The End

You know what it's like when something that has taken up an awful lot of time comes to an end. You are half relieved, half sad. What do you do with your time now? The more intense the experience, the more tricky it is when it suddenly all comes to a stop.

I remember when I finished my degree. I had had four years of intense experience. I had a year out in the middle - I had an abscess that had to come out and that set me too behind to continue my final year. But I worked and one of those jobs was at the College and the other turned into the basis of one of my final year projects. So my studies were never far behind me.

All that effort and work. I got a first. I won a prize. But it was a very odd experience, finishing. It suddenly didn't mean much. It still doesn't feel like much, although I am proud of it, I do wonder what it was all for, all that work. My graduation day was a strange empty day. It took me by surprise.

I loved my studies, i found them so interesting. Not sure I would have worked quite so hard, been so ruthlessly dedicated if I had realised how little that title of first would mean in the end.

I made myself ill in my final year. I became quite depressed. I started to gain weight and that hasn't really stopped. OK, so some of that was due to giving up smoking but....

But once I stopped studying, I realised there was little else left. All my hobbies had gone....

BIG only lasted six weeks but it was a pretty intense six weeks. Getting through all the exercises, all that paint! Then there was the tribe itself - a bunch of amazing women. Although our NING site is still operating for the moment, the amount of activity has dropped, not quite to nothing, but close.... Some days at the height I would have 100 fearless emails awaiting me, notifying me of new comments and other things going on....

So here I am now and I have my life back and normality can reassert itself. I put away all my paintings today. I am going to let them rest a little. Then I shall come back to them maybe, see which ones I like, which ones I feel like doing something else with, which ones ight end up on a wall.... maybe....

Apart from my Christmas Creativity - which I needed to do anyway - I need to get back to using my Wii Fit. What shape do I want my life to take now? A new beginning - or is that BIGinning?