Tuesday 2 January 2018

#401 Annual musings

I'd never spent New Year's Eve alone before. There were two hours to go until midnight and I was sat in the armchair of the converted loft in which I now lived. Watching Star Trek.

Twelve months ago, I was at the house of my friend Fionnuala's parents, drinking Fosters and half-watching something called "Hootenanny". I still don't really know what that is. I'd left my job two weeks prior and had been dating Hetal for almost a month, though she seemed to want to slow things down a bit, which was on my mind.

I'd been living on the Isle of Dogs for six months, during which I'd been thinking of leaving work for a while. Running occasionally. Blogging weekly. Working on my book. Figuring out how to make a mean risotto.

It had been an eventful year. I finished the book. The relationship ended. I spent some time looking at different types of jobs. Found a coach. Moved house. The main areas of my life remained distinctly unresolved though. I was single and hadn't yet returned to employment.

When I'd started 2017, I knew that it wouldn't be possible to predict exactly how the next twelve months would go. All I knew was that it was going to be a very different year to the one that preceded it. I'd hoped for more though. I never would have thought that the career break would last this long. That I'd end up moving or seeing a career coach before getting back to work.

Now a whole year had passed but I still felt similar to how I had at the start of 2017. I wanted more of a sense that I'd be fine. That the future would generally go well. The truth though was that I had no idea. Like the rest of humanity, I was about to welcome in an entirely new twelve months of existence, no wiser to how any of it was going to turn out.

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