Write-off

In my head, recently, I had basically written this year off.  It's been a year that feels, to me, as if no forward progress has been made.  Nothing of note.  An inauspicious year.  A bad year for the world at large; not particularly great inside my own head either, frankly.  No great creative breakthroughs.  Beginnings that have come to nothing.  A lot of smoke and ash.

I haven't even been anywhere new.  I have only been to countries I have been to before.  In fact, my most inspiring trip to a new place this year was to Margate - which was truly wonderful, but not exactly exotic.  It was hardly expanding my horizons in a great global sense.

I've been begging friends to go away with me for Christmas and new year this year.  I don't want to be here.  I can't bear to face ending this year on the same one-note it seems to have been stuck on for a while now.  I want an adventure.  Jamaica or Mexico or the wilds of California have been mentioned.  I can't seem to raise the momentum for it and it looks like I will have to wait for more far-flung travels.  Maybe next year will be the year...

Then it struck me.  When I think of how quickly the world can change, I realise I may be wrong - or at least premature.  When I think of the small flashes of joy that can spring up from nowhere and keep me going for one more day, the chance connections that remind me the universe is actually magic...

It's only October.  Maybe something extraordinary will happen, maybe it won't.  But there's still time.  If we're lucky, there's always time.