3/12/13 This is it

So. This is my journal.

It's now nine days since I left Dart Mills. The three days there were extraordinary. The sun shone, the scenery glowed gold and green and blue. I felt exhilarated.

The people I met, I would be happy to call them my friends for life. I felt engaged with the learning with an intensity that I have rarely experienced before.

It took me at least two days after returning to come back down to planet Earth.

Since then I have completed the Eulogy. I was surprised at how, when I actually put pen to paper, the words flowed and the piece took shape. I had expected to go through several revisions but in fact I had to make fairly few changes to the first draft.

It was harder for me to maintain a sufficiently sensitive tone in my dialogue with the student whose uncle I was describing. This was a salutary reminder to me that it was she who 'owned' her uncle, not me. In the end though, we were both happy with what I'd written.

Now I would like to concentrate on the course and follow up lines of research that I find interesting. Instead I will have to devote much of my time to selling the boat. I now have an interested buyer as well as an interested renter. All I need now is to seal a deal. So we are at the negotiation stage.

Selling the boat is part of the strategy of becoming a celebrant, which began last April when I started to give  the boat a face-lift. Since the logistics of boating make it difficult even to pursue the celebrants course, let alone enter upon a new career, I have to sell up. This is a good time in my life to move on, as I am getting older and the rigours of boat life are harder on me than before. The proceeds of the sale will also enable me to fund the start-up phase of my self-employment.

I have also been able to raise the course fees by taking a cash lump sum from an old pension fund.

This is however all a vexation and a distraction from focusing on the funeral  work, and the sooner it is all behind me the better.

As a new starter I'm finding the course structure - in terms of assignments and activities - rather bewildering. I trust it will all become clear as I go along.

I am particularly interested in the idea of so-called DIY funerals and would like to find out more about this area, and about how my services might possibly fit in with it.