Every week feels like a new beginning, every day a rebirth.

Must remember to turn adversity into a positive. Need to learn from difficult, mismanaged business relationships. Stop being negative, even if it's true; people only want positive solutions.

Taking it one day at a time, enduring the current blank, bland days in anticipation of an imagined future filled with stimulation, challenge, reward.

Conscious that my schoolboy friends were moulded and influenced by me. If I shut up and let them speak and express themselves nowadays I realise how much more moderate, reasonable and warm they are, and probably always have been. I feel like I am the rotten apple that spoils the whole lot.

For I centre my affection almost entirely on myself, bestowing only a very little on others. All that others divide among an infinite number of friends and acquaintances, to their glory and to their grandeur, I devote entirely to my mind's repose and to my own person. What escapes from me into other channels, does not really do so with my deliberate consent.
Michel de Montaigne - Essays

Time hanging heavily on my hands. With driving stretching on for at least another three weeks, I'm stuck here in my dependent state, with precious little to do. What work I have I put off, which causes a slight but appreciable mental burden which I should rid, but don't.

Met my sister's boyfriend for the first time, walked through autumnal parkland.

Failed the driving test. The agony of the wait, uncertainty, confrontation of own limitations continues.

Distracted myself by browsing a second-hand book shop and a walk around Clare priory with a friend. Beautiful autumnal red creepers over old cloisters, apple and pear trees littering windfall.

Driving test tomorrow morning, cannot think beyond it, understand that it is real or understand that I will still continue to exist into the future beyond it. Such a clear crossroads, only two possible outcomes, and time will inexorably roll on. Horrible to think that there is such potential for another shameful, embarrassing, stressful memory waiting for me the other side of it.

Fallen back in love with art, excited and inspired. Reminded myself about how good some of the artists I know are, had a browse on Instagram and feel excited that there are so many other people out there striving to get better, to draw and paint as well as they can.

Enjoyed looking around the illuminated manuscript exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Would love to make my own. Always loved the Book of Kells, arcanthus leaves, intertwining marginal decorations, gold leaf, tiny lines, beautiful lettering.

Work, walk, paint. Dull routine, crave more human contact, specifically from girls.

We cannot do without reality and we cannot do without illusion. Each serves its purpose, each imposes a limit on the influence of the other, and our experience of the world is the artful compromise these tough competitors negotiate.
Daniel Gilbert - Stumbling on Happiness

Work, walk, driving. The driving test is my event horizon; I cannot see beyond it, it looms big and black and impenetrable and yet I know that this time next week it will be behind me.

Early start, another self potrait in the hotel mirror, an inedibly poor breakfast, the surprise disappointment of which I enjoyed, a walk in the sun, brunch with a friend, meanderings and return to the country, tired and apprehensive of the yawning expanse of another unplanned, empty week.

Excellent day unburdening my wallet in the capital. Old friends, new friends, small-hours scrawl in a tired hotel. The transience, ease, familiarity of functional mediocrity is familiar and comforting. Being on the move is a tonic.