Newyear, newme?

It is tempting to go on a bit of a quest for reinvention at this time of year. Articles abound with announcements to renounce alcohol or animal products, or kickstart some kind of daily exercise regimen that would make Jessica Ennis-Hill look like a shirker. Every year for a while now I’ve had the same urges. Do something dramatic. I’m always naturally attracted to the dramatic after all. But, this year…do I want to reinvent myself? Erm…nope.

Encouraging a bit of self-reflection...

I do believe that a bit of honest self-reflection is necessary in life to grow as a person, and grow we must, if we are to make the most of our experience here on Earth. I know that I started last year with the good intention of spending more time outdoors, walking in nature. Things have tailed off a bit in the last few months, but I did make a point of doing it through last winter, and it definitely helped with my wellbeing. I note that now I am spending less time plugged in to my tunes when I'm out and about. Not because I've gone off music (as if!) but because I genuinely want to hear the sounds around me, the birdsong in particular, and if I were permanently plugged in, I would miss the sometimes nice things that random strangers say to me in passing. It's not all catcalls. Perhaps I'm trusting and finding that the world is a friendlier place now?

So I could probably keep that good intention going. Along with my intention to keep writing. Last year, I finished a children's story I'd started twelve years ago. I got six whole weeks through The Artist's Way (50% ain't bad)! I wrote poems, including one I read out at an open mic event. I wrote songs. I launched an EP, for goodness sake! I started a new blog (this one). I wrote articles for an online magazine. I want to write more and more and more. And if I spent a bit less time responding to comments on Guardian articles and used that time writing creatively, I could probably finish a novel by the end of March. But hey, I'm not giving myself too hard a time about it. Sometimes a good comment is enjoyed by many. I even got the top comment on one Guardian article before the end of the year. It's the little things.

Yes, I could probably do with cutting down on alcohol. Just a little bit. But I’m not cutting it out entirely because I like it and my usage and abusage of it has been trending downwards for quite a while. It seems I don’t need AA or anything that dramatic. No interventions needed here.

I could do with cutting down on sugar but I’m not going to cut it out entirely because I like it and I’ve upped the exercise so I’m not too rotund. A life without chocolate or cake is one definitely less worth living, but I will try to go for quality over quantity. Gone are the days when I’d wipe out half a tub of Ben and Jerries chocolate fudge ice-cream off the back of a Domino’s pizza in one sitting. I was at my heaviest and, crucially, unhappiest in my twenties. Food is not love, you shouldn’t eat your feelings etc. I don’t. Well, I try not to. I’ve been okay at that for a while so no diets or punishing exercise regimes for me either!

I have already cut animal products down if not out of my diet. I’m okay with that. I’m the type of person that if you say I can’t have something, I will stuff my face with it at some point out of pure defiance. I’m not an extreme sort of a person really. But if I say I can have something, that it’s not on some kind of forbidden list, I will probably just not fancy it all that much. I understand my own psychology so much better now. I guess that comes with age. I’m cool with the ‘flexitarian’ me. I certainly consume a lot more plant products, and that’s got to be a good thing. I certainly feel a lot better.

2017 had its challenges for sure. But I got to the end of the year without feeling hyper anxious, which is a small victory! Last Christmas Eve, I watched the Star Wars movie in a state of discomfort and fear following a panic attack in Exeter High Street. I don’t recommend it. I kept thinking about Carrie Fisher’s heart attack and how I was going to have one, just like her. I’d also had a massive panic attack in Cabot Circus a couple of weeks before. It wasn’t pretty. I rang my sister and she talked me through it, but I must have looked a sight, sitting outside Patisserie Valerie clutching my chest, crying and hyperventilating. This year? Chilled. Totally. Almost totally. No panic attacks though, that’s the important thing!

And there’s the most significant part. The realisation that for me 2017, though definitely a bumpy ride (when will I ever have a ‘quiet’ year?), was a year that when I got to the end, I didn’t feel like I had massively taken a wrong turn or needed to sort my shit out in some grand way. In short, I am finally pretty comfortable with myself and how things are going. In conversation with a good friend of mine today, we concluded that the only thing I could probably work on is not giving myself such a hard time. So I am winning because, so far, I’m not.

Of course, it’s only 1^st January, but I’m ahead of the curve on almost every other year in recent memory, so I’m quietly optimistic.

'You cannot think yourself into right living. You live yourself into right thinking.'