

... 

She was wearing that cheap memento mori again at what would turn out to be our last meeting. She said not a word about it, but when she arrived it caught my eye, and she caught my look, and her smile met mine in the middle. If you look closely at the grainy photo I took on my phone that day you can see it right were everyone could see, but no one else was going to notice: 

One last parting gift, as if her presence wasn't enough. 

Now, years later, I find myself sitting here, wondering. 

Because whilst I can tally up everything I've spent, and all the things I've given, the support I've received from the Laika's and Jason's and Gabe's and Boldilock's and Michael's and Anna's has been immeasurable; if I can't even count what I've received, can what it cost me count for anything? If I could say, with a straight face, that I've given everything, it would imply that at one point or another I'd had everything to give. Somehow now matter how much I give nothing is taken, yet returns threefold.  No matter how much of myself I give away, I always have more coming back at me; my cup runneth over, and what I have left afterwards is better than I was before. 

How could I possibly ask for more? 

I am not immune to Newton's Third Law. 
I am not immune to Newton's Third Law. 
I am not immune to Newton's Third Law. 

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

The cost of doing business... (Part II: Transit)

Somehow I just can't seem to get enough of: Enter Shikari - Pack of Thieves

Have you been listening or just watching the scene unfold, waiting for me to get to the point? 
The lede is buried between the lines; 
I could point it out but you'll learn better if you go find it yourself.
Don't worry, I'll wait.
I've got all the time in the world. 

Is it weird that I'm more avuncularly inclined towards my Padawans than I am to the memory of Younger Pete? It must seem unfair to hold them to a lesser standard, but I swear I don't; The Best Pete is the benchmark I hold myself to, and 99 times out of 10 (Ian notwithstanding; he'll always be the Paragon-ideal I know my Renegade-self can never achieve) that guy is the North Star I try to point people towards (because whilst Ian'ing is a virtue, the rest of us are only human). I won't pretend to meeting that standard myself, but he's the Ideal I'm always trying to be, the light shining tantalisingly over the hill I know I'll one day die on whilst it hangs perpetually out of reach. When I meet someone who wants to be The Best Them he's the example I offer them because (no one can be as Good as Ian, and who am I to give people a goal I know is unachievable; I'm not The Buddha, I'm just A Boy Who's Lost, just like the rest of you) the The Best Me I Can Be is easy to compare to the Me they can see. So don't mistake me for suggesting that being The Best Them looks anything like The Best Pete (let alone Ian); I've only managed to look like that guy on a hand-full of occasions, and even then it's only when you tilt your head 42 degrees and squint, but he's the mould I'm trying to shape myself into because he's the best I've got to be. I barely wanna be me, so why the fuck would I want that for anyone else? Making more of me would just give me another face I want to punch, and if there's a single more self-defeating idea than that I sure can't think of any. 

I've got no time for anyone who wants to be me, even The Best Me, but when someone wants to be The Best Them they can be... 
I've got all the time in the world. 

I still remember my first real Padawan like it was yesterday, but that isn't a stretch; I saw him a couple of months ago in Perth. If you look up "responsible young man" in Pete's Pocket Dictionary you'll find yourself peering at a photo of Jason U------- looking back with an expression somewhere between "respectfully attentive" and "if you gave the order I'd crawl on my belly through broken glass with my fly unzipped, sir". When he spotted my Facebook post saying I was visiting again he reached out to see if I had time for him to catch me up on what he's been going through, so I made damn-sure I found some. When I first laid eyes on him a decade-and-change ago he was a quiet, timid, unassuming little lamb wrapped in 6 feet of gym-junkie beefcake who seemed afraid to take up space. Over the years I've watched as he replaced timidity with self-assurance, and the humble lion who picked me up from Mother Dear's house had filled every one of those 72 inches with 'himself' in the best possible way. 

His life has gone to shit over the last year or so but that's not my story to tell, it's just the one he wanted to tell me. 
So I listened, and we talked, and there was fuck-all I could do to help, but he knew I'd get it. 
He thinks of me as a friend, and thought I'd like to know, and whether I could help or not was completely irrelevant; he doesn't need me to, but he knows that I would if I could. 

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of "leadership" lately. I could blame Ian, and I will regardless of how apropos for comic-effect, but he'd be the first to point out (if he were the sort to disagree, and not stop and first hear out your point of view, then question the evidence upon which you based your analysis later) that Leadership was one of the majors printed on the MBA that's been hanging on my wall since long before the conversations we've had since he started on his. 

