Ok, so my Big Exciting Plan of last October crashed and burned. It was meant to be a big success and proof I could accomplish something, but not only am I now not planning to go to university, my attempt to fix my major regret from college - the D in Maths - resulted in nothing at all! In hindsight, I didn’t work as hard as I should have. I allowed myself to be distracted far too often, and paid for it.

I have a choice now: I can collapse into depression and wait for the combined efforts of everybody around me to pick me up again, or I can throw myself into something new. Clearly, I want to go with the latter.

Today was unpleasant as the news was full of success stories, and it’s no fun at all telling people who’ve been following your progress for nearly a year that you failed. But, when you look at it as a whole, it was just 10 months. It’s not like I’ve lost a decade of my life. I tried something for 10 months and it didn’t work. If I pretend I did nothing wrong then I’ve learnt nothing, but I’m not going to. I know I messed up to an extent, but I understand myself a lot better for it. Anyway, I did get the C in physics, which isn’t to be sneezed at!

I’m listing some accomplishments of the last 10 months not to show off, but for me to look at if I start feeling down:

• I learnt a lot of fascinating physics, and got an A-level out of it
• I did get a good grasp of at least some of the maths (I got a B in the Pure 1 exam)
• I made some new friends over the Internet
• I wrote a lot for this blog, and enjoyed doing so
• I admitted that I wasn’t coping very well in general and got some help, which improved things tremendously
• I started playing the guitar
• I learnt to dance ballroom and latin (is that phraseology allowed?)
• I became much more confident when on my own
• I took some photos of which I’m quite proud
• I wrote, and had ‘published‘, two non-murder mysteries
• I discovered that being open with the world works better for me than keeping things private
• I watched some truly excellent television, saw some truly excellent films, read some truly excellent books, and heard some truly excellent music.

And, sorry to be immodest, but I don’t think that’s at all bad for 10 months. I’ve spent the day flitting between utter despondency and planning for what’s next. Hopefully the former will disappear before too long.

So, what’s next? Writing, for sure. I’ll give myself a few days to calm down and come up with a proper plan. I’m currently thinking about going on holiday, then launching into fully cut-off-from-the-world-during-the-day writing time until christmas. But that may change; who knows