A year on my own and not yet dead

The title says it all really - it's a year since I moved out of Ma and Pa's and into Sparky Towers, and the beginning of a new life as a real, proper, grown-up homeowner. And in that time I've been successful in not killing myself.

How awesome is that?

Y'see, I half expected to do something resulting in personal injury at some point. I was awfully pleased when I found out that Sparky Towers doesn't have gas, as I feared that would lead me to blowing myself up. I've also successfully dealt with washing clothes and dishes, hoovering and other assorted household chores, and matching up my socks properly (they're all predominantly black you see, and YOU CAN tell when they're not correctly paired).

I've also neither gained nor lost a disproportionate amount of weight, do not live on a diet of ice cream and crisps, and nothing in the fridge is on the verge of developing intelligence and rudimentary motor skills.

So all in all I've rather proud of myself. And there's only 29 years left to go on the mortgage - hurrah!

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Today was also the first day back to work after the Christmas break (which went by far too quickly, I should add). Still suffering from the bizarre ailment that struck me down last week, I briefly considered taking the day off sick, but there were two reasonably decent reasons not to:

1. There's actually a fair bit of work to do.
2. Can you imagine trying to convince people that I actually was ill upon my return, and that I wasn't just 'chucking a sicky' like the rest of London apparently did.

Instead I stumbled into work, coughed and sneezed and lot, and snotted in my hand once. I think that's the convincing part sorted.

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A plus side of 'the first day back' was that I shuffled down to Secret Starbucks at lunchtime with my old writing pad of story ideas. Reading back through some of my ideas from last year was quite an eye-opening experience, because, I'm amazed to say, some of them are actually kinda good (if I do say so myself), or at the very least worthy of taking a second look at. Of course, there's the novel outline I plan to expand upon in February, but there's also a couple of micro-stories that I wrote (but didn't submit) for the micro-story competition last year. What stood out the most, however, was a premise I wrote for an action-adventure character I came up with. I genuinely liked what I'd written, which makes a change.

That being the case, I'm going to spend a bit of time this evening typing and tidying it up. This is the year, my friends, this is the year; as Denny Crane would say: "lock and load!"