There are a pile of different perspectives on what it is to lead, and how to do it best, from 'despotic' to 'transactional', all the way through to 'transformational'. In a more avant-garde (and less peer-reviewed)  mindset, Ian is fond of 'poetic' (there's only one article I've seen on the concept; he linked it to me when he was researching his assignment), whereas I favour 'transgressive' (for which there are none I can find; I haven't written one yet). He'll point to Napoleon and Patton, whereas I'll veer towards Churchill and Rommel. Ultimately, there are three (3) archetypes you can play that have been shown to work depending on your mindset and circumstance: 

1) "I'm going this away,"; 
2) "You're going that way,"; and the one I favour
3) "We're going over there. Get onboard or make your own way, but I'll see you there unless I don't."

I'm not sure if that's what Gabe S------ was looking for when she pinged me a month-and-change ago asking for advice. Beyond the occasional "I'll be in Melbourne, drinking in [this] pub if you're free after work that day," I hadn't heard from her in any meaningful way in years, then out of nowhere my phone pinged with a Message that knocked me out of my chair: 

"Hey
I was just laying here thinking how far I've come in IT
I have my first solution architecture job, which i landed by shear luck and clients loving me.

After this one I will be contracting as a solutions architect not as high as my mum but it makes me so close.

Wanted say thanks for all the training you gave me at beginning"
- 18/11/2024, 17:03

Gabe's mum was the Rockstar Solution Architect who'd been engaged on the Citrix VDI project the Company I Used To Work For was delivering for one of our clients, with a formidable rep, and a form 17 pages long. The project went to shit, but it wasn't mine to manage, or my client who dumped us as a result of our Tech Lead's incompetence, so I won't pretend I give a fuck. That hadn't happened yet when I was in Melbourne for my annual Work "Non-Denominational End of Year Celebration" Pilgrimage and Rowan grabbed me to see if I was free to jump in on an interview panel to play the Voice of Tech. When I was hired I had to go three rounds against an autistic savant from Melbourne who was driving between sites in Sydney with the GPS calling directions in the background. He was a little distracted, but did not in any way go easy on me. I found out later that he was more-than-a-little impressed, but at the time I was surprised when I progressed to the final bossfight. 

Now here I was standing in his shoes. 

"We interviewing her on her own merits, or are we sucking up to her mum?" 
Rowan made a hand-wringing gesture and dissembled, "no of course not, she's junior but she's got some experience."
"So kid gloves, or...?"
"Be fair, but work out what level she's at." 
"Got it." 

An hour or so later I was refreshing my coffee when Row approached with an empty mug and That Look on his face: 

"Remind me to give you a better definition of 'fair' next time."
"What?? I smiled all reassuring'n'shit, didn't even show teeth."
"..." 
"I went easy on her; remind me to tell you how Ken and I made this South African guy, who drew his 9mm on four armed car-jackers and killed three of them, weep in his interview some time." 
"YOU FUCKING WHAT?" 
"Not important. 
"Back to Gabe... 
"She's terrified she's only here because of her mum, it was written all over her anxiety; I didn't want her thinking this was a courtesy-interview. 
"You said to find her level, and if someone answers right you keep asking harder questions until they can't. 
"She did well, solid basic knowledge, and when she didn't know the answer you could see she was freaking out, but she said as much, kept it together, and didn't break. 
"Cried less than Paul The Killer-Saffa, that's for sure." 
"Hmm..." 
"She doesn't have her visa riding on it, and her family's safety on the line, so different stress-factor. 
"Anyway, she's got potential. Gotta work on her confidence tho - reckon we can support her in that?" 
"You know we can." 
"Golden, because by the time she spins up I'll be back in Perth and it's you she'll look to on the daily, but if we give her the opportunity to get out of her mum's shadow on her own merits she'll be ours forever. 
"You want to seal that deal, make the offer in the next couple of days, up it by $5k, and invite her to the party on Saturday. She'll hit the ground running so hard she'll barely touch it."

A couple of weeks ago I received another message: 

"Well I applied for a senior/coordinator role
Not solution architect but will give me leadership and make it easier to get one later.

They are looking for someone to lead the service desk while they focus on growing the company
So essentially I'd be the manager of service desk

Got feed back saying I was great in interview
Think I'd be great fit and knowledgeable 

The people choosing has covid so won't find out till next week but sounds like I may have the job

Any advice on leadership?"
- 13/12/2024, 15:51

"Jeez...
"Where to start...
"I mean..." 

She's going to do great (whether I have anything to do with it or not). 

