Fourteen months away, and coming back deliberately smaller

I stopped completely for fourteen months and told almost nobody that I had stopped. There was no announcement and no falling out. I did not reply to two messages, then it had been a season, and after that it was easier to be a person who used to do this than to explain where I had gone.

The reason was not dramatic. A death in my family, a bad year at work, and a general sense of having nothing left over for other people. Rope was the first thing to go, because it was the only part of my week that was genuinely optional.

Forty three, east side, sixteen years of this in total. I came back last autumn, deliberately smaller: one person, one evening, nothing social attached to it, no attempt to be part of anything wider.

That smaller version turns out to be what I actually wanted the whole time, and I am not sure I would ever have found it without the gap. So I am not trying to get back to where I was. I am looking for the modest thing, held steadily, over years.

Not looking for anybody who wants me to come along to things, since I have retired from that half of it. Not looking for anything intensive. And not looking to discuss the fourteen months in any more detail than the paragraph above, which is as much as they deserve.