New Year.

I hate New Year. I say this every year. I think it's mostly because I'm shattered by the holiday season by the time we get to it, and this year was definitely no exception. The yukky antibiotics (second installment - better be it) didn't help, it's true. In some ways, I really ought to feel quite pleased to be seeing the back of 2007 - there've been some pretty horrible bits to it. There were some awesome ones, too, like RTTFP and getting a choral award among others. I never feel quite content admitting things are over, though. It's supposed to be pretty childish to cling on to things when they're finished, but I always do. I guess this year it's partly the fact that I have the new job to start after Christmas, doing something I know very little about, and, for a change, which I care about doing right. I don't usually care about the shitty little jobs I get in order to pay the rent or feed myself or whatever, but this time I do. I think. What if they don't actually LIKE me? What if I can't do what I'm asked? What if I just sound really stupid? Meh. This sounds really pathetic written down, but it's probably still true.

I'm trying to look at the New Year as a way of erasing the bits of last year that made it so bad. I'm not talking about Andy and me, the relationship, though I do mean the way that things ended. Contrary to what I'm fairly sure he believes, I do feel sincere regret for the way things turned out between us. The regret I had is that I badgered things into starting when I should have thought more honestly, right at the start, about how far I could see things going between us. I don't mean that I thought even then that we wouldn't have a future, but I do think I should have taken it more seriously. I was (am?) in a place where relationships are more fun than serious, but I think I put over the opposite message. I don't know. I have a suspicion they need to be both, but that's pretty hard. I don't really mean that I regret we ever started, because I think if nothing else we both learnt a lot in that relationship and that we supported one another through some bad things. I do mean that it would have been better that nothing had happened than for stuff to happen and then leave us both where we are. I think, anyway. But if it hadn't happened, then neither of us would have learnt what I think we have, and I, at least, wouldn't have found a relationship that I'm happy with. I wish, really really wish, that Andy could let things go. Just allow that they've happened, and that such things are complicated, painful, and necessary, sometimes. Then he'd stop tormenting himself, and by proxy, me. Some of the things he's saying now prove how badly he actually knew me. Stuff about deliberate cruelty, for a start, which I completely resent. I would almost mind less if he thought it was unwitting, but he doesn't appear to. Is it selfish to believe that I have never, or very very rarely, been guilty of deliberate cruelty? Unthinking, possibly, but I'd be mortified if I ever found anything like that out about myself. I don't think I lack self-knowledge, but that maybe wrong. Anyway. I really didn't start this to talk about Andy. I've been avoiding the subject because I still don't really know how to talk about it, not, as he seems to think, because it matters that little to me.

I was going to talk about New Year's resolutions. There's the standard 'lose weight and get fit' one, to be achieved by cycling to work every day. Shouldn't be an issue, I hope. Having spent a considerable portion of my life playing sport, the fitness thing is not something I really find difficult to engineer, but losing weight is always harder. Other things include 'join a good choir' and 'make some effort'. Generic and dull. Sorry.