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I sit here at my desk, amidst a sea of boxes, piles of paper and open drawers, grateful for the peace and quiet these last few minutes before the lunch break starts afford me. The morning has flown by quickly, lost in the blur of furiously packing, sorting and binning four years worth of work and junk that by the end of the day has to be organised neatly so the office admin staff can get them moved as required. The powers that be in my neck of the woods have decreed – having decided that we have been stuck in our silos for far too long – that moving to an office sharing arrangement that has us clustered functionally will foster a more collaborative approach to work, create synergies and improve efficiencies. Fundamentally democratic – and buzz word heavy – even though the unspoken elephant in the room is that by some quirk in the system the supreme leader has scored a corner office looking out onto the harbour; a far more eye pleasing sight than the endless parade of bus tops that I can just make out from my desk if I squint hard enough. Earned perks of office I guess.

In packing up, it has become clear just how much clutter I have built up in the four years and some I have been here – at the same desk with the same office mates and pretty much the same view outside. Amongst the bits and bobs I stumble on are a picture of a Nigerian wedding with my head photoshopped on, a cent from a (not so great) American road trip, a broken liverbird from an old keychain and odds and ends from the banter that came to define our relationship in this corner of my world – mainly centred on my (perceived) failings in love.

The sense is certainly one of an ending, fitting, given the phase I am in my own life, but beyond that quiet confidence that the small shoots of recovery are beginning to show, springlike.

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Day 4 of the Blogging 101 series was to Identify Your Audience. I very much see mine as the sort of person who might pick up a copy of The New Yorker, Slate or Granta and dig into a longform piece of creative non-fiction by a Teju Cole, Adam Gopnik, or Zadie Smith. I just need to hone my craft sufficiently to get published first 🙂