New Year’s Day

As the first day of Freshers’ Week, today – if you work in higher education – almost felt more like New Year’s Day than 1 January itself. There’s a buzz around the campus again, the kind of buzz you miss when everyone’s away over the summer months. Its absence stands out like a sore thumb, but so does the warmth you feel when it returns. As it turns out, that warmth may well be conducive to creativity too. I’ve spent nearly every week since my last post scribbling waffle in my notebook to varying degrees of desperation, but ultimately, nothing I wrote had any life in it. Most of it stopped making sense in the end – I was flogging a dead horse. Happily, I don’t feel that way typing this. It feels like the fire underneath has been reignited, to an extent.

I gave four short appointments to students today, new faces who were each looking for part-time work. I obviously can’t go into detail about who I spoke to or what we discussed, but I can tell you that seeing them become visibly more relaxed about their prospects was immensely satisfying. There can’t be many situations where you can see weights lifted from people’s shoulders in real time. I always say that I’ve felt valued over the last 18 months, but that’s never been truer than it was today. I made a difference, however small, and when that happens you can’t possibly struggle for new material. There are virtues to extol, and not only in my professional life, but my personal life too. My archery beginner’s course looms on Saturday – the first session, at least. I’m looking forward to it, and to hitting more than the woodwork this time. I just need to make sure I build up my upper body strength a bit first, because those bows are tough without a decent pair of biceps. I’m sure I’ll let you know how it goes. Here’s hoping I have another reason to smile by next Monday!

Mason

The Woodwork

There have been times in the years since 2017 when I’ve assumed I’d never pick up a bow and arrow again. Not because I didn’t enjoy it, though – I was making up excuses in my head. After all, my last club, while welcoming, was fraught with obstacles and difficulties. Dad had to drive me there and back, I couldn’t go at all if the field was sodden, and in the winter we retreated to an indoor shooting range only accessible via a seemingly neverending flight of stairs. When I threw in the towel and left after just over a year, I had no reason to think any other club would be any different. Perhaps archery had put up yet another barrier that would be tricky or impossible to overcome. Mind you, that was before I lived in Winchester. There’s a club that meets 15 minutes – if that – from my flat, would you believe. What’s more, they were all too happy to let me have another go, so at 10am on Saturday morning that’s exactly what I did.

I must have been there for little more than half an hour, but it was well worth setting my alarm on a weekend for. I shot six arrows at 20 yards, the same distance I’d previously been used to. Two of those hit the wooden legs – but the woodwork’s still part of the target, isn’t it? It was exciting and I slotted back in very nicely, however rusty I may be. Besides, the beginner’s course they’ve recommended can sort that out. I don’t want to say too much for now in case it all comes to nothing, but I just wanted to bask in how much I enjoyed it, and the fact I pulled my finger out and made it happen. Given how naturally laid back I am, it would have been all too easy not to bother and restrict it to a pipe dream.

What next? The club will be in touch once a date has been agreed for the course, apparently. We’ll have to see what transpires, but I’m sure our paths will cross again before long. Even if I never shoot again, I need to return the wrist guard I forgot to take off!

Mason

Blueberry Buttercream

What’s in a picture? Even the most unremarkable images have some kind of story to tell, and I was thinking about that as I panicked about what I’d write here next. This one was taken during a coffee and cake meeting I had with our departing student ambassadors early last week. Admittedly, when I snapped it (and I had to make the most of that blueberry cake, because I’d certainly paid for it), I probably wanted nothing more than social media likes. The most cherished – and most meaningless – form of 21st Century validation. Looking back on it, though, it’s more than that, because it’s attached to memories. Senses. The sight of smiling and friendly faces, the sweet taste of that rich blueberry buttercream. I savoured it all at the time, and by taking the photo, I could continue to do so for a little bit longer.

What’s in a picture? In this case, it’s calmness. Contentment. Gratitude. Friendship. Winchester’s own unique buzz and vibe. That slight dash of smugness you feel when your colleagues are working but you aren’t. Apart from all that, of course, it’s a celebration of all the small things that have made me happy – most of all, my stomach. Other people my age go travelling and plaster it all over the Internet, and that’s great, even though it does make my life look a little dull in comparison. I do this instead, and I might not be at the Grand Canyon or Great Barrier Reef, but I’m still soaking up every aspect of everyday life. Nobody should take that for granted, should they?