In my digital memory archive there's a photo of her sitting immediately to the left of Boldilocks in a pub somewhere near Richmond; their desks were only slightly further apart when they worked together. He still calls me 'sir', but that's just his way of making me feel better. We both know he transitioned into being a 'confidant', 'Pete's Support Potato', and 'well-spring of well-good Metalcore' a long time ago, to become one of my Secretaries. Never forget that a 'secretary' was never about being someone's shit-kicker, it's derived from 'secretarius' which is the latin word for 'confidential letter writer'. Boldilocks doesn't fetch my coffee and sit on my lap to take dictation in a short skirt (OK, he does, but let's set 'recreational' context apart from 'professional' here), he's a keeper of my secrets. You never stop being someone's Padawan tho, and he lets me maintain some of the illusion of self-worth I get from believing that. Just as I like to call him Mr Fantastic, that's just the sort of friend he is. 

Ian joined a WA Government Mentorship Programme at the beginning of 2023, and spent most of it working with a young lad who needed a LOT of help. At the end of what turned out to be something of a harrowing year he told me they'd gone out to an "expensive steak place" to put a full-stop at the end of that sentence, which the kid paid for by way of thanks. I replied: 

"Welcome to 'mentoring' and 'taking on Padawans'.
"It's soul-destroying effort, encouraging them, supporting them, dragging them back from the abyss, picking them up when they fall, rubbing their noses in it...
"but then they surprise you by actually learning, moving forward, getting their shit together, becoming the best-self you imagined they could be. 
"And if you think that's rewarding, imagine what it's like when you get your first Dark Apprentice."
 - 08/12/2023, 21:07

Mine (there've only ever been two) is in that same photo, sitting second-right, goes by Michael B--------, and there's no one on this planet I've fought as hard, or as often, who I'd still shout a pint for. You know that 'uppity smart-arse prick' who's convinced he knows better, wants to hear the justification for every direction, and argues every decision, because he's convinced he knows better? 
That's Michael's shit-eating grin you're looking at under 'U' in Pete's Pocket Dictionary. 

I can't remember who hired him, but it was probably Rowan; he hired me, and he could always smell his own. The New Management who took over after Rowan moved up-and-left had more of a "just do what you're told" mindset than Row's sense-making sensibility, and by the time I received a call asking me to "take him under my wing" they'd rubbed each other so far the wrong way there was enough static in the air to give everyone a bad hair-day. Thing was, Michael actually DID know better more often than not, he'd just been saddled with Managers who couldn't see the walls of the box they were living in, let along think outside of them, with whom he'd had to go to war to get anything done so often, and for so long, he came at every barrier put in front of him fist-first. 

Sound familiar? 

He was good at his job, which was the only reason he still had one, but TNM didn't have the energy or wherewithal to keep fighting for him to keep it. They didn't not-care tho, which is why they called me in to knock some sense into the guy when he fucked up for the penultimate time. I listened to their story, read up on the tickets, did a bit of outside-the-box homework, gave him a call, and offered him a different face to take a swing at. 

"So TNM asked me to look into the Incident at [Financial Services Client]."
"<sigh> Do I really have to go over this again? I fucked up, I'm sorry, I'll do better."
"No one here's saying that..."
"TNM is."
"...but they're not here, and you seem to be mistaking me for someone who gives a fuck. If I was going to take their word on it I wouldn't have wasted my time calling you, so can we skip past the bullshit before we get old?" 
"..."
"Client's pretty pissed off tho, so let's look at that instead, yeah? 
"Now TNM sent you out at 4PM to do this install?" 
"No..." 
"The client wanted it done at 4 then?" 
"No... I just got told it had to be done ASAP."
"But you called them and made sure they'd be there so you could get them logged in and set up, yeah? Then they weren't around when you got there?" 
"No..."
"Right... but you called next morning to remote in and finish it off? I'm not seeing that in the ticket notes, but it's the only thing which makes sense." 
"No, I mean, I left the login details..." 
"... and you checked FIRST THING the next morning to make sure they found the instructions, were up and running, yeah?" 
"No... I mean... it's not hard tho!" 
"For you or me it's not, but they're a Receptionist." 
"Who doesn't know shit!" 
"No, but knowing shit is what they pay *us* for, so why would they need to?" 
"..." 
"Sounds to me like you were playing for a protest-fail and half-arsed the job to make a point, shot yourself in the foot, and you've been blaming everyone else for limping. 
"Rookie move, man." 
"No! But, I mean... fuck..." 
"Now we're getting somewhere. 
"So are you going to work with me to unfuck this mess, or should I just go back to doing the job they actually fucking pay me for?" 

Putty doesn't mould as easily as Michael did after that... for a while anyway. Not much time had passed before he felt he'd learned enough kung fu, and came at me. 

So I beat him down again. 
And again. 
And again. 
And each time it got harder, because each time he'd got better, faster, and stronger. 

