And the New Year blows in, casting away the spent leaves of summer

Today was summer’s dying breath. One last stand before autumn sets in for good. Goodbye to sun and all that.

The New Year used to start with the spring awakening on March twenty-fifth, and now it begins pedantically on January first, separating two indistinguishable days of midwinter. But for me, it has always been the arrival of autumn that has heralded the New Year. No doubt this is largely a relic of the new school year starting on September first in England, combined with the way Finland seems to revive from its two-month aestivation. Autumn has always been the time to embark on new things.

My birthday also sits on the cusp of autumn. The change of season marks a personal new year, too. This year, I was to throw a joint birthday/leaving party. I've spent the past twelve months counting lasts: this is my last Winter, this is my last Vappu, this is my last Juhannus, because I’ll be gone by October. This New Year was to be the start of a new era.

Yet now I have to face my looming birthday in the knowledge that I am to remain here indefinitely, in the same miserable situation, and that this New Year’s Day will fall between two indistinguishable days of autumn drizzle.

I am trying to make the best of it. I’m taking on projects to stave off the feelings of failure, of treading water, of disappointment in myself; even though I have little hope of them amounting to anything. A friend surprised me the other day by saying that I make a habit of exceeding myself in everything I do. I would say that I've underperformed at everything I’ve attempted. If I’m such an overachiever, how come I’m still ‘here’, both physically and metaphorically?

In fact, that sense of failure is currently so overwhelming that I’m finding good news hard to take. Other people’s, that is. My friends are landing great new jobs abroad, getting married, being offered amazing artistic opportunities, gaining PhDs… the list goes on and they’re all younger than me. And while I’m happy for them, because they’re my friends and they deserve their success, each of their triumphs is another poke in the eye that reminds me of my failure.

One wet and gloomy autumn night years ago, I got on the wrong bus. I was tired, the windows were steamed up, and I didn’t realise until it was too late. Until the bus reached the terminus and I was disgorged into some godforsaken hole in the suburbs of Vantaa. Late night, no way of knowing how or when or if I’d ever get home.

That’s how I feel right now.