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My unflappable curiosity for life quite often gets me into trouble. But that hasn’t deterred me one bit. I am still getting accustomed to the mysteries of life revealing themselves unannounced, hoping to learn from them and develop a skill that might get me somewhere … else. For some reason that part remains unfinished, and slowly my patience is wearing thin. So I am on a new quest of doing everything new in the coming 365 days.

As a child, life was wonderfully simple. Alas! Age has the potential to drag every ounce of wonder from us. If we’re not careful we forget to view new things with potential, lest they get in the way of all the other stuff we have to do. The way I see it, if we have a tax return to fill in then we should just do it, any extra time spent moaning about the thing just takes up moments that could have been used doing something new and fun.

I decided today that this New Years won’t catch me out. Previously I’d woken up and somehow it was the last day on the calendar, time again to make resolutions. A list I would never write to forget about. However not to be outdone in my girl group I do spend a little while bothered with myself at all the inactivity I found myself doing in the year that has passed and making up an imaginary list with a levity which would have been hilarious  at any other occasion. That’s life! When you’re forced to do something that you wouldn’t otherwise have done it becomes a half-hearted exercise that leaves you with a feeling of slavery. One day, I can’t remember which; I resolved to do some things that I’d wanted to do for a while. Remarkably, it wasn’t anywhere near the beginning of the year – or the end for that matter – and I was gleeful with a set of resolutions that I’d chosen to create because I wanted to. I once read somewhere that only humans who are concerned with the trivial choose to kill themselves, and I realized in a flash that you don’t necessarily need to be dead to be in heaven. As a consequence, whenever I’m feeling rocked by life – whether it is debt or a long wait at the airport or the appearance of numerous gray hair – I choose to create something new, something mine, and something only I can breathe into life. Fitting really, because I’d like to wrap this up by saying that the latent confusion that highlights a new thought or idea is the very essence of it: just because we don’t have an answer for most of the things we do it, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. So, lots of Yuletide glee and a Happy New Year, everyone.

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