Is it a Happy New Year?

Saying goodbye to an old year and welcoming in the new seems like a brave and unusual ritual.

Most of us make resolutions to change ourselves dramatically once that clock strikes. This is the year to get fit, learn a language, drink less, find love.

The hope and expectation feels so brave and so optimistic. We know ourselves and our weaknesses so well, but that flip of the calendar helps us believe we can overcome all of our usual ways, to be the people we really want to be.

I feel like an optimistic soul, and yet I can't bring myself to celebrate the unknown, and worship a year we know nothing about yet. I want to celebrate the old year, and cherish the things that went well, the moments of beauty and delight, and learn from the pain, the anguish and the darkness. The old year has so much more to teach us than the blind faith that this year will be different.

And yet, there's a part of me that's jealous of those seeing in the New Year with a smile. That firm unshakeable belief that this year really could be the year it all goes right. It feels like Del asserting to Rodney that this time next year they'll be millionaires. I think the reality for me is that even huge life changes are incremental. They need to be, otherwise we couldn't cope with being thrown around continuously by life. Anything truly huge is likely to happen gradually.

Last year was a really interesting one for me. It was the year I finally found a home, after 35 years of searching. I fell more in love than ever - with my partner, my kids, my friends and with life. It was also the year I had a nervous breakdown, and narrowly escaped being hospitalised with psychosis, an illness had crept up so quietly that it took us all by surprise.

I don't think any year of my life has ever been black or white, and 2014 certainly wasn't. With a real mix of sadness and joy in my heart I've come to realise I can't stay in my current job and stay healthy, and we're currently figuring out what that means for the future. I've spent years in my job planning towards 2015. Just the words Twenty Fifteen invoke a Pavlovian response of fear at how busy this scheduled year would be. All of my life would be dominated by my work commitments this year, so much so that I nearly said no to being Maid of Honour to my best friend. Writing that now feels astonishing and shocking, that I was ready for my job to come before anything.

And now. Well, 2015 feels like a big unknown abyss. It will need to be first and foremost a year of healing for me, and what that looks like still needs to be determined. But I think it's clear that my priorities were stacked the wrong way around, and work should be far further down the list than it was.

It's a place of fear and excitement. A blank canvas that evokes stomach churning reactions in every direction.

365 days of possibility are ahead of all of us, and we're authors of our own story. Whatever this year looks like is partly down to us, and partly fate and luck.

Experience tells us it'll be both a good and bad year. We'll fail at some things and succeed at others. We'll win and lose, and hopefully we can keep perspective of the good to help us deal with the bad.

As a wise man once said: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I feel sure that it will be.

Happy New Year.