new year new me

My new favourite row of Victorian terraces in Manchester where I’ll be living next year.

Since 2016 has kicked off a gazillion things have happened, and a gazillion things more are yet to happen. So far, I've bought a house, taken drugs, had my first semi-relationship (if you could call 2 dates and a blowjob that), written 2107 words about mobilisation for war, worked out how to do my eyeshadow like a fucking boss, and come to terms with the 1d hiatus. So, unlike Kylie Jenner whose year is going to be filled with “realizing things”, I hope my year will be filled with things of more substance (not drugs).

I think that till about the 3^rd of February everyone is hopeful for the new year and that this presents a good opportunity to sort out all the things going on in their life. For example, it’s well known that gyms up and down the country are going to be packed for the first couple of months and vegetables are going to go out of stock quickly, the libraries are going to be empty and people will be out of their homes more often. Although people are skeptical about the longevity of these resolutions, I feel like this year is different. I can feel it in the positive air when I walk into my lectures and I can feel it in my heart when I get dressed in the morning. I can feel it when I'm peeling back the skin on my banana and I can feel it when I'm sitting with my friends over a pint. I can feel it in my gut because I didn’t cry out of sadness when I watched One Direction’s new music video for History and, if I'm not crying at that, you’ve got to know something’s up. This year just feels different.

Maybe I am the definition of the winter-gym-goer but, even if I am, I feel like I’d be okay with that, partly because I have loads of work which counts towards my end of year grade due in soon and if I can hold onto that motivation I’ll be sure to continue doing well at university, but also partly because it’s okay to just have that period of reflection on the last manic 12 months of your life. There is not one single person who hasn’t had something mad happen to them in the last year. No matter how mundane your life is, or how ordinary that year will be in 10, 20, 30 years time, there is always something to overcome or something to achieve in those 365 days.

One of the greatest things I learnt at the end of last year was that its okay to be a little bit psycho. Send the fucking text. Record the fucking Snapchat. Buy the fucking cheeseburger. And live your fucking life. I'm not turning my blog into a book club, but I read this quote by Racheal C. Lewis and she says

“But there is nothing more beautiful than being desperate. And there is nothing more risky than pretending not to care. We are young and we are human and we are beautiful and we are not as in control as we think we are. We never know who needs us back. We never know the magic that can arise between ourselves and other humans. We never know when the bus is coming.”

and it made me think. I was in a lift in November last year and my friend went to me “I’m sick to death of this ‘seeming too keen’ thing can you just call him please?!” I think from there I realized I need to be more straight forward. This probably ruined the aforementioned semi-relationship but my reasoning was, if you don’t like who I am when I'm being brutally honest, you're never going to like me. So I sent the fucking text and it blew up in my face. But that’s okay because then I had a whole week to eat junk food and sit in bed before class started again so I could focus on school work. And, as Michelle Obama highlighted, there is no one who is worth more than your education and I’m a great believer in that policy too.

It’s been said a million and one times and I'm not the first person you’ll read this from (definitely not some gawky teenage blog) but there's a difference between our generation and the generations before us, and the major difference is technology. And I hate those people who think that they need to have their phone in their bag 24/7 because they're ‘too cool to be on their phone’ and they ‘want to experience life’. Well you know what, I'm seeing amazing photos of my city on Instagram, reading the news and keeping tabs on One-Direction-World on Twitter, I'm still in touch with my childhood friends who I’d definitely not still be in touch with on Facebook, I'm making moodboards on Tumblr, and I’m seeing Scandinavia on Snapchat – so, I don’t know about you, but I reckon that’s living your life quite fully.

This year I’ve not got time for the bullshit. I’m cutting out the crap in my diet, and cutting out the people who don’t matter. It’s all very well me saying that, but I know I’ll still be in bed at 3am in March wondering if that boy still looks at my profile on Facebook, and I’ll still be leaving jam n cream biscuit crumb trails in my bed. I’ll still have my phone in my hand and I’ll still be saying I'm “having a break from being vegetarian” as I stuff Haribo in my mouth. But I know that and I embrace that, and I know that when I leave my thoughts in my bed, I’ll be living a good life. In the future I’ll be walking down streets I don’t know exist, for reasons I don’t know yet, listening to music I've not heard before - and the sense of renewal that comes with a new year is refreshing.

So yeah, I did follow a load of fitness accounts on Instagram (I can only afford free workout videos) and I did buy a vegetable stir fry that went off, and I did borrow a book that wasn’t about history from the library, and I did make plans to go to museums and art galleries that fell through – but not everything has to change. 2016 is looking promising so far, and maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to laugh at Kylie Jenner when she said she’s realizing a lot of stuff this year because I think I might be too.