This fucking year

Happy New Year everyone reading this. From Anny’s party last year to a night in with the Jellicle Cat watching mad Japanese TV, not the year I wanted it to be in a lot of ways but it happened nonetheless.

“I’ve had great sex, wonderful friends and now it seems like anything’s possible for 2004. I can’t wait to fly on into it and see what happens.” Mish December 2003

How can that have been how I faced this year? Who was this fucking silly little optimist exactly? Frankly the majority of this year I feel can be flushed down the toilet. So I have been stressed to the max this year, I have discovered lots of things about me that I really don’t like. And I have been the most miserable this year that I have been since leaving Royston Vasey.

This was the year that an earthquake shook the world on it’s axis, that has shortened the length of days. A huge thing but something small.

This was the year that Daemonbooks closed. A huge thing but something small.

I am saddened by myself this year. I am angered by myself this year. I am proud of myself this year. I am ashamed of myself this year.

There are huge things and also small things and there are happy things and sad things, somehow looking back the sad things seem to outweigh the happy.

But I got to Japan, I made it finally. I am going to make next year the best I can make it, I’m going to be Mish again, the way Mish should be. I am never going to walk into a bar again and ask ‘so who’s buying me a drink?’. And Mish is going to do more than writing fucking letters to try and put the world to rights.

New Years Resolutions:

1. Remaking the world: I am going to make one personal effort to improve the world (more than donating to charity through direct debits, recycling etc. etc.)
2. Stress: I am going to avoid situations that I know will make me unhappy or otherwise lead to me becoming mean-Mish. I am not going to be as crap as I have been this year again.
3. Publication: I am going to send off at least two good standard pieces of prose every three monthes.

I will begin next year by exhibiting some work as part of the Art Resistance group in Yamanashi. And next year I will build on that, I am going to make a difference next year not only to myself, my relationships with my friends but I am going to change some small part of this world and make it better. Fuck 2004 I am going to make 2005 brilliant.

I have finally left Lancaster. I never actually wanted to go there in the first place. When I went to look around the place to check it out for uni (Gods that seems years ago) I really, really hated the place with it’s dreary architecture and it’s rain. My friend Katie, who went to Keele in the end thought it was great, my parents thought it was great (in fact my Dad had been reccommending the place since before I’d applied on the grounds that he’d been to a conference there and thought it was cool…which maybe part of the reason I hated it). And when it came down to it my predicted grades (after taking a year off to put on The Crucible) were shit. And so it ended up really being a choice between Aberystwyth and Lancaster, as the least stressful options.
I knew, in the end, at Royston Vasey that I don’t react well to unhappiness, that I don’t react well to stress, that I needed to go somewhere and do something that I enjoy. Why has it taken another year of hell to remind me of this?

I loved Lancaster, I feel under no obligations (except one) to go back because Lancaster in my head is always going to be better than reality. In my head I can flush this year down the drain, in reality it exists and all I can do is swear never to be like this again.

I lost at least one friend this year, possibly more. And as ever I lose the friends with whoum I start out thinking that the friendship ought to be pretty nigh on perfect. I hated this way this year turned out, the way that I made it turn out. I hated who I became this year. I do not think I am going to ever be a full time teacher in the UK, I do not think I would like the monster gazing out from behind my eyes.

There have been things that saved this year. My Jellicle Cat obviously; where is this relationship going? Who knows…but it is what it is, and it is so I am happy with the presentness of it. As I have said before this year taught me that a moment is as precious as a lifetime. There’s another moment that saved this year, a friend turning around on the hill up to Bowerham and telling me that of course we were friends (and the tone said not to be so silly as to ask Mish).

This year I screwed up a lot. But I didn’t quite screw up everything, there’s Sweetie, My Favourite Uncle, the Nymph and The Naiad, Radio Steve, Cuddles, The Torch amongst others to prove that…right now I’m thinking about the rows. About that guilty feeling of persecution that I haven’t nurtured since Royston Vasey. About the rows with the doctor and about the tears. There were too many tears this year, too many raised voices, and frankly too much of this year felt like home in all the bad ways. I made it that way without even noticing.

If a moment is worth anything at all I can never ever do that again. My sanity rests on my honour towards a series of promises; one to my sister, one to FFG and one that was unspoken, unformed and rests on the glance of a pair of blue eyes. And that last, that I shall never be that Mish again.

My Christmas present to myself was a region free DVD player, and my birthday present was the Live Aid DVD box set. The first vinyl that I ever owned was the original ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ single. It was a present from…I think my Dad. Apparently I did indeed watch a part of the original concert, being bunged in front of the TV by my Mum. I have no recollection of this, not entirely surprising really, but I do remember the hot summer day when they rebroadcast a ‘best of Live Aid’ ten years on (or was it twenty years on?) special. To be honest I mainly watched for Freddy…how do I love thee oh crowd pleasing, amazing Freddy.

And of course I am angry at myself. What exactly have I done since I last sat down to watch Live Aid for the suffering people on the planet? I write letters, I sit in my comfortable chair at my comfortable PC and moan at politicians. And if I want to defend my position, what then do I say? Oh I worked with street children in Mexico, oh I volunteered at an orphanage in Quito…how many years ago was that now Mish? Well fuck that. Fuck being too busy to help. And I haven’t written a letter since I got to Japan, so thats five monthes of sheer crapness.

I have all these ideas to remake the world, to end the sheer shite that beaurocracy has us end up with and have I actually done any of them. Well ok I don’t know where to get that much LSD but the other ideas are possible.

I am going to make next year the best I can. Burned bridges may be unsalvageable but I am going to do my damnedest.