Adi and Emma’s thank you card with a link to their wedding photos arrived. Bittersweet: so lovely to see everyone together, gathered in such happiness. At the same time, wondering when we’ll be able to have such a gathering again. The future looks so…sparse and distant. For everyone who wants to get married, waiting for a visa or a citizenship ceremony, memorial services…All the fun of ordinary life is gone but so are the special things, the occasions we look forward to. I realized if I move to Edinburgh now I wouldn’t have a support network in place. Moving between peaks would be good but if I got ill up there I’d only have Lexie and that’s a lot to ask. Here I have the Kellens and Cora nearby and other friends a little further off. Much as I hate the thought of paying through the nose for a smaller, darker and less beautiful/spaciously viewed place to live, I have to bite the bullet in the short term, I think, to feel like I have people to turn to. So the best option might be another flat in Newlands Quay except I have to mentally tack on another £200 for the service fee to the rent each month. The price of rent hasn’t really gone down much. A little but I expected a bigger drop. But if I stay to the end of the year we’ll be Brexiting while I’m in London instead of a firmly established Scottish resident. What’s more important, immediate sense of security and community, or longer term bets (and safety net with more savings)? The future is always uncertain but it feels like the world is crossing a rubicon right now. I know that (for now at least) my position is secure and my personal suffering will be minimal. But I feel so many things: guilt, anger, despair at times, hope at times. Occasionally joy. But I’m so tired. I mean soul-tired. Can’t focus. My soul yearns for a role that lets me fight for more justice. But my pragmatic mind tells me to “put on my own airbag first” (i.e. secure my own material situation and meet my financial obligations) first before accepting lower pay and more precarious work. That helps no one. But I feel like a participant and perpetrator of an unjust system when I put my material comfort first. I am not ready to renounce all material comfort and live in a religious community (and which would I choose anyway?) But also the sacrifices of the gods of commerce are great indeed. Let’s see…in fact I have no choice…let’s see where the future takes us.