The last time I wrote, it seemed unreal to me that only one week of January had gone by, it seemed to have been 2010 forever and the world seemed to have marched right on as if the year had never changed. Today, the opposite is true – I am surprised that two entire weeks of January have flown past already, I wonder where half the month has gone, and I am striving to hang on to the bright promise of the year ahead that I felt so strongly on January the first. It’s hard at times not to be mired in the trivial and inconsequential, and not to get bogged down in seemingly endless slogs, but I haven’t lost it all. I still feel it – that livewire spark – that glimmering, teasing hint of great things to come.

Work commitments are piling up, not just in the office but out of it – events, training workshops, things at which I am to be a delegate of the company, which is still new enough to me to be fairly exciting; I am looking into moving to North London and possibly sharing a house again (much as I truly enjoy living alone it is far easier to move into a house where internet and bills are already sorted), I am still trying – this ongoing, neverending journey – to get to know the city better because however many of its nooks and crannies I explore, it never seems enough. And I am thinking, albeit somewhat vaguely and inconclusively, on the future and what I plan to do now that I have a permanent job. I am asked that a lot; I don’t have any answers right now. I wish I did.

I thought to myself on the Tube this morning that if I do wind up moving, perhaps the time will have come to really, properly audit my possessions, to cut everything down to whatever I can carry in whatever luggage I have (1 big suitcase, 1 medium suitcase, and a backpack), and either throw out, donate, or ship home everything else. The amount of stuff I have after over 5 years in this country is, naturally, astonishingly voluminous. And given that I am likely to be a nomad for the foreseeable future – perhaps it is time to pare it all back, once and for all, and do the nomad thing properly, in the appropriate spirit of liberation from material goods.

Highlight of the day: finding out that this July, I am being sent for my very first proper-proper all-expenses-paid conference! This is exciting because

1. it’s pretty much the biggest arts marketing conference in the UK, taking place over 3 days, and usually with about 500 delegates from nationwide
2. it is very rare to be sent for paid conferences in my industry because we’re usually broke (I have only ever been for free/cheap events), and this is the one big thing that my department always springs for once a year, and
3. it is taking place in Leeds – not that I am particularly excited about Leeds as a place, but I am excited about 3a) getting out of London for a change and 3b) its proximity to York! Though it occurred to me that probably no one’s going to be in York by the time late-ish July rolls round, so I might not get to see anyone anyway, which is a shame.

Other highlight of the day: fiddling around with SIA’s online miles redemption booking, and discovering that, amazingly, for the first time I can recall, that I have finally accumulated sufficient miles for a round trip from Singapore to Sydney. It seems unbelievable that I hadn’t hit the mark earlier, considering how many miles I rack up every time I make the UK-Singapore-Sydney round trip, but there you go. Now all I need is to find a suitable London-Singapore ticket that doesn’t blow one month’s salary… and I’m set for December.

The snow has let up for today but the chill hasn’t. We’re supposed to be in for the coldest night of the winter tonight; curled up here beside my heater and looking out at the ice and fog, I can believe that. We cancelled a workshop today because of the weather, and the one person who made it in, a young man from Romania, expressed surprise that such a dusting of snow should cripple London so because it was about a bajillion times worse in his country. To their credit however, I have to grant that TfL has done admirably keeping things moving over the past couple of days – the fact that I’ve been able to make it in to work and back with little trouble all this week is impressive, even if the ever lovable Northern Line has thrown up all kinds of delays along the way. Perhaps I really ought to start thinking more seriously about moving.