Not Resolutions, Just Plans: 2016.

You Enjoy It So You Should Do It More.

• Learn to make mood boards properly.
• Read more, like every year. 

You Won't Get What You Want If You Don't. 

• Draw everyday so you get better.
• Ditto, for your writing. 
• Speak French more, learn more French, just general better French.
• Start learning Arabic, even just reading it, you might never be fluent but everyone starts somewhere.

You Deserve It.

• Stop saying gross things about yourself. You're good at this but sometimes you still fall into that trap. Get rid of anyone who even remotely encourages you to do so - it's not about you and it's none of your business what anyone else thinks. 
• Remember how much you've already done.
• Like properly remember it - update your CV, LinkedIn and, for the love of God, organise your portfolio.

Writing from A to B: London to Leeds, 13.01.2016.

Oh London, my heart. You contain some of my favourite people and I feel so warm and ready to face everything when I leave you. You’re huge and sprawling and messy and I love that. I can’t help but feel though, that I love visiting you precisely because I can leave again. I can choose your best bits and spend my days leisurely wandering from lunches to coffee to galleries to kill time. Spend my time writing and thinking and reading and not much else. I love you potentially because you’re not my home, you’re my escape and I get to do some much and be so independent when I'm here precisely because you have so much to offer me. I don’t get the chance to make a mess here, or be bored here, I get to be filled with love and culture and time and then I get to skip off home to face my life. I have to worry and stress in Leeds because it’s my home and my life exists there and the people I see there I see all the time so I don’t just get to have the nicest times with them, I have all my times with them.  And so, they are a constant source of warmth, rather than the intense heat you get from spending a couple of hours with your closest and much-missed friends.

Really though, I'm just wondering, with so many seats around us, why you would choose to remain immediately next to me? You said ‘hi’ when you sat down, I hope you weren't imagining conversation to take place. It’s 8.30 pm man, and I have shit to do.

I would recommend, if you don’t get to do it already, spending some time with strangers and describing what you do. Strangers or people you haven’t seen in an incredibly long time. I've found nothing else on this earth that helps me pat myself on the back quite like explaining the bare bones of my most recent achievements. Sure, the reality is never quite as glamorous and I would be honest about that too if I got the time. When I explain everything I want to do, too, it sounds so realistic and so certain. Who knows if they really believe I can do it, I hope I say those things confidently enough that they believe that I believe it. I suppose all that matters is that I carry on saying it. To strangers, to my friends (who of course think I will be exactly as successful as I hope to be), to myself. And then I have to do it ten times more frequently than I talk about it. Keep moving, and back myself by telling everyone the direction I'm going in.

For the next two weeks I have my days off next to each other and they include at least one weekend day in both of them. My boss has fallen in love with me/done something awful to me that she feels guilty about. Discuss.

Seriously now, what are you still doing here? Should I move? I'm on the inside I shouldn't move. Fuck this. This is unpleasant and uncomfortable and I've had to move my screen so much I'm basically sat on the arm rest of my seat. Are you having a nice time? Maybe my train time is more sacred to me than it is to you. I'm just going to eat these sweets I found in my bag and wait for this to end. WHY. Why are you using the two empty seats opposite us to store your paper and your bottle of water? Just sit there. For the love of God just move over there instead and I can stop typing like a T-Rex because my laptop is so close to my face.

There was enough love in the people I've seen in the last week to persuade me that I really am doing okay. Enough to be happy with my lot and teach myself to be less anxious about something I already have and have had for much longer than I will let myself know.

Is there an inordinate amount of times to listen to Hall & Oates’ ‘You Make My Dreams Come True’? It’s probably once and I've already surpassed it.

A-HA. I knew you couldn't be comfortable with this arrangement, you've gone to lay across the two seats in front and we both now have the space to mobilise all of our limbs.

I think fizzy strawberry laces might be one of my favourite things. That’s something to add to the list of New Year’s Plans – always have a bag of fizzy strawberry laces in bag, in case of emergency.

