It's a glorious day, sunny and bright, teeming with singing and buzzing beings; this first day of the month of my reckoning. Today I've set aside schoolwork, cleaning and sorting and getting the house ready for guests. We're having a party in the pub, for my birthday. I turn 40 next week, and my position in life is no more certain than it was 10 years ago, although I am loved and I feel more at home in Ireland than I ever did. Whatever comes by the end of this month, I think I will be able to face it better than I could a decade ago. It's a self-assurance I have attained, despite the multiple crises of the PhD process, maybe because of them. Even though the world is falling apart, things don't feel so hopeless on a personal level. While icebergs melt and continents of plastic grow in the oceans, I can still tick off the items on my to-do list. *Snort* The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, "We are born, so to speak, provisionally, it doesn't matter where. It is only gradually that we compose within ourselves our true place of origin so that we may be born there retrospectively and each day more definitely." I feel that, more than ever. Stay composed, whatever the circumstances.




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