"I don't know why you kept putting up with that," one of my colleagues in the Leadership In Practice unit of my MBA said when I recounted this story. 
"He'd had so many Managers who didn't know shit acting like they knew better, but really didn't. He needed to know that I really did. Challenging The Master was how he tested himself, but it also proved I was worth listening to. He got harder to beat each time because he was *learning*." 
"But what if he learned everything you knew and took your job?" 
"If he gets good enough to take my job, he can have it; he'll have earned it."
"But..." 
"But what... you think I wasn't getting better at the same time? Everything he took away from me was one more thing I didn't have to do any more, and I got to pick up something else which moved me forward. 
"Everything he took was something I gave to him, and if I can't keep up, if he overtakes me... that's on me. I've no more right to stand in his way than Moses had to enter The Promised Land." 
"..." 
"You HAVE been paying attention in this course, haven't you?" 

He actually did thank me, just once, years later. I'd re-tell the conversation, but after the ridiculous number of pints he shouted me that night I honestly can't remember what it was he said. 
I can tell you he's kicking arse, tho. 
I'm pretty sure I could still beat him, although when I saw him back in April he let me maintain my illusion of self-worth by not making me prove it. 

What is a relationship after all, but a closed system;
Nothing taken that wasn't given freely
And returned in exchange, 
If not in kind;
Because the world can be anything but. 
But we can be if we choose. 

Concludes in Part III: Perihelion...

Saturday, January 11, 2025

Remembrance Day...

Spiritual accompaniment: Twenty One Pilots - Backslide

 A year-and-change ago Bridget was familiarising herself with my blog, and I expressed to her the idea I'd had around taking the Deadman post I'd written many months before and re-writing it from the perspective of how "nice [it was] to wake up and throw my arm over someone who nuzzled me back." 

I'd made a start on it, but not got very far, when the year ended and I got distracted. 

Then along came Xmas morning, and I found myself receiving a thoughtful gift wrapped in seven layers of paper, in the middle of which was an envelope, wherein I found a card, enfolded within was a letter. 

I have something of a history when it comes to gifts, which is to say:
I'm shit at them, and I'm almost as shit at receiving them.
Bridget had been paying attention tho, and when I told her about how Kandace would buy me a gift year-on-year, each more personally apropos than the last, and every year I would accept them with visibly-demonstrated gratitude before proceeding to unwrap them with careful consideration so as to tear the wrapping as little as possible, then fold it neatly along the lines and hand it back to her so it could be re-used with a reverence reserved for the shucked-shell of the most holey, she'd been listening. 

She was good at picking gifts for me, too. If there's someone who can nail the gap between "something you didn't realise you wanted" and "but wouldn't buy for yourself", it's Kandace. 

So whenever she expressed that unique gift she has in my direction I endeavoured to return it in kind, by way of "delayed gratification" and take my time opening them to ensure she enjoyed the ride. Each year she'd stand there patiently with her trademark grin lighting up her face until the package was unwrapped, and I'd hand her back a neatly-folded piece of wrapping paper. 

I'd proceed to loudly appreciating the thing she'd given me, and she'd proceed to scrunching the paper into a ball and throwing it offhandedly, but with unerring accuracy, into the recycling bin. 

Coming to the envelope in the middle-layer of alternating-coloured paper, I stopped to read the card, and then the letter I found inside it. Seeing a YouTube link, I made her wait whilst I went and grabbed my laptop and laboriously typed in the URL so I could play it whilst reading, then made her wait some more until I finished listening to it before resuming the un-wrappening. 

Just like with Kandace I reserved my response until the end, because a gift is a singular thing regardless of how many moving parts are therein comprised. Just like one's initial reaction can only presented in that one singular moment; that gift of our time which we call "the present". 

If memory serves, I smiled and kissed her, but that memory is as fuzzy as it is rose-tinted. 

The gift still sits on the buffet next to my CD collection, and the paper was used to wrap another gift 12 months later, which took considerably longer to unwrap neatly. The kiss lingers in echoes, but that's another story entirely. The letter, on the other hand... 

After reading it I gave up on the piece I'd started writing and deleted it; I've done enough rounds in the ring to know when I've been beat, and by then I'd lost too much pride not to admit the bell had rung and it was time to throw in the towel. What I'd just read may have owed a debt to ChatGPT but it said what I'd wanted to say, from a better perspective, better than I was going to... so why waste the effort when I had a better version in my hand? 

I say that because, with her permission, I posted it verbatim just before I started writing this introduction, back-dated to the moment I received it because for all that the future in the moment I first read that letter was a mystery, and the year-and-change since are now history, I still treasure the memory of reading those words for the first time like the gift they continue to be in my present...  

... which you can find here: Bridget's Guest Post: Resurrection + bridge = Happiness?