New year...

2008 at last. I have to say that I am not feeling 100% today. A combination of a cold, a headache and not enough sleep. Although I have been off work for a couple of weeks, I really don’t feel as though I have had a break. At least I don’t have to go back to work until Monday.

So, what did I make of 2007 on a personal level? Well there were certainly some good things, such as going out with G, which has been great - and very welcome having been single for so long! There was also a change of job way back in January, which whilst not the perfect job and maybe not really want I would ideally want to be doing, is much better than my last job and I have a really nice boss and there are times when I have had to do things that are really difficult and have done them well. I could have been a better boss at times, but I have done some positive things to manage and encourage C but I need to think about how to do that better. I have also owned where I live for a year and have really started to make that my own. I’ve decorated, fitted a burglar alarm, fixed things, learned new things about owning property and generally enjoyed owning my own place. I certainly get a form of security from owning my own place and have made some good in-roads into paying off my mortgage. So that’s all been pretty positive.

Having said that, my overall view of 2007 is one of disappointment. It has been a challenging year in a number of ways and if I were writing my school report it would say “could do better” (as it so often did!). I think on the surface many people would look at my life and think that it has a lot of good things in it, which indeed it is does, but on a number of fronts I think it didn’t go as I would have hoped. The main area that I am disappointed in is relationships. Relationships with friends and family. I look at the quality of both of those and just don’t really think they were enhanced on any really tangible way in 2007. I have a good relationship with my sister and that has been good, but friendships in particular have been tested and found to be wanting. I have talked to a few friends about some really difficult stuff and there have been very mixed results. A couple of them have been great and one of them I have been pleasantly surprised at how great and supportive she has been. But a couple of other friendships have just once again surprised me at how far those friendships have changed – or perhaps it is me that has changed and the friendships have stayed the same and are never likely to catch up. S was one of my housemates at university and for a long time was my best friend. I spoke to her on the phone a while back about some really difficult stuff and she told me how “disappointed” she was and even cried because she was so disappointed. Who wants to be friends with someone who is disappointed in them? I have just withdrawn from things there and now can’t quite understand how we were ever really good friends.

Another friend was someone I had also known through university, although we weren’t actually at university together. I knew that I had neglected the friendship and I wrote to her at the beginning of December to try and offer a bit of an olive branch (not that we had argued) and explained what had been going on in my life during the year. How did she respond? Well… she didn’t. Not one word. She did send me a Christmas card, but that was just a very standard card that she had signed, there wasn’t even anything ‘personalised’ in it. She could have sent it to anyone. I was really honest with her and in response she couldn’t even write a few words to even acknowledge that.

I could go on, with other examples of where friendships feel as though they are just slipping through my fingers but you get the point.

There is also the shadow of A still in my life. It is a really unfortunate situation that I go out with someone who is really good friends with the one person who knows A’s perspective on what happened between us and knows why A finds the prospect of being in touch with me so abhorrent. I never want to have a conversation with C about it but I still know that she knows far more about a relationship that I had than I do. I find that difficult and uncomfortable. But this year I intend to try and deal with some of those things, which you may well read about here – I bet you can hardly wait.

As for my family, well things are the same as ever with my father and I cannot imagine us getting back on to good terms. There’s just too much water under the bridge and my father lacks so much self-awareness and is so unpredictable and just downright odd that I just don’t want to spend time with him or have him know about my life. Things are fine with my mum, we just don’t see each other very much and I like to keep myself to myself when we meet up. I might take an occasional day off work and try and go out and do stuff with her, as it would be a big regret for me if I let those opportunities pass.

I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions. I think often you just set yourself up to fail. I also think you don’t need the turn of a year to make changes, if I want to change something I can make the decision to start to do so there and then. I would hope that there are a whole series of new resolutions, however minor, throughout the year and I take a bit of time every now and then to evaluate where I am at on some things. But for 2008, I do plan to try and build a few bridges, some with people already in my life or who have been at some point in the past and maybe with some new people as well and to have the hope that I might reach the end of this year and feel more satisfied with where I am at and the quality of those things in my life. Here’s hoping.

Whatever 2008 holds, I hope that it is a good year for you. Happy New Year.