The start of 2016 has been particularly grey. Something about the low cloud and the near-constant rain makes it difficult to look up, to look ahead. I’ve been reminded over the last week of Douglas Adams’s planet Krikkit, where the sky is so completely featureless that it never occurs to the planet’s inhabitants to raise up their eyes: they have no concept of sky, or of what might exist beyond their planet.

But today has been mercifully clear, low sun in a high blue sky. It feels like the horizon of the year is suddenly visible, twelve months away from here. So I’ve been looking up, considering the shape of the year to come.

Though September has always felt like the month of new beginnings  more than January, I’ve dabbled with new year’s resolutions in the past. Often these resolutions were to do with writing goals: finishing this draft, getting those stories accepted for publication. Writing goals can be great motivators, of course, but they can also set you up to fail. One problem is that for writers so many of our markers of success are largely outwith our control – dependent on agents, publishers, markets, judges. ‘Publish novel’, for instance, is an achievable goal now in a way it wasn’t even in the very recent past, but for writers in pursuit of a traditional publishing contract so much is about luck – getting the right book in front of the right person at the right time. And optimism can be another problem; though mine has kept me writing through the last ten years, it means that even when I think I’m erring on the side of caution my goal-setting is hopelessly over-ambitious.

When I think of goals, achievements and the year ahead, I see myself climbing a mountain. Here I am, halfway up: I can look back at the view, feel a sense of satisfaction at how far I’ve come – then turn around, and gaze up at the distance still to climb. Does anyone ever feel like they’ve reached the summit? And if that ever happens – what next? Is the descent all that’s left?

But it strikes me that this image is not quite right. It wants a shift of perspective. Perhaps the mountain doesn’t represent success. And perhaps it’s not a single mountain. Zoom out, and it becomes a mountain range. My half-way up position is not so much about goals achieved or out of reach; it’s about time. About the span of a life, and a life’s work.

In January, the years seem long – but they’re not, of course. They fly past anti-clockwise / like clock hands in a bar mirror, as we well know.