What have you got to show for it all?

This evening I’m going to Cambridge to see Haruki Murakami read, and get M’s copy of Kafka on the Shore signed.

Tomorrow I go home. I am nervous about going home, although I’m not entirely sure why. It feels like I’m going back as a failure after six years on my own, even though I don’t really think I’ve failed. But what do I have to show for the past six years, years in which relationships have come and gone, in which friends have died and given birth, married and divorced, broken down and reassembled themselves? What do we have to show for all of it? A portfolio and a resume and a little bit of money saved up, I guess. Experiences. I suppose there isn’t really much you can have to show.