I’d really like to do this on the journey to Newcastle I’ll probably be making in a couple of weeks, but I'm not sure how much I fancy carrying my laptop all day. Phone notes or hand written it might have to be. If I go. Otherwise the next time we do this might be the big one from Leeds to Sydney over nearly three whole days.

I wonder if an orchestral version of Call Me Maybe exists. There’s room for a really epic sounding string section there.

You were quiet a lot today and I hope you were happy listening to me talk and not just wanting it to end. I know I chat to fill silence but I also try not to say things without meaning. I hope you were just listening and taking it in and that’s why you didn't interrupt me. I wish we saw each other more, we have so many good memories (don’t we?), and I’d like to add to them, not just watch them fade.

Writing from A to B: Leeds to London, 10.01.2016

The best part of journeys I book to run away from something  that's happening where I am is that by the time I come to take them, everything has usually settled back down. It happened when my boyfriend in second year dumped me and I booked a trip 4 weeks later to go home. It’s happened now. That means that when I get there I can run into the arms of the people I love and not use them to hold me up. It’s always been true that I prefer to tell stories that have already ended, and the story of the last couple of weeks is over now, it’s made its way into the category of ‘news’. I can share it and we can comment and move on without trying to find a resolution because I already have one.

‘My momma don’t like you and she likes everyone, and I never like to admit that I was wrong’ – Justin Bieber, Love Yourself.

‘You know if I'm honest, I never thought they treated you that well, I never said anything, but now you've said that, well.’

We moved on from that at the time because you were trying to get me not to dwell on the bad - when was the last time I got to tell you anything positive really? I'm going to ask you about it when I get back though, because I want to know if my radar was really a bit off on this one. You know I'm fiercely protective of myself but also my weakness is getting people to like me.

To the girl on the train who started crying when she was on the phone,

I took my headphones out and listened for a little while, to see if I could work out what had happened. To see if I needed to go over and offer to help or support you. When I found out my brother had been diagnosed with cancer I was on a train, travelling alone, about half an hour out of Leeds, I had to move from First Class to Standard to find a plug socket that worked. I’d been travelling back from Ireland since 5 AM that morning. I thought I was texting my parents so they could pick me up and take me home but instead I had to navigate my way to a hospital I’d never been to before, to a ward I never imagined I’d have to go to. I was on my own and there was only one other person in the carriage. I know she heard me when I called my boyfriend at the time to tell him what had happened and would he please come and be there.

When you started crying it reminded me how awful it is to be trapped in a moving carriage full of strangers when you've received bad news. I was going to go over because it’s a long way from where we were to London, and god knows you shouldn't only have yourself for company if something bad has happened and you have to sit in the same place for another hour and a half.

I'm glad you've just left your keys at home. I'm not glad because it happened, it sounds super stressful and difficult for you to solve (you've been calling various people for the past 20 minutes now). I'm not glad because it ‘could be worse’, you have every right to cry in frustration and exhaustion at any situation. I'm glad because I wouldn't wish you to do what I did, because I would hate to spend the next hour and a half having my heart broken as you tell me what happened, or maybe you don’t want to talk about it and I spend that time wondering if you’ll be okay. I'm glad because I can’t promise nothing truly devastating will happen to you, but I hope when you find out about it you’re in a place you can freely leave, surrounded by people you love.

These people sat opposite me are eating cheese Doritos and the smell is killing me. 

2015: The year I lost everything.

Right now, all over every inch of the internet, people are summarising the year that was. Thousands of lovely people and exceptional writers are sharing their good hope and empowerment with everyone else — these articles are both soothing and exciting to read. They tell stories of problems overcome and ground made in the direction of their dreams. 

This isn't going to be like that. 

This is a story of 2015, a year which I'm beginning much as I ended it. A year that very nearly floored me but didn't quite. And a look at 2016, in which I plan to give everything another go.

First, let’s get a quick run down of everything that happened in 2015. Good and bad. This isn't some sort of call for sympathy, but to know how I'm feeling now you need to know what I'm reflecting on. This is that. 