Mason

The Fine Art Of Pleasing Everyone

It’s Lara’s birthday on Thursday. Remember when she and I did that book club together, along with our friend Nora? Well, in the time since that came to an unfortunate end, we’ve continued to send each other a book now and then. She’s turned to her own bookshelf, too, and started to review them on Instagram. Her posts are concise – I’ve tried persuading her to do longer ones elsewhere, to no avail – but they’re always worth reading (you can find them here). They also show off the variety of what she reads. One minute it’ll be a Neil Gaiman fantasy, the next a biography of Queen Elizabeth II. That’s good for me, because I know that in theory she’ll give anything a go (I bought her The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy last year, although I still don’t know if she’s actually read it yet). So why can’t I do the same now – settle on something, one that I’ve enjoyed, and have faith that she might like it too?

It all comes down to the anxiety I feel around all present-buying, for every special occasion. I live with that constantly creeping fear that I don’t know anyone in my life well enough to be sure about what they’d appreciate. It’s always the same, no matter how close the person may be. I can overcome it and press ahead, but this is not one of those times. So I’m stalling – I’ll have to owe Lara, because I can’t help feeling that I can’t afford to get this one wrong. On the upside, maybe it’ll be worth the wait. At the very least, it might end up on her Instagram – even if she gives it a hammering!

Mason

Take A Deep Breath

I’ve just received a new notebook. Of course, it’s not my first, and it certainly won’t be my last either, but it is somewhat more precious than those I normally acquire. I tend not to write explicitly about my job, but yesterday, my line manager Liz left for pastures new, and it’s fair to say that all of us in the office are already feeling her absence. She works very hard, but has a habit of injecting a healthy dose of fun and laughter into every day, and never leaves you feeling anything other than 100% supported. Let me tell you, that kind of backing goes a long way – especially if, like me, you put yourself down at nearly every opportunity. I made both that and my gratitude for my hiring clear to her when we said our goodbyes. In return, she told me how well she thought I’d settled in, and how valuable my help had been. It soon turned out that that wasn’t all she had to say, as I discovered when I opened the notebook – a parting gift – upon getting home.

The book itself wasn’t unique to me, because we’d all been given one, but the handwritten message on the first page was. I’m going to leave it here so you can all appreciate it as much as I do. Sometimes we can all benefit hugely from some simple reassurance, no matter who it’s from or what the situation is, and this will certainly put a smile on my face whenever I look at it. Not only do I put myself down a lot, but I’m also constantly concerned about my timekeeping, because it seems like there are always ten Very Important Things to do at any one moment. Priorities are never far from the front of my mind – not to mention how the hell I manage them – but Liz does her best to put my fears at rest here. That’s typical of her.

“Dear Mason,

“Enjoy this notebook at work, so you can chuckle each day at the so-called ‘jokes’ at the bottom.*

“Congratulations on all you have achieved in this role so far. Take a deep breath – you are doing far better than you think and you are far smarter than you realise. Don’t forget to fill your diary with your plans for your work each day, then it will remind you to complete it.

“All the best, Liz x”.

Mason

*The notebook is both lined and includes questionable one-liners: “My wallet is like an onion. Every time I open it, it makes me cry.”

Operation Book Club, Part 5

My attempts to throw myself into the written word while I search for a new job are going pretty well. I have recently submitted a piece of just over 1,000 words for a brand new project, which I’m sure you’ll hear more about in due course. On top of that, I’m finally reading Nineteen Eighty Four, the next novel Lara, Nora and I will be discussing as part of our book club. It’s taken me six months to get started – according to my notes, I finished the last one on 16 August – but I’ve made good progress, with just over half the book under my belt at the time of writing. And let me tell you, it’s certainly made an impact!

