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Happy New Year—

Back so soon and once again here I am, trying to ignore the ingrained feeling that I should think about the year ahead and make some resolutions. 

I’ve posted before about how I used to come up with eighteen resolutions every New Year’s Eve. Three in each of six different categories. I know… it’s embarrassing! My only defence is that it gave me a purposeful glow and for those few hours each year I felt in control of my life. 

Then two years ago I wrote that I had at last recognised the folly of all those broken promises to myself and was planning instead to focus on a couple of themes for the coming year. Balance maybe. Nuance? Trains? Being kinder? All flexible and open to interpretation. But I quickly realised that even this tame affair was too controlled. So I decided I would just get on with trying to enjoy things for their own sake. No goals. 

As an approach it’s gone quite well and I’ve managed not to make any New Year resolutions for some time now. It’s a kind of anti-achievement. Nonetheless however much I try to eschew the idea of commitments the start of a fresh new year does feel symbolic. It’s an opportunity for something. So this January I’ve turned my previous habits upside-down and instead of thinking about the year ahead, I’ve thought back over the past year. Rather than making it about what I want to do, it’s about what I’ve done. Given the speed with which past resolutions have crumbled and got forgotten, it’s vastly more reliable. It’s interesting, too, because there’s an element of surprise. 

Last year brought quite a few things that evolved without much planning, and which turned out to be enjoyable and worthwhile. I visited new places, read satisfying books, spent happy times with friends and family, and did some more coastal walking. Those things were all individual events but meanwhile behind the scenes other less definable, diffuse goings-on were having a significant impact. Two in particular, were important although they would never have made it onto my resolutions list because I wasn’t aware of their value until I lived them. 

One was discovering that I don’t care what other people think, anything like as much as I used to. I don’t know how that happened. But it did. I became aware of it earlier in the year when I had to give a talk and realised that for the first time ever, I didn’t feel tortured by self-doubt. I gave it my best and hoped that some people would like it and find it interesting. But I also knew there was a chance that some people would find it boring or even irritating. It’s just the way it is. You can’t please all the people all the time. I’ve got a friend who says she can’t stand David Attenborough. Yes, David Attenborough. Even Jane Austen—St Jane— hasn’t captured all hearts. Mark Twain thought her “…entirely impossible. It seems a great pity to me that they allowed her to die a natural death. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shinbone.”  

The development of my insouciance has been invisible to all but me but it has had a physical manifestation—it’s coincided with a change of hairstyle. For my entire adult life, I’ve peered out through a fringe and much of my face has been hidden behind it. My forehead has not been seen for decades but earlier this year, quite out of the blue, I decided that I’m through with that. I want to look at the world with less fear and accept how others see me, for better or for worse. At the moment every day is a bad hair day as my former fringe is growing out and can’t seem to sit happily in any position. It’s anyone’s guess where my parting will end up but despite knowing that my hair looks a bit weird and dishevelled, I really don’t care. It’s a symbol of my new mindset.  

The second thing that took me by surprise this year, is living through a creative block. If you’ve read this blog before then you might remember that for about four months, I lost all interest in writing despite being part-way through my third book. Somehow I managed not to panic. I even accepted that I might never write again and found myself thinking about that famous line from the Serenity Prayer—“grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Then one week in July, as unexpectedly as it had disappeared, the desire to write returned. From that point on, I whizzed along and by the end of November the book was more or less finished. It’s currently with an editor. 

Once this stage is done, I’ll decide what to do next. No goals. No expectations. 

I’ll let you know what happens.