Two weeks.

It's creeping up behind me. Three weeks seems a long time. The three weeks left before I finish at work seem to stretch into eternity. That's partly because I've got MASSES of work to do and the mental piles are tottering around my ears...and mass clearly equates to length.

Two weeks is tomorrow.

I'll be doing something else - sales analysis for a theatre. Working out a glitzy bit of number crunching on a new piece of software. Walking to work. Drifting around the supermarket. Planning a party. And then...

Two weeks.

My birthday is less far away than that. I hate my birthday, it reminds me of all the things I haven't done yet. I discovered yesterday that someone I sat through classes with at uni has not only founded a reasonably well known and certainly very outspoken climate change activists group - but has written a book about it. I am in awe. And support what she's doing, definitely. She keeps inviting me to events on Facebook, though I suspect she doesn't know who I am or where I came from in her life. But I am a little jealous.

Two weeks.

I hate deadlines. At least the ones that are to do with life and not to do with work. With work, they're ok. I like to plan, and generally make sure the decks are cleared down enough that I finish things well in advance to leave time for things to go wrong. Even if that actually isn't a very efficient use of time. But in life? I never have strong enough plans to work out what I should have done when far enough in advance, so when New Year and my birthday go whizzing by I'm always left with a nebulous guilt for Things Not Done. It's too late for me to write a book before my birthday (still an ambition - maybe I will have written one before ONE of my birthdays?), and I think it's probably too late for me to do a ton of the things with Traci I wanted to do before she goes...we don't have time, and what time we have we need to fill with packing and admin.

She goes in two weeks, and we have no idea when she might come home.

I'm going to miss her like crazy.

Until the wind changes.

Once again my life is turning over. I'm not the person I was even a year ago, though I suppose that's true for everyone. For me, it's especially so. One year ago, for starters, I was still pretending half to myself and certainly to the world that I was straight. It's taken me most the year to be able to say that I'm not to the great wide internet. Still not comfortable with it, really, but I guess nobody ever is. I'm sticking with the 'bi' label for the time being but we'll see how that goes.

One year ago I had never really fallen in love - loved people, certainly, but not fallen heart and soul.

One year ago I was jumping about from pillar to post, blown about by winds not of my own devising. This year, I might not like the place I am very much at the moment and I might not be very confident about how the places I am going will turn out, but I am here of my own volition. I am living somewhere I chose. I am choosing to leave my job and look for something else. I am choosing to take a great big break before I start in the Civil Service sometime next year. And I feel that I have achieved something this year in actually getting that damned job.

I'm done with Cambridge for the moment. My last night here will be the 31st of October, though I will feel like I've gone by then because I intend to stay with people that day having moved out of Argyle Street the day before. I might come back sometime - it's a fantastic city and the people are wonderful. I love some things about living here. But I need a break from it. I need to be away from the pressure cooker of excellence that is both stimulating and exhausting. I need to break from the people and the situations. I need to be somewhere bigger, where there are different people and different things to do. I will miss it hugely, especially when I'm trying to build a new life somewhere else and definitely when I'm back in St Albans or Cornwall trying to find something to do until somewhere between April and October when my life will be purposeful again.

I have become something, this year. More myself, less hidden. I have acknowledged parts of me and stopped apologising for them. Not in any way all of them. Self-confidence for me seems likely to be always a bit difficult and actually I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't want to be so confident in myself that I stop questioning ways I behave and think with regard to the world and my place in it. It is part of that recognition of who I am that I want to get a tattoo. I have never wanted that kind of permanent change to my actual body before - I've even talked about it on here. But this is sort of different. It's an affirmation - a revelation, not a concealment, as I seem to have envisioned it in the past. I am going to do that, I think, if Traci will come with me and it doesn't prove too scary to walk through the door.

Odd that I hate the New Year posts in January that I feel compelled into. This moment, the end of the summer and the descent back to the winter feels like the natural moment of change. Things are in flux - the year is turning, I can feel the summer heat fading and the autumn earlier nights are here and coming in fast. I guess it's always been the moment of change - it's September on Tuesday, and a new school year starts. I always enjoyed the first day back at school.


