The weather’s astonishing today, as Scotland endures an aptly named “weather bomb” of highly gusting winds and rain from skies alternating between ice-blue, wine-gold, and slate-black with disorienting speed.

That last makes it particularly appropriate to talk about this year, its end, and what’s happening in the next.

In some semblance of order, then:

• I’m turning 30 (on St Lucia’s day)
• I’m going back to Canada for the foreseeable future (on December 28)
• I’m marrying my fiancé (next summer)–
• –from whom I’m going to be separated for over a year while his immigration paperwork gets processed–
• –but I’m trying to comfort myself with the knowledge that I am going to be so busy
• teaching a Creative Writing course at the University of Ottawa (in January)
• while also teaching and studying at Carleton University (for the next two years)
• that hopefully this won’t entirely feel like unstitching myself from my lover fibre by fibre with all the fraying and frazzle that entails.

There’s a lot more detail to be filled in between those points, but there’s also so much to be done in anticipation of leaving that the thought of even doing the work to find the point at which to begin to story-tell is exhausting.

I’m very excited. I’m very sad. I’m going to work very hard.

There’s a start, at least.