My Positivity Diary

I have made no secret of the fact that 2015 has not been my best year. Far from it. I know that there are people out there who have had much worse years than me, for much more legitimate reasons, but from my point of view it has not been a good year and I won’t be sorry to see it end.

Most of the reasons are personal issues that come with a hat-trick of breakups. Yes, the first one was technically in 2014 but there was about 10 hours in it and, as the relationship lasted four and a half years before we called it a day, it’s been hanging over my head all year. The second didn’t end badly at the time, but for reasons that are still unclear to me, the person concerned no longer speaks to me. The third one, I feel, was a disaster, and the burden of all three have contributed to the worst mental state I’ve been in for seven years. The fact that, as I write this, I’ve got a cough that is now making my chest hurt as well as my head, is doing nothing to improve my mood.

Other things have happened, but as an overall experience, it has not been a good year. This situation has created issues for me that are not going away; wracked as I am with guilt and shame, I may never have an entirely good ‘year’ again.[1] But I can’t sit around all day feeling sorry for myself about it, so I will pick myself up and get on with my life, as I always do.

Then again, one might reasonably wonder why one needs to have a good ‘year’ at all. It’s not as though we’ve reached some arbitrarily-designated date where we wipe the slate clean, pretend none of it ever happened and erroneously presume that we’ll never get upset again for as long as we live. Things that affect the course of our lives happen on a daily basis, some good and some bad. Why should we have to judge where we are in our lives by the standards of an entire year?

Nonetheless, this is that time of year where people make so-called ‘New Year’s Resolutions,’ a list of things that they’ll do differently to how they did it in the current year to make the next one better. I’ve done it myself, have even succeeded on a few of them (2011: I did a gig every week,[2] 2014: I didn’t buy any video games.[3]) And while I don’t necessarily expect a good year out of 2016, I might have some good days, and some good things might happen to me.

So my New Year’s Resolution for 2016 is this: At the end of every day write down one positive thing that has happened during that day, in this diary:

This could be something passive and mundane, such as: “I woke up this morning.” (Not always a guarantee. After some very uncomfortable nights of not being able to sleep, I sometimes sleep well into the afternoon.) Or it could be something that I’ve done, like “That gig at the Stile went really well.” Had I made it this year’s resolution, I might at some point in July have written: “I passed my Grade 2 music theatre exam with distinction.” It could be something that happened in my guitar lessons, it could be something that I saw happen to someone else, or I could have simply been in a good mood that day.

I won’t be able to share it all with you as some of it will be subject to Data Protection laws, and some things might be interesting to me and boring to anybody else. But I might make a ‘Highlight Reel’ of it at the end of every month, unless it gets filed in the ever-growing folder of “can’t be arsed.” I’ll pick the best entries from each month, explain why it was important and how it might contribute to a more positive situation for me.

I’m hoping that by doing this, however good or bad 2016 turns out to be, I can legitimately say that good things have happened. I won’t need the whole year to work out well, because I can look at any individual day and say that it was a good day because [insert here] happened. Hopefully taking time to appreciate the good things that happened will make the coming year a far more positive experience for me than the last one.

So, Happy New Year to you all. My one piece of very general advice to you all: Make it a better year than the last one.

P.S.

If you’re wondering how I’m getting on with the depression mentioned in my previous blog, there has been progress with the relevant situation. However, for the first time in 13 Christmas Holidays I am neither working in any meaningful way, nor am I in a relationship. While I don’t deny I need a break from both after a gruelling Autumn term at work and the way my last two relationships made me feel, I have little to take my mind off the issues that have been plaguing it for the last two months. (Except my Wii U. That’s going to be a big help in the coming weeks and months.) I’m hoping this will improve when term begins again. Until then, I’ll spend my days playing video games, eating chocolate and building Warhammer models.

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[1] I will mention at this juncture that, while this is very much the way I’m feeling at the moment, I haven’t ruled out the possibility that it may change. It’s difficult to see how, but it might.

[2] Except when I didn’t. I gave myself two weeks off to go on holiday.

[3] Except when I did. I bought a game on impulse and realised after the fact. As it was a game I previously owned and was replacing, I was given a free pass on it.