strawberry fields forever

Living is easy with eyes closed,Misunderstanding all you see.It's getting hard to be someone,But it all works out;It doesn't matter much to me.There are songs that seem to acquire new meanings as we get older. Words that once floated past unnoticed can, decades later, suddenly land with uncomfortable precision.That opening verse feels rather close to home at the moment. Sixty years after John Lennon wrote it, I find myself in much the same territory of heavy introspection and personal turmoil — minus the fame, fortunately, and with considerably less interesting hair.It's been a busy two weeks since I last posted.At work, silly season has started manifesting early, with increasingly jittery shoppers trying to get their orders in before prices inevitably go up. The usual mixture of deadlines, demands and low-level panic is building, and after so many years in the same industry, I know exactly where this particular road leads.Last Saturday, I helped an old colleague with a personal job,…