Retrospective...

I'm finding it hard to get back into the habit of writing entries.

Actually, that's not strictly true. I was incredibly pissed off on Thursday and was desperate to vent into a diary entry, but I just didn't get the chance.

After they read my full article on my NaNoWriMo efforts both Alison and Anne both said they thought I should at the very least consider journalism as a career. This was kinda freaky at first, because it's something that has never ever occurred to me. I guess I associate the word journalism too much with my beloved British Press (*cough* *spit*). I could quite happily write articles for magazines though, I think.

Had a fairly heavy conversation with Anne about homophobia the other night. It's not something we've ever really discussed before, and I found it really hard to know what to say. It was a lot like a conversation I had about racism with an Asian girl I was very close to some years ago. On both occasions I found myself dealing with what I can only describe as some sort of helpless disgust at being part of what I would sarcastically term the "Acceptable Majority". On both occasions I think I came across as a little naive, but this is pretty much because I cannot understand how or why bigots think like that. And I think to myself, what a Wonderful World...

This also brings me to something else that has been on my mind this week. I've been contemplating compiling a quiz or a survey about how people see the year looking back. The worst thing that happened to me this year (from the point of view of sticking in my mind, at least) was having someone label me a homophobe. It happened a month or so before I started keeping this diary, and it was in reference to a few cheeky comments that I made around 18 months before that. As soon as the person in question made it clear that he objected to said comments, I stopped making them. It seems he held something of a grudge. There is obviously more to it than I'm putting down here, but a) I don't want to go into it in that much detail, and b) I just don't, OK?

I fell apart that night. Alison had just the day before departed on a 9 day trip to Canada, so naturally as soon as she was out the door I had a crisis. Timing? What's that? Anne was one of the people who helped put me back together, and her doing so was one of the things that made us become much closer friends over the the summer. There were other good things that came out of it, eventually, as tends to happen with all bad things, but it's something that it's difficult to let go of, and something that it's difficult to forget.

Strange how one word in an email can do all that.

As far as the looking back on the year thing is concerned, I think I'm gonna set up a survey on here. Hopefully I'll be able to persuade all my readers to fill it in.