Make 2014 the year you take some risks.

Happy New Year Beautiful People!

Last night, somewhere after the champagne and somewhere before the rosé, I took a moment to reflect on the past year. I came to the conclusion that although it had been a year of ups and downs, overall it had been a pretty damn fine one! I survived my first year of uni (I even managed to get good grades!), I made some amazing new friends, travelled the country visiting the old ones and came to terms with drifting away from others. I spent a gloriously sunny May bank holiday dancing my heart out at Knockengorroch, relaxed in Northumbria with my wonderful (if slightly bizarre) extended family, moved my best friend into her new flat, moved my family into their new house, and moved myself into my new uni house. I celebrated engagements and pregnancies and mourned the loss of friends and family. And just before Christmas, I spent an incredibly inspiring week working on Bent Architect’s new project, England Arise. Despite the difficult parts, some so heartbreakingly painful it was as through all the air had been knocked from my lungs, in the grand scheme of things, 2013 was a pretty amazing year. And next year can only get better! Can’t it?

However, this morning (feeling slightly fragile I have to admit) I woke up looking towards the coming year with all together less comforting feelings. I started thinking about my upcoming university deadlines; work that actually counts toward my degree this year. Oh Lordy! That I am yet to sort out my summer work placement, that again counts towards my degree and could affect my chances of getting a decent job after I graduate. Oh My God! That I don’t even know what sort of placement I want, I mean who knows what they want to do with the rest of their lives at 19, I only left school ten minutes ago! It’s crazy!

I’m scared of finding a placement that I sort of enjoy and then finding myself still working there in thirty years’ time and hating myself for it. The problem is, I don’t really want a job at all. All I really want to do is sing old folk songs about unrequited love and murderous fathers, in dingy bars, somewhere in the back of beyond, drink whiskey and dance on tables! But of course that’s never going to happen because I can’t even sing Eva Cassidy covers for my nana, without my heart beating so fast it feels like it’s going burst out of my chest! I don’t even like whiskey; it tastes vile, it makes me feel like someone has lit a fire in my throat and usually ends up with me spending the next day with my head in toilet. I can’t even dance on tables properly because I’m too busy worrying that people are looking at me thinking ‘what an idiot’, that I end up falling off the table and looking like an idiot! Oh my God, my life is going to be a disaster! I may as well give up now and accept that I’m going end up living with my parents and working as a waitress for all eternity, while everyone else goes off and lives their lives! Oh feckin’ hell!

This train of thought will inevitably lead to a quarter life crisis, that quickly becomes a full blown, hiding under the duvet style, existential crisis.

As ever though, once I’ve had my fill of building pillow forts in an attempt to regress to a childlike state and avoid any of the responsibilities of adult life, given myself a stern talking to, drank several pints of tea, re-watched all four seasons of Torchwood (and cried my heart over nearly every episode) I emerge, willing, if not yet quite ready, to face the world. Yes all my fears about the future are rational and justified. Yes, there is every possibly I’m going to screw up. And yes, I’m going to regret some of the decisions I will make. But, equally there is every chance that won’t happen. There is every possibility for example that I find myself on a work placement I love. Maybe a placement that will lead to a job I love. Maybe one day I will be brave enough to stand up in a bar full of veteran folkies and sing Pilgrim of the Pennine Way with all the passion and emotion I can muster! The point is all these things are possible. I have the power to make all of these things happen. But not if I spend all day hiding under my duvet, scrolling through Tumblr for hours on end, avoiding any responsibility, terrified of making any mistakes and wishing I was back a primary school.

It’s easy to get bogged down in the negatives, the difficulties, the struggles. But you need to focus on the beautiful bits. Yes it’s a freezing cold morning and no you don’t want to sit through another boring Romanticism lecture, but isn’t that sunrise gorgeous? Look at the way the light’s shining on those rooftops, it’s beautiful. Yes you’ve got three deadlines this week and are nearly in your overdraft, but last night you all sat up until gone three, drinking wine and talking philosophical bollocks and it was brilliant!

I've already been on one placement that changed my whole perspective on what I want to achieve. Who is to say that can’t happen again? The point is I have to make that happen. No-one is going to come along, sprinkle a bit of faerie dust around and make all my dreams come true. As lovely as that would be, it’s not going to happen. I have to do something. I have to make sure that I’m sitting here next year writing about what an amazing year 2014 was for me.  I need to get off my arse and write those essays, books those festival tickets, pick up the phone and ring those companies about work experience, learn to drink whiskey, finish my sodding C.V., and dance on those tables without giving a damn  what anyone else thinks! Some of these things are scary, and some of them won’t work out, or be as good as I want them to be, but I have to make myself do them anyway, or I’m not allowing them the chance to be amazing. And yes, there will be tears only the way. Tears of happiness, tears of laughter, tears of pain and tears of sorrow for things you think you can never recover from. But as Doctor Who so eloquently said:

 ‘The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant’.

Make 2014 the year you take some risks. Do the things that scare, because you never know when they may lead to something brilliant. And on that note I’m going to ring my nana and sing Songbird down the phone at her because I bloody well can! And so can you! (Although maybe ring your own nana’s, don’t all ring mine, she might get a bit confused).

Love

S

xxx