Life Update /006 (Scotland Edition)

We are always, inescapably here, even when our minds wander elsewhere.

In the stillness of recent days, I've found myself caught in a curious pattern—my mind habitually racing forward while the present moment slips through my fingers unnoticed. The irony doesn't escape me. Where once I remained tethered to memories and past regrets, I've now swung to the opposite extreme, fixating on uncertain futures and hypothetical tomorrows.

Progress, yes, but incomplete. I've traded one form of absence for another.

This shifting awareness has brought two realisations into focus: the overlooked abundance already woven into my life, and my persistent difficulty inhabiting the actual moment I'm living in. When external noise fades and I turn inward, I discover how rarely I truly occupy my own experience—how seldom I fully arrive in the now before mentally departing for what might come next.

The present, it seems, remains the most elusive territory of all—neither haunted by what's behind nor anxious about what lies ahead, but simply, completely itself.

My last Life Update, a dispatch from Edinburgh, was at the end of February. This edition finds us back in Scotland, and back in Glasgow. We've returned to this port city on the River Clyde many times, yet it has always remained just beyond our grasp. Perhaps it's our southern English sensibilities that misread its character, or perhaps we've been peering through windows fogged by preconception. The city wears its history in layers—Victorian grandeur and art nouveau dreams now softened at the edges, like old photographs whose corners have begun to curl.