It feels much longer than 12 days since I was last in London, mixing it with the young, free and saved at the Hillsong Europe conference but I suppose life and adulting can do that to you, particularly when that sometimes indecipherable line between work and life is crossed. Shed loads of emails and the cumulative effect of multiple weekends away finally caught up with me both in my work and personal lives, leaving me wondering if it was all worth it after all. All told, the amount of time I have spent scouring YouTube for snippets of the songs I heard, and the satisfaction going over pictures from that weekend still brings, suggests that there is still some lingering benefit.

Added to all of that controlled chaos is perhaps the fact that this period – bookended by the 21st of July and the 15th of August – is a deeply emotive one; not least for all the mementos to loss, the search for a new normal and a looming not-quite milestone birthday embedded therein.

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I am slowly realising that managing controlled chaos is something I will have to deal with, given the phase of life that I am. For one, gradually becoming one of the older heads around at work has meant that there is more of a recognition of one’s knowledge from peers and younger colleagues. That means that one gets volunteered for non-routine tasks more often, ones which require a lot more thought and reflection on how solutions to increasingly complex problems can be found. That these non-routine tasks are often highly visible, of a time-sensitive nature and transcend multiple timezones multiplies the pressure they place one under.

The looming not-quite milestone birthday adds several layers of complexity to everything else too. The passage of time places certain expectations, desires and long held aspirational goals in context, eroding the comforts the illusion of time once provided. Each year, with the lengthening of one’s chronological age, the room for error – and the time left to achieve said objectives – becomes ostensibly shorter. That adds a pressure of its own to everything else.

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This state of living on the edge, juggling multiple balls and straining every sinew to stay ahead of the burgeoning task lists is one that does have its thrills. The joys of checking things off the to do list and coming to the end of the week having delivered tangible solutions does feed a sense of accomplishment and heightened purpose. How sustainable that state is over the long run is one question I am not sure I have the answer to, particularly given my natural predisposition is to take my time to try to unravel thorny, convoluted issues rather than bludgeon my way through them.  On a simplistic level, the solution is to find a balance between work and life that works, one that does not prioritise one over the other so much that it effectively starves one of focus.  Sadly, finding that balance isn’t something I have historically managed very well, the events of just over a year ago being a case in point.

For today, the pressing need to get a report out ahead of a deadline has dictated my actions, requiring me to spend pretty much all day in at work, Summer Friday or not. With that deadline just met, there is finally space to catch my breath and breathe a little, until the next big one comes due…

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Currently listening to: When the Fight Calls (from the Hillsong Young & Free Album, Youth Revival)