The end of my second week in Manchester – and things are looking better. It’s certainly hard to believe that things could look worse than they did last Saturday – which was officially one of my genuine low points – and things have been on something resembling an upward curve. Having some firm work to do has definitely helped – there’s something about the firm structure of proofreading, and knowing you’ve got a certain number of pages to get through per day, that makes time just whirl past. Not that I haven’t had my rough moments, of course, but they haven’t been quite as crippling as before, and I’ve been able to get through them more easily. This may not be a path that I thought I’d be on, but it’s the path I’ve ended up with, so I’m going to make the best of it. A strange sort of perceptual change has been coming over me over the last few days, and the situation I’m in doesn’t feel quite so horribly wrong anymore. I’m getting the impression that I can actually cope with this for the immediate future, and I’m able to think about what I’m going to do next without wanting to crumble. There are still some loose ends that need to be tied up, and I’ve also got the upcoming adventure of the London Film Festival to look forward to – it’ll be eight nights in London, and a chance to properly catch up with some people who I didn’t really get to see in the flurry of action before I left. Plenty to do, and the vague feeling that I can actually approach it all with something resembling positivity and hope. Stranger things have happenned…