I hope you all had a great festive period, filled up on turkey sandwiches, ate a few too many chocolates, etc, etc… and now that we (most of us) are back to the grindstone, it’s time to remind ourselves of the minutiae of Real Life©.

In the first three days of the year I’ve read the first 50 pages of The City by Dean Koontz and the first 130 pages of Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. Now, once you stop laughing and have put aside the idea that you think it’s a book for girls (I’m trying to convince myself it really isn’t), I can tell you that total page count is about three times the amount of reading I did in the entirety of 2015! Crazy. I’m enjoying both and will hopefully be onto new stuff soon.

Now, the writing…

So as I stumble my way out of 2015, my only real hope for next year is that it is better than this one, and my only resolution is that I make it better. Somewhere along the way, in the last twelve months, I lost the essence of who I was – who I am. I stopped writing in March. I didn’t think I had stopped; I thought I was taking a break, but nine months later and I have yet to write much of any great value since.

Of course, December 31st is an arbitrary passing of the baton from one year to the next, but it’s as good a point as any to make some changes.

…so it begins tomorrow.

…that’s how long I’ve been on this planet.

I’ll be honest, it was not one of my better twenty-four hour periods. It’s probably the end of an era, or – perhaps more frighteningly – the beginning of a new one. I guess that doesn’t make any real sense, because every day starts anew, and with it comes another round of expectations and another batch of fresh challenges.

Maybe the full stop I imagine to be there today is completely arbitrary.

Life goes on. Tomorrow is another day

Right?

Yeah, I know… it’s been a while.

The last few years, on a personal level, have not been great. 2015 began much as 2014 ended – badly – and now that we’re in the tenth month of the year, the landscape has not changed much at all.

Spring held promise, and for a while I genuinely believed I was beginning to look over my shoulder, see the bigger picture, come out the other side, etc. To be perfectly honest, for a few months the world did look a little brighter, but you know, sometimes your eyes can deceive you.

I used to deal with these things through my words and my writing, but I seem to have run out of juice in that department lately. For want of a more appropriate analogy, the cure has, well… kind of become the cancer. To put that in some kind of context, this post is the most I have written in months. Months. For me that is both sad and embarrassing, and I hope to get that part of my life back on track very soon.

So yeah, watch this space…

I met up with an old friend today – someone I’ve not seen for a long time. I’ve known him for fifteen years and he’s been a good mate ever since. He moved over to Canada with his bride a while ago and has spawned a couple of kids along the way. It was great to see him – albeit briefly – and catch up on the family gossip… even if some of that didn’t make for easy listening.

I went to live with my girlfriend in Northern Ireland in 2003. I didn’t drive at the time, and he was the one who got me there… with all my worldly possessions in the back of a hired van that was falling apart faster than we were travelling. We had to exchange it for something a little more road-worthy only an hour into the trip. Anyway, eventually we arrived and I waved him goodbye the next morning. Although we have had many other more experiences typical of two guys in their twenties, I think sometimes a friendship is defined by one particular event, and I guess that one’s ours.

It’s a pity the world is (still) such a large place. Canada may as well be the moon.

Have a safe trip back, buddy.