All things must come to an end

Today is the first day of my last term as a student (unless I bollocks it up) and marks four solid years since I came to Norwich, sight unseen, armed with a blank notebook, a woollen jacket of insufficient thickness, and the intention of whacking my head against the metaphorical wall until one of the two broke or someone made me stop. Looking back, I'm shocked that it was the wall that gave way, rather than my head, and not just the wall of the university's ivory tower but that of publishing's looming fortress: I never thought I'd make it this far.

I came to Norwich in 2012 with the hope that I'd get a year to breathe: to write, to recover from the illness that had kept me pretty near insensate for six months, to spend time in a country I loved but didn't think would have me and in the same timezone as someone who I loved but who wouldn't let me compromise on my goals for it. I've stayed for longer than I planned, done more than I thought was possible - in fact, pretty much everything I dreamed of doing, except for the 'breathing and resting' part. I thought by now I'd be back in the States, working a dead-end job with health insurance too expensive to actually use and writing stories no one would ever read in my free time. I still feel like an impostor, but it's a simple fact that, if I am, I'm an impostor with two published novels and a thesis in its final stage of revisions,  who trembles at the unknown but jumps into it anyway on the off chance that it will be interesting.

At the end of December I should be turning in my thesis and moving down to Reading. What happens after that, I'm not sure - doubtless the viva and the revisions and the handing in of the final dissertation will take up a lot of time and account for endless fannying about. I'm looking forward to waking up in the same town every morning for a month, and I keep daydreaming about what I'll do when I'm finished, making little lists of the books I want to read and places I want to explore and foods I want to feed Dave while I'm in the post-handin limbo. After that, who knows?

Already I'm sad about the prospect of leaving Norwich. It's been a lovely place to become an adult. It's been a good place to become a writer. I hope it will be a great place to come back to, just as much as I hope I'll have plenty of reasons to come back.

It's not over yet though. And tonight, there will be fencing.