Howdy ho,

Since my last post, mostly I’ve finished my dissertation, had it passed through the exam board, judged by the powers-that-be, and received confirmation that I now have a Master’s degree. Well, another one. It was incredibly hard going and I honestly – not even slightly humblebragging here – never thought it would get done. It just somehow… did get done. Failure failure seemed like distinct possibility and even now I can’t help wondering if they got it wrong and are just being extra-nice to me for some bizarre reason. But it looks like I’m a graduate once again, hence the post title.

After catching the last of the summer sun in the family “second home”, as shown here:

The view is really quite something…

His favourite place, along with any place where he can go swimming

My lovely sister took me out for a celebration, and took this rather scary photo of me:

The view is really quite something…

I did some more cat-sitting:

The view is really quite something…

Then yesterday I went to see one of my favourite authors, Janice Galloway (Google if you don’t know the name), in conversation about a new release. 2015 certainly seems to be an interesting year for literature, if for nothing else on the culture scene, IMO. Being a major influence on my own writing, this was an important thing to go along to, not only due to also having a Scottish heritage but also having a narrative voice that I could almost hear inside my own brain, if I actually had the talent and motivation to scribble/type more often. This will likely lead to a review being done on here sometime in the near future.

The above, and also applying vehemently for jobs aside, that leaves quite a bit of spare time once again. Filling it in a productive way is now proving to be the next big challenge. There’s only so much “recovery time” I think I can plausibly take before needing to do something again. So:

• There’s writing. There’s always writing. That now really goes without saying.
• Doing something worthwhile. Volunteering, in the absence of something which actually pays money, because bad things are happening right now (and admittedly always are) and it would be the least anyone could do with time to spare.
• Photography. Keep meaning to spruce up the photography page on this site and this would be a decent incentive.
• Socialising. Still working on being better at being a “normal person” again after months shunning company while in Dissertation Mode. This may take a while.
• Travelling. Plenty of time but little in the way of inspiration or direction.
• Online dating. Some of which I’ve already done. More on that another time…

The nights are fair drawing in (again – why does this keep happening?!?) but the autumn sunsets this has brought have been rather impressive. Managed to snap one:

The view is really quite something…