I decided to go to the main library for the first time in ages today, but it’s changed a lot since I was last there several months ago. They’re currently in the middle of doing some building work, so you have to go in through a side door up a flight of temporary stairs into a part of the library I’d not previously visited.

Within 5 minutes I had got myself completely lost trying to find a café that I knew was there but which seemed to be increasingly elusive, particularly when I discovered I was on completely the wrong floor. Then I saw the signs that were plastered all over the place which I had somehow managed to ignore on my travels. I guess sometimes you just see things and dismiss them for whatever reason… maybe more on that soon..

New year, new blog, new rants! So, to begin..

Actually I don’t really feel like ranting. For a change. No, it’s time for some musings (devoted aficianados of my blo, if they exist, will know that my posts fluctuate wildly from musing to rant and little in between).

I don’t really have a great many events to look forward to this year. Not to say I have to dread 2008, but as far as I know, no-one I am reasonably close to is getting married (there’s still time to rectify that, John :p) no conferences are on the horizon and I can’t see myself leaving the country, barring a change in my current situation.

However, that can’t stop me being optimistic. Granted the year hasn’t exactly been great so far (see the penultimate post in http://andrewstothers.blogspot.com for the ceiling incident) but I think my optimism has good grounds.

I know now what I have to do for my thesis and that is a massive relief. It will be a lot of work, but if I knuckle down, there’s absolutely no reason to not finish before the end of the year and start writing up. This is a hope; and not an expectation, but if we don’t have hope, then what are we left with? Pessimism seems to be something of a national sport (and I could be world champion), but times are about to change, there is a task at hand, and it is alogether more pleasant to look at it positively. I’m not the sort of person to have a “because it is there” mentality towards things, but the task I have is there and there’s little worth in striking it off as too hard.

If Jimmy (more on him later) taught me anything before he died, it was that too many people these days stare at a wall thinking they can’t possibly climb it when they could just walk a hundred yards and go through the gate. If you won’t set off to look for the gate, then you’re stuffed, simple as. You have to believe a gate is there, or you’re done before you start. I miss his pearls of wisdom, even if they didn’t always make sense…

But anyway, what’s wrong with a positive outlook on life? Absolutely nothing, and if I’m honest I think it’s a better way to be. I just wish I’d realised this sooner. So even though there seems to be not a great deal this year in terms of events, it doesn’t mean I can’t look forward to a good year. Someone I know is expecting a babyin the summer (I would say who but I don’t know if the couple wants everyone to know at this juncture), there’s Euro 2008 and the Olympics and my church is getting a new minister. Come to think of it, I’[m pretty darn excited. Bring it on!