It’s bleak and blustery outside, with wind and rain and brooding grey skies – in short, typical Cornish weather. My journey down here was transformed into a bit of a saga thanks to some serious fog at Manchester Airport- resulting in a near-three-hour delay on the flight, which took a certain amount away from the ‘hey, air travel is just as much as the train, and a lot quicker!’ It was my first time doing it this way, though, and the actual journey part (once we got off the ground, and past the interminable waiting) was over ridiculously quickly, which was something of a relief, since I was (a) rather emotionally fragile and (b) running on only three hours of sleep. Since arriving, I’ve been realising exactly how tired I am – a combination of hard work and bad sleep has left me very fatigued, and a certain proportion of the holiday is simply going to be me, staring off into the distance, enjoying the simple act of not doing anything.

I’m also slowly getting to a more philosophical place relating to my current life situation. There’s been plenty of time to think about it, combined with a couple of things happening which I’m going to draw a discrete veil over, but I’m starting to feel like I really don’t want to be angry about this anymore, and that I’m looking forward to a point where the bruises will go down, and I’ll be able to think about the good stuff without it hurting quite so much. I’m surviving, I’m coping, and I’m aiming towards the future in a number of intriguing directions, and that’s something I’m fairly happy with right now. I’ve got four-and-a-half more days down here (including meeting up with Tris on Monday, which looks to be (weather permitting) a seriously fun bit of adventure), and I’m going to do my best to enjoy them.

…aaaand we’re back.

Things have been somewhat quiet here of late, and – in a break with the tradition of the last twelve months – it’s not because I’ve been spending most of my time curled up in a tiny ball weeping, or howling in despair at the sky like a very low-rent King Lear. Instead, it’s been mainly the fact that I’ve actually been pretty damn busy – one of my main projects has been a pretty drastic overhaul of the website (which isn’t finished as yet – there are still some tweaks to do), and I’ve also been writing. Actual, genuine, no-holds barred writing. I’ve notched up over 20,000 words since January 1st, and (without giving away too much) I’ve got a schedule I’m trying to stick to, and am succeeding so far. We’ll see how it goes. More than anything else, the last week or so has been one of the first points in a while where I’ve actually felt like I’m doing the right thing and going in the right direction. Doubt, fear and other negative emotions have been fairly regular bedfellows for me (for somewhat obvious reasons), but I now feel like whatever I’ve been through (and whatever I’m going to go through – I’m aware of the fact that this emotional rollercoaster ain’t over yet), I’m going to be alright in the end. It’s something I haven’t felt for a while, and am rather glad to be feeling now.

The work helps – I’ve had a selection of things to do over the past two weeks, and have actually had that familiar ‘Not quite enough time in the day’ feeling beloved of freelancers, which means that no matter how hard it may be to keep things going (and how infrequently it may arrive), you’ve gotta be doing something right.

So things are okay. Yes, there’s room for improvement – but now, I feel like at least there’s potential for improvement as well. Plus, I’m off on holiday to Cornwall in a couple of days, which promises to be a much-needed fix of countryside and quiet. And I’m generally hoping that this positivity vibe doesn’t simply turn out to be the hush before the metaphorical custard pie that’s been hurled in my direction finally hits…

The first full week of 2009 has been somewhat odd and intense for me. After the intial pleasentness of New Year’s Day passed, all the slightly less pleasent aspects of starting a new year in my current situation started rearing their ugly head, and by the beginning of the week, I was skewing back into a very familiar feeling of depression. Events weren’t helped by the simple fact that the first week back is always going to be slow, that I’m a freelancer who’s in the middle of attempting a fairly major career change (along with all the other changes I’m having to cope with), and that no matter how bad or good I’m feeling, there is something inherently dispiriting about sending out lots of stuff and hardly getting any replies. I have, at least, got a healthy chunk of work coming up at the end of January, but that was matched by learning that one of my few review outlets is changing hands, and likely scaling back any potential for further reviews. To be honest, I knew that kind of thing was going to be thin thanks to my Manchester-based life, but it is somewhat as if the door has slammed behind me, and I’ve now got to make this work. Combine this with the general atmosphere of random despair you can get from even a glance at the headlines, and it’s easy to not exactly feel tickitiboo right now.

However, from Tuesday onwards I bounced back – since then, I have been occupying myself with a combination of getting some writing done and a heavy redesign of my website, and it’s been going pretty well. The writing is part of an ongoing quest to get myself doing a certain amount every week, and the website is a combination of getting the ‘work’ section of my site correct, and redesigning it so that it does its job better and attracts search engine hits more. I’ve been doing this thanks to plenty of advice from my Web-design-savvy friend Tris, and it is turning into a somewhat massive job – I’m essentially rebuilding the whole site from the ground up, and throwing a serious amount of new content on there as well (including a gigantic collection of reviews). Once it’s done, I’m hoping that it will help – and, to be honest, it’s helping to have something to do right now. I’d far rather be spending my time doing stuff that’s going to help in the long term, then simply be panicking and running around like a headless chicken, which is often my default situation when I don’t have much work on (another reason for questing for more proofreading – the structure of it does me an awful lot of good). I spent yesterday on a mission to get my hair cut and buy a new coat – and, amazingly, was successful on both counts, while this morning I went shopping, and was happy to find that my rough target for spending and my estimate of what my trolley of goods would add up to was almost exactly the final total on the receipt. This afternoon, I’ve been finishing off a project, and tonight I’ll be relaxing with pizza and a movie (probably a second watch of the wondrous WALL-E), as it’s back to the grindstone tomorrow, with a review to finish, podcasts to listen to, and more work to do on the website than is comfortable. All in all, however, 2009 is off to a fairly good start.