Three days in to the year I had my heart broken, it hit me harder than it should have and I'm still trying to understand exactly why I was so devastated by the loss of someone who clearly had no interest in being my partner. We've reconciled as friends now, and the time where watching him be successful and happy with someone else was about as much fun as putting pins through my eyes has passed. I haven’t had anything else like a serious relationship all year, and 2015 certainly threw me a lot of red herrings in the love department. 

On the 15th January I lost my younger brother, we knew it was coming and the explanation isn't for here, but that is just as disruptive and devastating as you could imagine and then some. You don’t process something like that in 12 months, if you process it at all. Beyond the overwhelming anguish and pain of grief I now dread the question ‘So, do you have any brothers or sisters?’. I lie every time and I'm continuously annoyed at myself for doing so. I learnt it’s possible to grieve and also be made to feel bad about the way you do so.

In the immediate aftermath of this I coped by going back to work and carrying on with my Masters degree against all sensible opinion. I worked myself into the ground and put too much pressure on myself and lost a lot of weight doing so. My current weight is a constant reminder of a body not yet recovered. A body that absorbed all the pressure that my mind endured. 2015 was a year of strain and it was always going to show somewhere.

I changed jobs. Not a mistake but my experience there was hardly wholly positive. The CV is immeasurably strengthened by it though and it’s opened doors I'm still fully exploring. Eventually I was too much of an expense and I lost my job by virtue of being told I wouldn't be paid enough to have any sort of life on my earnings. I went back to my old job, I was welcomed with open arms and lots of laughter and a work colleague who tells me she loves me being there every single day. I am lucky. 

I have to appeal my grade. Future life plans than involve a PhD which I don’t fund myself make this worth it and I wouldn't be undergoing this incredibly invasive and unpleasant process otherwise. I still haven’t graduated. I've done so much, and worked so hard, and I have absolutely nothing tangible, either professionally or academically, to show for it.

I pitched a million pieces and applied for a thousand jobs and had freelance work rejected or ignored time and time again. I felt like I was metaphorically flailing around and finding nothing to cling to and also like I might actually be unemployable. Despite my Masters degree and wide and varied work experience I was beginning to believe I may end up as a Victorian pauper. 

A lot of people let me down, people I thought were my friends didn't know how to cope with what had happened (thanks again, for implying your feelings were more important than mine). So, they either drew back or worse still, resented me for being the centre of so much attention. Some people let me down generally and would have done so anyway. This always happens but sometimes If you’re really at the stage of saying ‘at least it can’t get any worse’, then it almost definitely will.

I embraced this and learnt to laugh about it. A trait, I'm told, which is simultaneously ‘unsettling’ and ‘incredible’. 

So what, then? So I had a terrible year. So I ended up exactly where I’d started, same job, same city, still no degree, still single, same friends, less family. I've lost more than I've gained and I've gained almost nothing. I've made approximately no ground whatsoever. 

But there’s something quite nice about that. There’s something really relaxing about starting a new year and really being able to start all over again from the ground up. Let’s try and see 2015 as a dress rehearsal and give everything another go. 

It’s also worth pointing out that 2015, obviously, wasn't all bad. I've received more support and more love than I thought possible. Some of it from people I haven’t spoken to in years who were essentially perfect strangers. This year made me understand the importance of love, real love, for the people you surround yourself with. The importance of holding on to the people you want to hold on to and going after what you want. 

I strengthened relationships I already had immeasurably, and reignited some that both parties had been guilty of leaving to dull. I took a lot of decisions about my well-being and my life and my happiness and I feel comfortable with all of them. I trust and admire myself a thousand times more than this time last year. I'm optimistic that I’ll look back and see that the things that happened to me happened at exactly the right time and led to the best possible conclusion. I am proud of myself. 

So I’ll submit more pitches, and apply for more jobs, I’ll go on more dates and make more friends. I’ll graduate, eventually and change job, hopefully. I’ll find my way, and I’ll make some ground, because if I did last year I can definitely do this one. You don’t need to have had a perfect, or even remotely good, 2015 to have an excellent 2016. 

2016. Like 2015, but better.