Day 8: First panic and a trip to Barmouth

Last night I felt homesick and just wanted to go home to our bunnies and get back to work. Which is kind of unexpected as I don't think I have ever come to the end of a holiday eager to get back to the daily grind. Maybe it's because I have no structure to go back to? Now that my free time is here, maybe I'm rueing the annoying 9-5.30 framework that made sense of my day and gave me things like school nights and weekends and the Christmas break to look forward to.

I also had the anxious realisation that I may finally have to more than just talk about my own ideas and dreams down the pub. Rejection and failure is not something I'm used to in my job of 30 years but I can surely expect a fair bit of that when building stuff of my own.

So there was a sleepless night and I'm sure there will be many more as things start, change, and bring both new horizons and new risks.

It rained through the night and all the way to lunchtime so I finished my book. (I wonder if I subconsciously took The Snowden Files because of our Snowdonia trip.) Given assumed NSA/CGHQ surveillance of Jo Public's comms, it's definitely given me an appetite to look more into cyber security if only to regain some sense of self-control and to brush up on information/data literacy.

This afternoon we drove down the valley to Barmouth. I remember vividly going on the waltzers there as a child of nine or 10. I remember thinking: "Wow! A funfair and it's at the seaside. Best thing ever!" Amazingly the waltzers ride is still there. These days I'd rather jump in a quarry lake than go on a sick-making centrifugal fun ride, but walking along the Barmouth Bridge viaduct was cool. That's your 40s for you.