It’s distracting me from my current situation in a couple of ways. Firstly, the hard-hitting material means I’m well and truly immersed, but in addition, it’s nice to take my eyes away from a screen for a bit. I’ve mentioned what a relief that can be plenty of times before. It’s only since leaving Haymarket that I’ve truly realised how much of our lives are consumed by devices, and not just recreationally. If I’m not scrolling through social media (which can be a bad idea if you’re comparing your own situation to that of your much more successful fellow graduates), watching a video or playing a game, I’m frantically scouring the net for employment, and even that’s giving me square eyes. What’s more, it can be hard to strike the right balance between spending sufficient time doing that and getting away from the pressures it can entail, so the book is really helping to provide a different kind of mental stimulation, one that’ll bridge the gap until the next big thing to focus on arrives. Things are a little unpredictable and lonely for me in the meantime, but it’s true what my Mum always says, you know – “as long as you have a book in hand, you’ll never be alone.”

Mason

In The Words Of The T-Shirt…

“…Just Do It.”

That’s what my old GCSE English teacher used to say, usually when we had to write an essay. Given that she had to mark so many of them, she never had much time for people who went “round the houses” – in other words, those of us who took ages to get past the introduction to the crux of the matter. All she wanted was for us to make and explain our point, and to do it promptly. To get the thing tied up and finished. It could still take me a while to hit the nail on the head, and I can remember writing many a long-winded paragraph, but I got there in the end – and that small quote is advice I’d do well to remember today.

As you’ll know by now, I’ve long wanted to be the most versatile writer possible, but I’m invariably held back by the belief that I’ll never write anything worth reading or watching, or that I’m too rusty to take on a specific project (such as scriptwriting, which – Jed Mercurio video lessons aside – I haven’t done since I left Winchester in the summer). I lack a certain amount of confidence, but I also know that I won’t regain it unless I press ahead and write regardless, so sometimes it seems like a somewhat impossible situation. There is, however, a light at the end of this particular tunnel.

My friend Abi works as a photographer down in Cornwall (sometimes she doubts her own ability too, but she really doesn’t need to – as you’ll find out for yourself if you contact her via social media). Her mind is endlessly inventive, and I admire how she always tries to push herself and her business further in colourful and distinctive ways in order to stand out from the crowd. This includes utilising film and the written word as well as imagery, and for her latest endeavour she’s decided to create a video featuring herself and her camera immersed in her beloved Cornish countryside, while she explains her motivations for doing what she does via voiceover. This element of the video needs to be personal, profound and sincere, it needs to delve deep into the effect her environment has on her wellbeing and creativity – and writing such a thing is no mean feat. I should know, because it’s a task she’s entrusted to me.

I’m in two minds about whether or not I should accept it, largely because the lines are meant to convey her own perspective – so surely they should come from her? Nevertheless, I think I will, firstly because I want to help a friend, and secondly because it’s still an opportunity to show someone what I can do, even if it’s not on a massive scale. Abi doesn’t need to use any of what I’ve written once she’s seen it, but it won’t hurt me at all to carry on, even if it is only 500 words, and just do it.

Mason

Operation Book Club, Part 4

As I’m sure I’ve said before, it’s nice to peel your eyes away from a screen and take in some proper paper pages every now and again. The book club I have going with Lara and Nora was meant to facilitate that a bit more often, of course, but that seems to have stalled somewhat for the time being. We were meant to finally discuss A Natural History of Dragons earlier in the week, and confirm Nineteen Eighty Four as next on our list, but thanks to me that plan fell flat on its face (although it should be easier to schedule now that I’ve finished work for Christmas).

Lara’s generosity, however, means that we might have something else to talk about in the meantime. She’d been buying all of my books for the club anyway up to this point, but outside of that she also decided to buy one for each person in our friendship group, after making sure we hadn’t read it before. Ben was thrilled with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I also enjoyed earlier in the year, while I received The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, the second in Sue Townsend’s series of books about a teenage diarist navigating the numerous challenges of adolescence. I’d read the first of those in Winchester too, and was pleasantly surprised to find that while it appeared to be aimed at readers of a similar age to its protagonist, it also contained a lot of humour that adults would appreciate – and that would go right over kids’ heads.

