I've been awol for a long time. I know, I should tell you something you don't already know, right? Still, you cannot beat starting a post with a little bit of rhetoric. I've made no mystery of my dislike for summer in many missives I sent you and in many posts over the past two years. But something, or rather some things, happened to me over the past few months to make this summer my crappest since time immemorial. It's a funny thing, in a way, because I cannot really tell you about anything earth-shattering; it was not. It's not even anything as grave as to grant this pervasive sense of helplessness and tiredness that has affected me since May. Part of me knows that, since taking up a new assignment in January, I had been working full steam ahead up a learning curve that, soon after the beginning, turned into a greased vertical line. It stayed that way all through to the Jubilee, when I took the week off to go to London and have a fantastically good time, while it instead turned into one of those crash-and-burn scenarios when your body, at once sustained by adrenaline and lack of sleep, merely gives up on you. And the sense of uneasiness that has stayed with me is all down to something I really hate to admit to: I haven't been ok since. Not even near ok. To throw my legs down the bed in the morning requires an effort... Read more →