Out with the old and in with the new

Well good day 2012. How lovely to see you. I have been expecting you, please wipe your feet on the door mat on the way in. The kettle’s on. I have biscuits too, chocolate hobnobs – only the best for you. I do like your shoes, what a beautiful shade of red. I only hope you can walk well in them.

2011 passes out from exhaustion and 2012 removes her shoes. This might be better done bare foot; it could be a tough shift.

An exciting year lies ahead. New years are strange, does anyone else agree? I find myself perched on this one precariously. I saw 2012 in not actually with hobnobs and tea, but with my good friends, good music, lots of hugs and plenty of food and drink. 2011 has been so much fun, with the exception of a hard bereavement. I went travelling to India, Borneo and South East Asia with my best friend Carla for four months at the beginning of the year. I returned to the UK in April, after getting soaked in an amazing city-wide water fight in Bangkok to celebrate Thai New Year. I returned to work, found a lovely bunch of people at a new writing class and moved into a flat with my friend and her boyfriend. A very good family friend died in June out of the blue, during Coldplay’s set at Glastonbury (I was watching it on TV, so were my friends when it happened). That was hard and it’s heartbreaking seeing them so sad. It still feels quite surreal, as it was so unexpected. The cause of death was inconclusive. I don’t think death can be any easier when you know it’s coming; it is so abrupt and final when it does that it must always be a shock. It makes you realise that you can never prepare so enjoy every moment that you get.

I was feeling excited for 2012 until I started getting itchy today. I penned some resolutions yesterday and was feeling good about them and now it’s the 2^nd January 2012. I know I’ve hardly given myself a chance, but the clock is ticking. My main resolution for this year is to apply myself. To learn the art, for I have come to think it is nothing less. I am a chronic fidgeter. Restless.

For example, I list reading and writing high up on my list of passions yet I am constantly skipping around them.

Unless I am on holiday I find that I cannot settle in to a good book anymore. I used to love curling up and absorbing a good book in a few days. Over the last year I have developed an unnerving habit. To leave books unfinished. Even if it’s the best book in the world and I have managed to stay hooked up until the last 20 pages...for some reason I drop it there and never finish it. Even if I would really like to find out what happens. Weird.

So this year, I aim to read more, and when I say read, I mean finish more articles, books, short stories.

The same goes for writing. I am a dabbler. A restless pen always rattling around in my head, but when it comes to joining the letters on paper I get stuck. I write a few sentences and then turn away.

Writing and reading sort of feel like the cure to my restlessness, and they simultaneously feel like the itch.

I feel the need to be more useful this year, to both myself and other people. Watch this space...and if it gets to April and I’m still doing a strange restless, fidgeting dance in a corner watching the clock, then there’s always Thai New Year J

                                                     Carla and I - Thai New Year, April 2011

Happy New Year to all of you, here’s to a bloody good 2012. And let’s hope that it’s not the last (some Mayan Bard said it would be, silly Bard, there’s always one who has to put a dampener on it!)