I appear to have written a book

When I decided to walk out on all my recent reality I began a diary. This diary provides the basis for this blog: I choose a moment to record from each day, and once a week I choose a moment from the week to inspire me for lainablog.

Day one was the day after leaving. I woke up at Amy’s. It was sunny. We went for breakfast and then went sketching in Shoreditch, did the Volvic v Evian taste test (Volvic tastes better) and sat on her friend Cornelius’s sofa on Brick Lane.

I continued the diary through my stays with all the friends who took me in and listened to all my woes about being homeless and jobless, including Eloise and the Angels, my sister and her menagerie and Alec and Briony, whom I have to thank for my whole present situation.

I reached the end of this particular diary on Sunday evening sitting in bed in my new flat about to start my new job.

And when I came to look for inspiration for my blog this week I picked up the diary and the significance of its ending struck me. I had a think about all the things I’d done over this troubled summer. It’s quite a lot. I have to think of it that way or else it’s all been just an odd blip in my life, a period in which I lost the plot and wasted my savings. I’ve always had to find something positive in everything or else I find it hard to bear. There was a point this summer in which I worried that none of it made sense and none of it was positive. But then a string of things occurred that led to where I am now and made me not be able to see it all as anything but positive.

So this blog is dedicated to all those who helped me. I’d like now to list a few more specific thank-yous:

-Beth for providing me with Desert Flower for a companion

-The Business Wire hardcore

-Adam, Gary and Chloe for encouraging me to blog and showing me how

-Seb for being a muse

-The Rennes lot, particularly Kirstie who hosted us at a difficult time

-Caroline & Scott for eternal support and the Adobe suite

-Alec & Briony for providing me with my new reality and for navigating

-Annekoos and family for welcoming a stranger and for all-night Scattergories

-Fin for housing me

-Laura & Mark for recruitment- and general solid support

-The Sheffield email stalwarts

-Hannah & Sameer for sunbathing at Blenheim and Bluetooth

-My parents for – apart from the obvious – the garden stove chat

-The electrician who agreed to move the unbudgable cabinet while he was round

-BMI for employing me

I did a lot this summer. And looking back over this diary I realise I did one more thing: I wrote a book. Couldn’t have done it without you.