In retrospect...

I don’t normally do this, but there’s a first time for everything. It's been quite a year and I think it deserves a mention.

I began the year in a cabin in South Gippsland on the coast of Australia with friends - we spent the day on the beach and visited the caves on the way back to Melbourne. A rather odd experience for me, being my first summertime new year. Later in January my gorgeous nephew William was born. Life continued in the party format it had acquired a few months earlier, and all in all, life was good.

In March I bid a sad farewell to Melbourne and its most beautiful inhabitants and returned to the UK, went back to my old job, reconnected with old friends and made some new ones, began an A level Biology (and have thus far completely failed to actually complete any of it or get my exams booked in), and discovered the Star and Shadow cinema where I started volunteering. It was a manic few months, especially because I was house hunting at the time, and nursing a broken rib. My first ever broken bone.

June saw me moving back into Newcastle from my parent’s house, where I fell in love with Heaton and the whole Ouseburn area. I started dating Euan, turned 30 (everyone made a bigger deal out of it than me) and began salsa classes. I also finally took the plunge (not literally) and went back to rowing, if a little lazily.

After deciding not to go on any more holidays for a while, I went on holiday to Poland, where discovered that I am probably a little too laid back about travelling these days, and developed an insane fear of flying after a rather epic non-landing episode at Leeds-Bradford. A few weeks later I overcame my fear of flying after being sent to Cornwall with work, and then later, flying to Dublin to visit friends. I bought the macbook I have been wanting for years, and finally submitted my application to university.

This month I got my first tattoo! I am planning the next, but it will be a long time coming. I started going to yoga again, and realise that while I always enjoyed it before, I am now a lot more in tune with the spiritual aspect. I am reading Krishnamurti's 'Think on These Things', and am finding myself for the first time in my life totally engrossed and underlining phrases - actually defacing a book, which is something I never thought would happen. I am looking into meditation as pain control after many years of 'the drugs don't work' and feel empowered by non-reliance on medication.

Am I turning into a hippy? Quite possibly! But I don't see that that is a bad thing. I am calm and in control, and happy. It's not all been sunshine and roses - I have been ill a lot this year, and have had some major headaches thanks to our friends in the tax office (both at home and abroad), but all in all, it's been a good year :)

Ch ch ch changes

What was it Andrew said? Only the cool kids don't update their blogs (or something like that). Obviously, I'm just cool... ;)

I'm not one for New Years resolutions, but it being the season for it and all that I've started thinking about it a little. Maybe one too many snow days has left me a little starved of mental stimulation... I try to make the changes I want to make all year round, and this year has been a big year for me in that respect. I'm a better (well, I think so) and happier person because of it.

As I've gotten older I've become more squeamish, more scared of hurting myself and, apparently, a bit of a wuss it seems. Maybe that's because being the klutz I am actually entails hurting myself more than the average person?

This week I took the plunge - for the past 10 years I have been trying to make myself give blood. Sometimes I've even gotten through the doorway of the centre. Its not the needles - those I don't care about at all. And its not the blood per se. Its the same feeling I get when I think of losing teeth... nausea comes over in a wave and the world spins in a progressively greying manner. I feel like my life-force is about to drain out of me (to which, unhelpfully the nurse at the blood centre replied 'well, it kind of is'). So this time I actually did it! Yay! And it was fine, and I feel good about it. Roll on four months time when I can go again.

And much like everything else this year, I sit wondering why I didn't do that before now. So much wasted time. No more! Well, maybe a little, since I am still sitting in the house a bit scared of slipping on the ice (again)...