I sang at a wedding today, feeling shattered by a very difficult week indeed. It was pretty hard going, actually. Odd that it was 'One More Step Along The World I Go' (very slow and not very good tune recording here, though I'm pretty certain that practically EVERYONE sang that at school and still knows it by heart) that I found the hardest to get through. I needed to do something. I bought a bag, which I do kind of need because my beloved blue handbag is getting pretty tatty, but it didn't fill the hole. I needed to make a statement to myself. Do something slightly crazy to stave off doing something truly crazy. So here's the haircut. What do you think? The woman who cut it looked horror struck when I first said 'same length all over, a couple of inches long'. She said it wouldn't look very feminine, and suggested a bob instead. I wasn't wedded to my idea, really, I just didn't know how to picture a bob. It was never boy hair I was after, just something that will look neater and more like I take care of it than my usual bird's nest, and would be the change I need in my life.

This still doesn't feel like my head. She showed me the back of it and it looks like someone else. I've NEVER had my hair this short. The closest it got was chin-length when I was 12 and I didn't like it then. This, I'm quite pleased with. It won't look like this after I've slept on it and brushed it and washed it, but I think the shape will be ok. My curls are a quite enthusiastic when I give them a chance. We'll see. It's definitely not what I had before. Comments appreciated...

Also, it turns out that it's bloody hard to take photos of yourself in the mirror.


I've been calling it grown up hair to myself. I haven't got the little girl long hair I've had for years, that I always wanted when I was tiny and never could grow. That part of my life is over. Here is something different. I am something different.

Unrelated.

Two different people in the last week have noted that I have lost weight. Now, I knew I had, but didn't think it was enough to be noticeable. Maybe I should take the extra TWO INCHES of space in my (albeit always a bit baggy) jeans more seriously. I have no idea what I actually weigh now, since I don't have access to scales, but yay! For reference, I suspect that purely developing an aversion to food for a few weeks is probably not the most healthy way to shed pounds, but it seems to have been effective. NOW I just need to keep it away. I'm thinking about going to play lacrosse again, if I can find a club whose schedule will fit in with mine. Trouble is, I think the nearest two are Welwyn Garden City and Hitchen - neither VERY near. Potential for playing with people I knew at school is reasonably high. Also, if I'm going to go and play lacrosse, I might need to go and have a go at the contacts thing. I can probably see well enough to play for a bit without glasses, but it will annoy me and probably give me headaches. So. We shall see.

New Year's resolutions, since several people have asked:

• Finish the jumper. It'll get there, depending on the length of time I have in front of the telly.
• Write more. We've covered this.
• Move out of Cambridge and have adventures. Only ordinary adventures, about jobs and life and love, but adventures nonetheless. Meeting new people - lacrosse and theatre and singing. I've never been able to limit myself to just one of the standard extracurricular directions, why did I feel that I should?
• Not move house so often. That shouldn't be hard, right...?
  

That'll do...my laundry's cooked. And Martin's making me STEAK for tea. :-D.

I hate New Year.

Not for any good reason, really. Lots of bad ones. The most acceptable being the pressure to party and the general post-Christmas blues being incompatible. Less acceptable reasons include aforementioned objections to the passing of time, which as has been pointed out to me are just very pessimistic ways of looking at time. I might indulge, though. We'll see. For an upbeat beginning, the picture was taken on the Garret Hostel Lane bridge, with Trinity Hall and Clare on the left, and the Clare bridge in front. This was about half past 5 yesterday, but it was BITTERLY cold - I assume that the two punters were staff members of some sort taking boats from one end of the river to the other, because nobody ELSE would be punting along the Cam in the dark and the icy cold for fun. They came up as perfect silhouettes though, I was quite pleased, and the river went glassy in the photographs. I like the colours, too, not that they existed in real life. You could call it slightly over-exposed, since this was full dark, and the purples weren't there and the glow on the wall on the left came from a streetlamp on the path on the right, and wasn't nearly that bright. I was pleased though - been a while since I took a picture that I thought was even slightly interesting. I like winter light though, it does nice things to ordinary views. I took some on the beach on Boxing Day which were rendered a little more engaging by the light. They need some editing though to really make them fun. Even the one above needs some cropping - there's too much wall on the left, and I could bring the trees and the bridge into better focus by making them more central and so on. I'm going to have to invest in Photoshop for the Mac. At £600 though, I'm going to bribe a student who doesn't need it to buy it for me, I think... Gah. Or make more of an effort to learn the Gimp. Need time. Never have time.

