Marnie Hughes-Warrington is standing down as DVC A at ANU to return to research at the university. She explains why here. This is a disappointment for those who were fascinated by her blogging fascinations, first with managing university budgets and developing teaching and learning strategies and then with her Pepysian chronicle of constructing a new ANU. But an inquiring author’s engagement with ideas can matter as much as the subjects so let us see where she leads us now as she writes about the writing life and how, new ideas happen and  grow.