It seems wrong to be kicking off the new year with a miserable blog post but this blog is nothing if not honest, and to be honest right now I am feeling pretty miserable. I hate New Year. There I have said it out loud. And I apologise to all those around me for whom this brings down the general mood of celebration.
But that is just it. The whole world seems to be celebrating. From mid afternoon on December 31st the TV news channels are full of the various celebrations as they happen around the world and the following morning we are treated to the celebrations from Times Square in New York. Oh look, all that ticker tape, snogging and general whooping. Fifteen tonnes of fireworks in London, and a social media stream full of people out having fun as midnight approaches and then bemoaning the hangover the next day.
This is quickly followed by a groaning inbox of either “final reduction” sale mail shots encouraging us to spend the money we don’t have after Christmas. Or discounts for gyms / gym clothes / slimming club memberships. You can’t move for adverts on the TV for Diet Chef or Weight Watchers.
I hate it. It all seems to culminate in this big finger pointing at me saying “You. You fatty. Get off the sofa and go and get pissed. Go and bloody celebrate. Then go and get skinny”.
What if I don’t want to?
What if I quite like just sitting on the sofa (after all it is not like we got invited to do anything else on New Year’s Eve) drinking Champagne on New Year’s Eve. I am not being charged an arm and a leg for dinner, or worrying about how to get home. What I would have liked to do if I am being perfectly honest, is go to bed at 10pm. But no. You can’t do that, it’s not the done thing. As the fireworks went off locally our dog had a panic attack so Mr B went to calm him down, the teens sloped off after seeing the fireworks I was left sitting in the lounge on my own. Which seemed to compound the feeling of “meh”. My thoughts of staying up drinking Champagne until the wee small hours dashed by a whimpering dog and sympathetic snoozing husband.
I am quite happy just bumbling along as I am thank you very much. Yes, there are lots of things in my life I would like to change, many of them are not my things to change though. Of the things that I can change, well that is my choice to make as and when I decide to make it and having all this constant bombardment on January 1st of “thou must celebrate” followed by “thou must be skinny / happier / richer / more successful” pisses me off quite frankly.
And then we get a week long onslaught of celebrities on beaches who are either “flaunting / displaying / showing off” their skinny bodies or silicon enhanced curves. Just stop already. They are on holiday. We are not. It just feels like more nose rubbing. Especially when it is on a beach that we know well in Barbados and are looking about more drizzle and frost out of our windows.
I am going to start a movement that encourages people to make changes as and when they like throughout the year. That might be on their birthday, or when they book a holiday, or when the children go back to school after the summer, or after all the Easter Eggs have finished, or whatever. And more importantly whenever.
Sorry this post is a bit <insert down turned mouth> but this time of year does this to me. I look back on 2014 and think “yep, achieved masses, lots of other things I have achieved” and I look ahead to 2015 and see endless possibilities and want to leave the door open for change when it feels right to change. Not because media is pointing one finger at me and one at the calendar.
Tell me it is not just me that feels like this?
Photo of New Year courtesy of Shutterstock
Definitely definitely not just you. Well, maybe just you and me. I lasted until 9.25pm on the ‘night’ – we didn’t have champagne and I may have turned over at the sound of the fireworks – and then gone straight back to sleep.
I don’t want to “save for a debt free Christmas”, a new sofa (well I would actually but that’s another issue), a kitchen that is now ‘on sale’ having been displayed at a grossly inflated price in one store in the middle of nowhere for the statutory period to enable it be put in ‘the sale’, a model of the Mary Rose made with matchsticks that will take 7 years to make and cost me just 99p for the first issue and £9.99 a month thereafter or to be offered the OAP membership rate for the local gym, again.
If I’m going to change anything, it will happen when I am good and ready. And if that isn’t until it happens, that, as they say, will be that. x
You just keep being amazing you! I agree it is silly. I made loads of goals for myself and now can see I am back to the same crazy routine and it is going to be tough. I love doors, in fact my life philosophy has been to open random ones. Let’s open some more random doors in 2015 my dear! YOU are already fab, so I order you to do as you please xxx
You jeep going .
I’ll ‘still, be here supporting you
So pleased others feel the same way I do x
Rather than saying let’s not celebrate New Year, why not say let’s celebrate the passing of every month? Every week? Every Tuesday afternoon, if it suits you? I say let’s add more celebration to the calendar, not less.
Besides, the passing of a year is a natural moment for lots of people to suddenly have a, “If not now, then when?” moment. Life slips by without us noticing so much of the time, and if a New Year gives you the spur to make a change you’ve been half-considering for months, or years, then why not?
I’m with you 100% , like a lot of the seasonal activity NYE feels contrived and commercialised. I’m looking forward to some normality next week when the children go back to school and we all heave a big sigh of relief!
I like to stay in and see in the new year with the family. All bar one of us, we actually made it this year! I’m guilty of the ‘New Year, New beginnings’ brigade in afraid (sorry). I do think, if you choose to, you should just go to bed early, and wake up as normal the next day, most of my family do! Xx