I appear to be on the downward trend of whatever mood swing I've been on the hyper side of for the last month. It's been nice to have a few days off work and a change of scene and everything, but it's probably the whole having space thing that has dropped me off the end of whatever high I was on. I'm fine, just sleeping less and staying in bed a lot more, due to wanting to sleep more, and all of that. But Eleanor came up yesterday and we had a lovely drift-around-Cambridge day, and then I went to London today and had lunch with Hugh and I did a bit more shopping and stuff and it was nice. I did actually go to London for a reason, which I completely failed to follow through due to being a wimp, so I'm feeling bad about that, but it WAS nice to see Hugh and I DID get a jumper like I've needed for a while, but all the same. I was enjoying the high. I was feeling the get-up-and-go and it was keeping me going. Grr. Will have to find ways to get it back. And it is for this reason I'm about to go to a party with Carl and a lot of people I either know very vaguely or not at all. I wouldn't be if I wasn't most of the way down a bottle of cider. I wouldn't be if I didn't feel the need to go and mix with a whole different selection of people to the ones that I'd be with tonight if I could hand pick them all (if you're reading this, you're one of the people I'd pick, no worries...). I just hope I can be well behaved and nice to them, and stay awake until midnight - this is usually a problem I face at New Year, too. Anyway. Right. Bravery. Need to put on clothes that aren't tracksuit. Gah. I can put on my NEW clothes. Gah. Wish me luck...

P.S. Nearly finish Sexing the Cherry but not quite - more soon...

New Year.

I hate New Year. I say this every year. I think it's mostly because I'm shattered by the holiday season by the time we get to it, and this year was definitely no exception. The yukky antibiotics (second installment - better be it) didn't help, it's true. In some ways, I really ought to feel quite pleased to be seeing the back of 2007 - there've been some pretty horrible bits to it. There were some awesome ones, too, like RTTFP and getting a choral award among others. I never feel quite content admitting things are over, though. It's supposed to be pretty childish to cling on to things when they're finished, but I always do. I guess this year it's partly the fact that I have the new job to start after Christmas, doing something I know very little about, and, for a change, which I care about doing right. I don't usually care about the shitty little jobs I get in order to pay the rent or feed myself or whatever, but this time I do. I think. What if they don't actually LIKE me? What if I can't do what I'm asked? What if I just sound really stupid? Meh. This sounds really pathetic written down, but it's probably still true.

I'm trying to look at the New Year as a way of erasing the bits of last year that made it so bad. I'm not talking about Andy and me, the relationship, though I do mean the way that things ended. Contrary to what I'm fairly sure he believes, I do feel sincere regret for the way things turned out between us. The regret I had is that I badgered things into starting when I should have thought more honestly, right at the start, about how far I could see things going between us. I don't mean that I thought even then that we wouldn't have a future, but I do think I should have taken it more seriously. I was (am?) in a place where relationships are more fun than serious, but I think I put over the opposite message. I don't know. I have a suspicion they need to be both, but that's pretty hard. I don't really mean that I regret we ever started, because I think if nothing else we both learnt a lot in that relationship and that we supported one another through some bad things. I do mean that it would have been better that nothing had happened than for stuff to happen and then leave us both where we are. I think, anyway. But if it hadn't happened, then neither of us would have learnt what I think we have, and I, at least, wouldn't have found a relationship that I'm happy with. I wish, really really wish, that Andy could let things go. Just allow that they've happened, and that such things are complicated, painful, and necessary, sometimes. Then he'd stop tormenting himself, and by proxy, me. Some of the things he's saying now prove how badly he actually knew me. Stuff about deliberate cruelty, for a start, which I completely resent. I would almost mind less if he thought it was unwitting, but he doesn't appear to. Is it selfish to believe that I have never, or very very rarely, been guilty of deliberate cruelty? Unthinking, possibly, but I'd be mortified if I ever found anything like that out about myself. I don't think I lack self-knowledge, but that maybe wrong. Anyway. I really didn't start this to talk about Andy. I've been avoiding the subject because I still don't really know how to talk about it, not, as he seems to think, because it matters that little to me.

I was going to talk about New Year's resolutions. There's the standard 'lose weight and get fit' one, to be achieved by cycling to work every day. Shouldn't be an issue, I hope. Having spent a considerable portion of my life playing sport, the fitness thing is not something I really find difficult to engineer, but losing weight is always harder. Other things include 'join a good choir' and 'make some effort'. Generic and dull. Sorry.