Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about connections. How life has a way of arranging itself when you least expect it, how certain doors open at the exact moment you’re standing in front of them. I’ve written about this before, but it keeps coming back, because the more I pay attention, the more threads I notice.
One of the clearest examples is how I even ended up in my current job. I had sent in my application and was told almost immediately that I would not get the position I had applied for. That could have been it. But in the same phone call, I was told that someone had quit that very morning, and if I wanted the job, it was mine.
It was a job that had never been announced or posted anywhere. On paper, it looked like luck. To me, it felt like something bigger at work, as if a door had opened just for me, and all I had to do was step through.
Even stranger is that this job brought me to a part of the country that had never mattered to me before. I had no roots there, no family, no history. The east was a blank space on my map. And yet, from the moment I arrived, the threads began to appear.
Faces from childhood, from my sister’s schooldays, from old jobs and forgotten encounters suddenly resurfaced here of all places. I met children whose names echoed through my own family. Parents whose lives were, in subtle ways, connected to mine. Colleagues whose paths had somehow crossed mine before. For years in other jobs, I never once ran into someone I had known. But here, the list keeps growing.
And what makes these threads even more powerful is that I truly love this job. It feels like home. It isn’t perfect, and it isn’t always easy, but it is real. Every week brings both routines and surprises. Forest days. Shared breakfasts. The laughter and questions of children who see the world with unfiltered curiosity. There is responsibility, yes, but also joy. And more than once, I have caught myself thinking: this is exactly where I am meant to be.
These connections keep multiplying. Sometimes they appear quietly, in a surname or a familiar face. Other times they arrive loudly, impossible to miss. Each one adds another stitch to this feeling of belonging.
And it is not just at work. Music has its own threads. Certain songs seem to show up exactly when I need them. Collaborations arrive at the right moment, as if they were waiting for me. Words written by others have found their way into my own.
There are also the invisible connections. The people who read without saying a word. The ones who never comment but keep returning. My ghost readers. Their presence is another thread, quiet but steady, reminding me that my words do not vanish into the void. They travel further than I can see. But I also value the readers who do show up, who take the time to comment, to respond, to say “I was here.” You matter to me. Every message, every note, every small acknowledgment means more than you probably realise. Those voices anchor me just as much as the silent ones, reminding me that what I put out into the world is received, and that it lands somewhere.
Family, though, has always felt different. Where these threads now reassure me, my family never gave me that sense of roots. Not the kind of deep, nourishing roots people talk about when they describe home or belonging. My sense of belonging came from elsewhere, from places and people that were not tied to me by blood. Maybe that is why these threads I notice now feel so important. They are not just coincidences. They are proof that roots can grow later, in unexpected soil.
And in many ways, my children are my roots. The strongest ones I’ve ever had. They keep me grounded, even when life feels chaotic. They are living proof that I can build the kind of foundation I once missed. The connection I never had growing up, I have now — because I created it with them.
I could explain it away as chance. Yet chance doesn’t capture the way it settles in me. It doesn’t capture the quiet assurance that rises whenever another thread shows itself, weaving one more pattern into my days.
For me, these moments are reassurances. They remind me that I am not lost. That I am exactly where I need to be. Belonging, I’ve learned, is not always about roots or history. Sometimes it is about noticing the patterns that keep returning, the small confirmations that you are on the right path.
This job is more than work. It is a place stitched together by invisible threads that keep whispering the same thing: you belong here.
reflections of an unquiet mind 