This year I have, apparently, made several resolutions. None of them I’m keeping, but oh well.

The first was to try and be more positive. Life is not usually worth living, and there are dark moments everywhere, but actually for me my life is generally quite acceptable. Work puts me under serious stress, but I’m not dealing with life or death here. About the most distressing a day gets is whether or not I have fucked up someone’s computer, or worse, lost all their treasured photographic memories. That alone can be awful, and it’s happened before, but, at the end of the day, it isn’t important. Not really.

Whilst I would be sad if I lost all my old photos, I would also wonder what it is I’ve lost. I look at them now and think, oh, that’s depressing. I used to smile OK. I had more hair. All bad thoughts. Would I really miss them? There are so many in fact that I might just go – oh, I can’t even remember what was there. Tragic. And I don’t even look at them anyway. I looked at them just now for the purposes of this paragraph. Point proven.

So the resolution to be happier should be an easy one, right? Be more philosophical about everything. Be more zen. Be more Buddhist. There is nothing supremely bad. Or supremely good. It’s all just a bit meh. So stop overreacting to the fact that the phone always rings when I’m on the phone to someone else. It just is. Deal with it.

It’s been a total failure. But at least I have made a conscious effort. So maybe not a total failure. I’m just more upset that I bothered to make a new year’s resolution. That is always definitely a conscious effort I make to avoid.

The second resolution has been to try and leave the office on time, especially at weekends. 1pm sharp, gone. This needs to happen. It isn’t. I may have improved on leaving times by a few minutes, but today I was there at 7am, and, though I left at 6:30pm, that’s still an absurd length of time to be working.

The third resolution has been to try and get back to being a bit more active. Whilst moving house to as far away as it has has had its advantages to this point, I am definitely getting a belly. Not a fat belly. Just an ageing belly. It sags now. Also, my eyes are developing lines. And my hair is just a joke. I could try and get back into the sit up regime that I used to do, but I have less time now. I’m spending more time in the morning doing crappy pre-office paperwork. See Resolution 2 and its general failure.

The fourth resolution has been to find something different and fun to do in leisure time. As always, this usually has to involve the other half. J, I think, would like to join a gym and all that jazz. I wouldn’t. I hate other people. It’s also embarrassing. I would rather us spend more time together doing fun things. That might even involve more time having sex. What a weird thing to say. But sex can be a fun mutual pastime. We didn’t get enough of that last year. I know he agrees too. But life and work make us both miserable at the end of the day at times, and that is hardly conducive to the mood…

4 semi-resolutions. 4 semi-failures. I’m sure there are more, but I can’t think of them right now. That’s probably because I’ve broken them and conveniently forgotten them.

Good.

I started writing this cheating… at the time it was not actually 2018 yet. I was in a Travelodge somewhere in the Midlands. I’ve never been here before, but we decided that we’d spend some time away before going back. Well, about one day away anyway. So I wrote this bit in advance…

It’s time to look ahead. The new year should lead to some changes. This year things cannot stay as they were. The world is different now – politically I mean – and it makes me somewhat stressed as to what is coming. Trump is a madman, and I cannot see how that situation gets any better. I think it will get worse before it does…

In my own life, I have to find something else to do. Work cannot stay as it is, because it’s too depressing. I need to be able to exert some control over it, which is something I haven’t been able to achieve in many years. I am not sure what I can do though. I wanted to sit back and have a good think over this period, but it hasn’t happened. And J doesn’t seem very inclined to talk seriously about it, only to say that he agrees that “it’s over” as far as our current business is concerned.

The trouble is that we have a certain standard of living to maintain. That sounds ridiculous I know, and I am hardly last of the big time spenders, but I do enjoy my treats. I like spending some money on coffees and nice bits of treats. We’re going to a zoo today, which will involve similar things. It’s not like this costs a fortune, but if I was earning any less (and we don’t really earn much) I would be really worried about where the next meal was coming from. And I’d start becoming obsessed again with buying cheap crap from the supermarkets… I’ve had that moment before.

I hope J and I keep going strong. We have things we could improve, but having our own home should make us more secure and more comfortable. We are getting there.

Family-wise – that’s the big worry. I’m not sure what the future holds. There is so much illness around in my dad, my mum, my family in general… Nan is, of course, the biggest. And I am sure I’m going to start feeling more and more worse for wear. I don’t like the way my face is getting liney. I can see there is now more eyebrow than there used to be. And my hair is still the joke it has always been. Mid 30s are here to stay.

Is there anything that could improve with these things this year? It doesn’t seem so. Biological processes can’t be stopped. My eyes are worse than they were… I would be very worried about trying to learn to drive a car without glasses now. That’s crazy. I don’t wear them from day to day, but I do feel better wearing them. I don’t have to squint and strain to read road signs or just generally read the conditions. Perhaps I should, but they do make me feel a bit awkward at times.

I hope that this year J and I finally find more interesting diversions to pass the time. Netflix is all well and good, but it is extremely stationery. The trouble is after work you don’t really want to do anything else. I suspect the future lies in some sort of exercise related activity – more walking, mainly – chiefly because J is concerned about the flab he still has. I must admit at times I think I’m getting a bit podgey again too. I used to do sit ups in the morning, but now I tend to sit and read e-mails and do boring admin things for work. Joining a gym sounds expensive and dangerously close to bumping into the kinds of people I don’t like. So what can we do instead? We need to get our thinking caps on for this year…

It’s now the 2nd of January when I finish writing this. The 1st day of the year started with chores, nachos, beer and TV. Lots of music, thanks to a program on 4 Music which played every single Number 1 of the decade so far. As a former chart and stats nerd, it was good fun. But my relationship with J has forced me to move on from things like that I used to enjoy. I think I tried his patience at times. I need to learn this year to be a bit better at being less bossy…

Here’s to 2018! Let’s see what you got.