End of the road

I like reading Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole books. I know they’re not real and the story lines are, at times, too gruesome and stretch the bounds of my imagination but I find myself rushing through the pages towards the end through excitement. Nesbo truly is a great writer. 

I’m reading ‘The Thirst’, for the second time as it happens and while much of the story is coming back to me there is a lot that I missed on first read. 

Hole is a man driven to solve murders. It is what he does best  and he will use any means to get there. It is an addiction and of course he is hampered by another addiction to alcohol. This is how we like our detectives, flawed, driven and determined. If ever we were wronged we would want someone like Hole to be out there defending us.

Quite late in the book, Hole talks about the feeling of emptiness. ‘The emptiness that comes when a case is solved, when you reach the end of the road and realise that there is no road left.’ He is born to be fighting crime and feels a void when he can no longer get his fix.

Now I am no detective. I might have the logic and determination to work in the profession but I am not ruthless enough. I don’t think it would be for me though perhaps I am mixing up reality with fiction. I do, however understand that emptiness but this time it is when a project is finished and you realize that tomorrow you won’t come in to carry on. 

So it was when I helped move North Tyneside Council into new offices in Cobalt. That morning I turned to the team and asked what next? So it is now that #CyberFest has come to an end, at least for 2019. There is a void in my life which was filled with planning, social media, meeting with people, preparing presentations and delivering events. I have reached the end of the road and there is no more road left.

But wait, there are all those other things that I had planned, those things that have been clogging up my to do list. I’ll make a start on what’s next. That is how I will fill the void, that is how I will get my fix.