RESOLUTIONS
Just kidding folks. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I have learned better. But I do want to wish you all a Happy New Year and I hope 2025 brings much peace and joy and laughter to all of you. Including me.
A new year is a great time for reflections and a terrible time for resolutions
Resolutions are a determination to make a change or do something different, and an arbitrary change of date does not bring the inspiration and grit required to make long-lasting changes. That takes something much greater.
The only time I can remember making a New Year resolution that I have actually stuck with is the year I traipsed in desperation up the stairs of a women-only gym, hanging my head in shame at the state I had got myself into. Twelve years later – no, it is now thirteen years – I still attend gym regularly, and I am strong and fit. Mostly. Although I have had several weeks off now. But I no longer attend like an eating-disordered raging banshee. Now, I go for the sheer importance of middle-aged women maintaining strength and fitness as we start staring those older years in the face. And sometimes, good health and well-being include time out.
So, I have resolved to have no resolutions for 2025. I have also resolved to have no predictions. If there is one thing that 2024 taught me, it is that life is notoriously unpredictable.
Early in 2024, I began the most spectacular love affair of my life with someone I had loved deeply but in a very different way for six beautiful years. I never in a million years predicted a magical romantic dream. It was so very different to the long, loyal, patient and dependable love of my marriage. It is always difficult to compare my two loves as it makes one seem more valuable than the other, which is not at all true. Both had great love, but where one had great loyalty, the other had great passion. And both of those things are beautiful.
I am fortunate to have loved and been loved deeply – twice
But if there was one thing I could not have predicted in this entire wide world, it was having my magical love inexplicably disappear without a word. I still cannot make sense of it, and the questions will haunt me all my days. My marriage may have subsequently ended, but we remain good friends, and he is nothing but supportive of the love I have lost. Despite what he and I have lost together, I remain cautiously optimistic that we will have a lifetime of friendship. Whether my other great love ends our estrangement, I cannot predict. Because life is nothing if not unpredictable.
So when I reflect on 2024 I don’t know if it is with great joy or great heartache. Because in reality it is both. And if the joy wasn’t so magically delicious, the heartache wouldn’t be so gut-wrenchingly painful. Grief is always a direct reflection of the level of love. And I know I wouldn’t wish away a moment of any of the love I have had in all my years, so the overwhelming levels of grief just need to be endured. Because everything passes. The good, the bad and the very ugly. And when one thing passes, eventually another thing comes along.
The thing that came along for me as 2025 rolled in was Covid
I could (again) not have predicted that I would be sitting alone with my cat on New Year’s Eve feeling as miserable as all fuck because I was on day two of Covid. Running a temperature. Chills racing through me. Aching in every bone in my body. Mind-numbingly fatigued. Mopping up a continuously running nose. And experiencing the unjoys of gastro. I do not want to view it as a reflection of things to come. Instead, I want to view it as summing up a very shitty end to a year that began so spectacularly. I experienced a rollercoaster of unexpectedly high highs and low lows in 2024.
While I do not believe in resolutions, I do believe in hopes and dreams and wishes. And my hopes and dreams and wishes for 2025 are that there will be no rollercoasters. A few gentle undulations, perhaps. But none of the massive heartstopping drops that rollercoasters are notorious for.
I am now on day four of Covid and while the two little lines on the test strip still light up like the Christmas tree I’ve been too exhausted to dismantle yet, I am feeling like I am turning a corner. The fever and gastro have gone. Hopefully the rest of the symptoms will follow suit and I’ll be well enough to return to work next Monday. Because I cannot afford to not get paid.
In lieu of resolutions, these are my hopes, dreams and wishes
I plan on making no specific changes for 2025. There has been enough change recently to last me a decade.
Instead, I hope I can feel inspired to write more regularly and maybe dust off my second memoir, which is now fifty per cent finished but does include two integral people in my life who I need to write about very carefully, as their stories are not mine to tell. But they are inextricably linked to mine. That is still a work in progress.
I hope that Tasmania finally gets some summer because I’m very tired of wet, windy, cold days. The past few days are leaving me cautiously optimistic.
I hope I can continue to maintain strong recovery from my eating disorder and all my mental health diagnoses. It was a hard-won battle over many, many years, and I don’t want a hard loss. So far, so good.
I dream of an army of grandbabies – even though my own children may not want to raise an army of children. But I adore the two I have so much and I’m not sure a grandparent can ever have too many grandchildren.
Now that I have the rights of my book returned to me, I dream that I republish it under a different title and with completely different graphics. The way I wanted it in the first place. I’m still pondering the wisdom of pouring more money into an essentially selfish venture. I will write more about this later. A poll perhaps – to keep you all entertained.
I dream of climbing many more mountains and venturing into the world of overnight hikes – if my back can hold out. I already have a tentative date for the overland track in February 2026. Fingers crossed I don’t break my leg beforehand this time.
And as for wishes…. I continuously send wishes out on fairy wings, hoping and dreaming that my estrangement ends. So really, I just wish that wishes weren’t so fucking useless.
2025 is here now
May your hopes, dreams and wishes come home to you. And may they bring a belly full of laughter, a soothing balm to your soul, and peace nestled warmly in your heart.
