Looking back, looking forward

It seems like a good time to have a quick think back over the last year and a look toward the coming year.

As year’s go 2005 was quite reasonable. 2004 was quite possibly the worst year I can remember (although it did start as a very good year), and this year was certainly an improvement on that. I made some new friends; changed jobs (within the same organisation); had a great time walking the West Highland Way; finally got my act together on trying to buy a house- although I still need to actually purchase somewhere so I am actually maybe overselling that one; went on some very nice dates; and survived turning 30. Nothing earth shattering, but on the whole quite a good year.

I am not really into New Year’s resolutions. I don’t really need the turn of a year to encourage me to make changes in my life. If something needs altering then hitting my head against a brick wall until I finally accept that I need to take action usually turns out to be enough incentive to encourage me to get my act together. The pressure of a specific 12-month period in which to achieve a particular objective is just setting myself up for failure. But I think it would be fair to say that I need to make more effort to get involved with things. My life seems to go in cycles where I am totally run off my feet doing things, followed by periods where I seem to have not got around to arranging to do anything.

I am also an expert at putting things off "I’ll do that when I have bought a house", "I’ll go and see that when I have someone specific to go with" and so on. Only then I sometimes forget to enjoy life along the way. So maybe I just need to decide to enjoy life more, to do things because I want to do them rather than looking for a reason why I can’t do them at the moment.

So, once again, not exactly earth shattering ambition. If I was still at school and my homework was to write an essay on what I was going to do in 2006, saying "I’m going to try and enjoy life more" would not get me top marks, but to be honest I was never very good at doing my homework.