I reckon everyone else in our group might enjoy it. I don’t know if they’ll all read their respective books from Lara, but I hope they do. Not only will it allow them each to discover something new, but it might mean we can collectively review a number of different titles together – and aside from Ben, I don’t know what anyone else got, so it’d be interesting to find out. What’s more, by the time we finish them all, maybe Lara, Nora and I will at last be able to progress to George Orwell…

Mason

Low Blood Sugar

We might have finished university now, but my friends and I will always find an excuse for a chat on Zoom and a quiz, and last Thursday night we did just that, thanks to Nora having the initiative to actually finish writing one (after I started one months ago that’s never materialised). I think many of us would agree that one of the big downsides of uni is that you bond with all manner of people, only to be torn apart and thrown into different corners of the country, so coming together again through technology can make things a little less lonely – especially when you’ve spent all week working from home in your room like me!

At the beginning, we all agreed that we felt a bit rusty, it having been so long since our last quiz, but we quickly hit our stride again. Well, five of us did – Alysha wasn’t able to join us until after we’d finished, and I came straight from my desk at the end of my working day to do it, foregoing my dinner and a shower. I’m nothing if not dedicated to the cause! Unfortunately, what that meant was that by the time we started, I was seriously flagging, and I ended up 15 points away from Deacon, who was ultimately the winner.

You could say my poor performance was down to my lack of knowledge of recently-released films and TV series, but I prefer to solely blame my low blood sugar – an issue I rectified with some cheese and crackers immediately afterwards. Regardless, it was nice to be reunited with everyone, and I’m hoping it’ll serve as a catalyst for regular quizzing again – and for another book club meeting between Nora, Lara and myself. We still haven’t discussed A Natural History of Dragons yet. In fact, I’ve almost forgotten what happened in it.

Speaking of Lara, I must get back to my online shopping – it was her birthday yesterday and there’s still the business of the ideal present to attend to!

Mason

Graduation Day

Well, that’s it. Having been a graduand up to this point, I am now officially writing my first Third Time Enabled post as a bona fide BA (Hons) Creative Writing graduate. One shake of Alan Titchmarsh’s hand in Winchester Cathedral was all it took, and it was the icing on the cake on a day quite simply awash with pure, unfiltered joy. It’s now been just under a week since the ceremony, and already lots of people have asked me how it went. I’ve noticed that the one word I’ve used consistently when describing it has been ‘infectious’, and I stand by that (although not in a COVID-y way, just to be specific).

What was infectious was the happiness in abundance, and the pride everyone had not only in themselves, but in each other. Creative Writing was always a very friendly course, and I can say that I’d probably stop and talk to the majority of people I met regardless of how well I knew them, but even so, it was heartwarming to be congratulated before and after the ceremony by so many people. I got the sense they were all genuinely interested in what lay ahead for me, and that feeling was entirely mutual. There was a lot of applause from everyone as each graduand took the stage in the cathedral, but it very much occurred to me that nobody minded one bit – we were all in this together, so no clap was too vigorous and no cheer too boisterous. I know I actively tried to be as loud as possible for everyone I knew! I’ve met a lot of people over the last three years who I think will go far in life, and I look forward to seeing and hearing what they can achieve.

Of course, those people include Lara and Nora, and as always it was delightful to be reunited with them again. As with a lot of people, my palms were practically red raw from applauding them so hard in the cathedral, and afterwards we got the chance to celebrate further by having a couple of drinks together (non-alcoholic for me, obviously). We were joined by Lara’s mum, who was also over the moon for her daughter, and Ben, who just happened to have been working in the nearby museum. Many laughs were had by all, and they were definitely made all the more special by the fact that we likely won’t see each other for some time. There’s been talk of us meeting at Christmas, or in the spring, but in the meantime we might just have to stick to our Zoom quizzes. Lara’s already volunteered to write one, and now that our schedules all differ, she’s suggested that we focus on making them more streamlined – otherwise we tend to mess about and let time get away from us! It’s all about optimising the moments we can spend together, and all of those are precious indeed, especially now we’re entering the next busy stages of our lives. We therefore ended a brilliant day in the best possible way, and the nerves I felt going into it became a distant memory. Trust me, I was physically shaking as I put my robes on – as brilliant as everything was, I dread to think when I’ll next be that apprehensive!

Mason