Today, it is raining. It’s that Southern rain that I’ve become accustomed to these past few years: a fine, drizzly mist that will soak you through no matter how many layers you’re wearing. I usually like to use bad weather as an excuse to revel in the weight of the world’s problems, sitting by my window with a cup of coffee and a sad novel… However, today I’m up, ready, and waiting in town to catch up with some of my favourite people.

Something you should know about me is I’m one of those friends that doesn’t really keep in touch. I’d call myself a low-maintenance friend, but I think the most accurate phrase would probably just be, uh, bad friend. I’m the kind of friend that will go weeks without seeing you and then hold a three-hour-long coffee meeting so we can catch each other up on the month’s happenings. And repeat. I feel like I have more of an excuse with my friends that live far away (I didn’t forget about you, I just live far away, duh), but I have amazing friends that live in the same city as me and are rarely factored into my busy (ish) schedule.

Saying this, I never fall out of touch with people. You can bet your ass that whether it’s been weeks, months, or years – if our friendship is important to me, I will find a way to claw my way back into your life. Working, doing an MA and trying to write a novel decent enough to get published means that I have to schedule in Catch Up Meetings whenever I find a spare day. Today, as rainy and gloomy as it is, is that spare day.

Having stayed over at a friend’s last night, and just met another friend for lunch, I’m now waiting patiently in Starbucks for my aforementioned coffee meeting with friend number three. I’d say I’m smashing my Catch Up Day so far!

There’s a lot of other things I need to be focusing my attention on as well, so this nice little break in my Catch Up Day is being well spent working on some of the deadlines I have due in December. I’m so excited to start my new job as a bookseller on Sunday, but until then, I need to make sure I’m ahead of all my Uni work and manuscript deadlines, to take a little bit of weight off my shoulders before Christmas.

Today, it is raining. But I will be essay-planning, creative writing, manuscript editing, coffee-drinking and catching up with old friends… so I hardly think I’ll notice the rain at all.

Click here to read all about why I think ‘getting our lives together’ is absolutely overrated. (Let’s be messy together.)