Once again, we’ve reached my favourite time of year, one that contains a run of months I like to collectively refer to as “the ones that end in ber“. I will admit that I feel like I’m entering them on the back foot, as I can’t help but sense a gap in my life, of the sort that opens when you’ve stopped a long-term focus on something and find that there’s nothing to replace it. I guess I’ve made the first steps towards filling the aforementioned gap by venturing into archery, but maybe other things will have to contribute to this as well. I am, for instance, looking forward to things at work becoming slightly more manic. I think everyone will agree that they prefer the busier times to the quieter ones – I personally find that I feel much more useful when things are like that!

On the whole, my attitude to and feelings about life in general are better at this time of year than any other. Evidence of this came on 31 October last year, when I wrote a post here entitled “The November Ember”. In said post, I talked about how November 2014 had been a pretty rotten month for me (that having been my fault), and how in future I hoped to make November “a byword for positivity”. You might notice a similarity between the title of that post and this one. That’s there because I’m writing this as something of a sequel, to confirm that that plan was successful, and has since spread to cover the entire period that surrounds it. Last year, at around this time exactly, I was feeling very positive about the Creative Media college course I was starting, and although it didn’t work out in the end I have some fond memories of it and I keep in touch with some of the people I met there, Grace being one. When I left that course, I started looking for a job, and although I spent four long months without one I tried not to lose hope of finding something, and I still tried my very best to keep a smile on my face at all times.

Twelve months on, I’m feeling just as positive about the job I now have, and even though I might only have a few other things to look forward to, it’s well worth keeping this mindset. As I said in the last post, I can’t wait to go back to the archery club on Sunday, and maybe I’ll have other opportunities to meet people and more of my friends in the near future. Whatever happens, I’ll have this blog to record everything on, and that’s a prized possession as it is. It’s a constant reminder that I’ve been productive in at least one sense, and the words here will – I hope – be enough to keep life rosy as we go through the last and best part of the year, in 2016 and every year thereafter.

Mason