This will probably not be my year. Last year was meant to be though.
By the time I got to the last long-eared picture of my 2025 Donkeys of Ireland calendar, I would be the fittest I had been since I stopped playing competitive sport. I would exercise, see specialists and stop eating dinner out of the work vending machine.
The next 12 months would be dedicated to my health. I bought an unlimited class membership to reformer Pilates on January 2nd. I broke my wrist in two places on January 5th.
I don’t believe in manifestation because I’m not skinny, blonde or mentally stable enough to make it look “spiritual” rather than like “symptoms of a manic episode”. But if I did, I would say worrying about “health” put a message out to the universe and she responded by gifting me a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms. How much time? Well dear reader, it’s now a full year on and I still can’t pick up the vacuum cleaner when it gets stuck around the corner. The mocking, sidelong glance from Henry the Hoover sends me into a white hot rage.
READ MORE
The accident took away 12 weeks spent in plaster during a summer where the mercury shot past 30 degrees almost every day. Nearly four weeks out of work. A netball season. A decent social life. Being able to wash and blowdry my own hair.
But luckily by the end 2025, it wouldn’t have even made the top five worst things that happened to me that year. That’s how life works. It loves to give you perspective. And perspective is really just a fancy way of saying a series of terrible things will happen to you, each one worse than the last so that by the time the really bad thing happens you will feel stupid about being upset about all the other, smaller sh**shows that came before.
Unfortunately for us, there is no finite amount of upset humans can feel about anything in a calendar year. It’s not like annual leave. We don’t tell ourselves not to “use up all our upset” on being passed over for a promotion or a passive aggressive text “just in case” our house burns down. Getting upset over things is a hazard of being alive. We just have to learn to live with it.
[ People who get up early in the morning for no reason are a menace to societyOpens in new window ]
“Not to get so upset over things” might top some people’s New Year’s resolution lists but it has no place on mine. I have accepted that I will get upset. I will let upset wash over me like the spray of an errant wave when I’ve stood too close on a seawall. But I will do something useful with it. If I am annoyed about an issue, I will donate my time or money to a charity group that combats it. The Good Lord did not see it fit to make me beautiful or rich but He did give me two hands and the ability to write cranky emails. I can take rubbish home from the beach. I can give up my seat on the bus. I can call my grandparents more.
I have given up on self-improvement. I will be the same lumpen, bad tempered, unhealed hobgoblin with wonky eyeliner and a bung arm as I was last year.
In the end and at the worst, we’re all we have
I do not want to be the most optimised version of myself. I want to be useful. I want to be helpful. I do not want a pert Pilates bottom, the perfect slicked back bun and a mastery of the “clean girl aesthetic”. Maybe some people can put hours into themselves, work a full-time job and still have time or energy left over to contribute to their community. I wish them well but I am not one of them.
Social media feeds and the bookshelves of airport shops are awash with ways to turn yourself into a better person. We’re learning to think fast and slow, not give a f**k and to “let them”. We’re told working out, taking selfies and reading 10 pages of a book every day will make us worthy. RIP Maggie Thatcher - you would have loved the individualism of “75 Hard”. But in these dark and divided news cycles, my wish is that “minding others” should carry as much social capital as running marathons.
Last year I learned that in the end and at the worst, we’re all we have.
