Troubled times/Happy new year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Sorry, have you got a headache? Surprisingly, and smugly, I haven't. I discovered the wonderful, cakey cocktail that is the White Russian this festive period and it either doesn't give me hang overs, or the Matrix reset itself as soon as the clock struck 12 last night (this morning? I'm never sure which 12:00 is a.m or p.m...Considering I'm turning 30 this month, I should probably learn to tell the time soon). Regardless, it's 2018! My knuckles are still white from 2017, so hopefully this year'll be a slower one. 

I know that 2017 (and 2016, come to think of it) globally felt like 12 months in the Upside Down, but on a personal level I was lucky in that my problems were all of the "woe is me, my life is too nice!" variety, so please allow me to indulge myself in recapping all the terrible 'troubles' I experienced last year. Hankies at the ready! 

1. Moving house is haaaaard

That famous property ladder that everyone and their dog seems to be on? Me and my dog are now on it! We've moved down the M4 to a quiet (if you ignore the motorway that is 2 metres from my back garden...if you close your eyes and pretend you can't hear the honking and/or sirens, you can convince yourself that the traffic is lovely waves lapping at the beach...kind of) area where people do all manner of weird things like making eye contact with you and saying stuff like "Hello!" and "Good morning!" Very odd, but curiously pleasant. I can't beat them, so I suppose I'll have to join them.

2. Changing jobs is haaaaard

I secured myself a new jobbo - a role that mostly involves organising stuff (diaries! Stationary! Post-its! BIROS! *rubs knees*) and writing bits of content for internal staff. It comes with an hour-long commute each way, where I'm forced to laugh at podcasts for 60 whole minutes before I can be reunited with my beloved diary and Word documents. The toil! The torment!

3. My weird foot

...the name of my debut album/autobiography. Dibs!

After a whole year of appointments, acupuncture, physio and having my feet rubbed by professionals (not strangers at the bus stop - I assume that's not how most people make friends), the wonky foot I dragged through a marathon in 2015 is now.... still a bit fucked! Think it's safe to say that my brief career in shuffling is on indefinite hiatus, but this is fine - mostly because it has to be, but it no longer has me weeping and flailing like a damsel in a black and white movie every time I feel the slightest twinge in it. For now, the weird, achy appendage at the end of my right leg is part of me, and together we will continue to enjoy the fact that I'm still able to walk round the block to empty the dog twice a day, go to functional fitness classes to be forced to do burpees with other sweaty people, and to go to the (pretty decent for a fiver a month) gym at my new workplace.

If it weren't for all my foot faff, I would never have got over my fear/disdain for gym machines. I used to be a bit snobby about them, but have since come to realise that they are there to help you move weight safely, and that they can be pretty fun. Niggly sports injuries - the great humbler of exercise snobs the world over!*

4. No bugger I know has the same surname any more!

This year, I have attended 4 weddings (no funerals, thankfully), 2 hen parties (wheeey! Hen! Hen! Hen! Hen!) and one baby shower. In my friendship group, there has been a sudden, seismic shift into proper-grown-updom. I've been all over Britain in fancy frocks, watching my friends wear even fancier frocks while they promise to fancy their partners in fancy suits for the rest of their lives. 

It's been so nice to have gone to so many parties and celebrate with them. The only issue that arises from this is that while my liver is reeling from the constant onslaught of these events (I'm pretty sure there's a space where my liver used to be that's now occupied by prosecco bubbles and tequila *gag*), it sometimes takes me a minute to figure out who that person is with the surname I'm not used to seeing on my Facebook feed - "oh, it's that friend I've known since she used to bring traffic cones home from their nights out!"

To sum up, I got 99 problems, but a real one ain't one. 

May 2018 bring you lots of similar trials and tribulations. We can all form a support group and discuss how terribly terrible our lives are, and if it helps, we can have wine and cheese too.

Also, if it turns out to be yet another year in the upside down, don't worry - I've got us covered:

Just call me Will Byers

* Being as I'm not likely to be crossing any race start lines, let alone finish lines any time soon, I'm a bit torn over the name/URL of this blog...please visit the Rebecca Writes and Runs Facebook page to help me out with the poll I'm going to put up. I would be much appreciate. Thanking you muchly. 

2013: You Can Do Eet!!

Happy slightly-belated-because-I-was-hung-over-yesterday New Year!!!

If your New Year's Eve celebration was anything like mine, you spent it in a friend's house, talking way too loudly and enthusiastically in your loved ones' faces and waiting for the moment you were allowed to set the poppers off. The things that go "bang!", not the...y'know...poppers... It wasn't that kind of a party.

...Mine had a round of The Big Bang Theory board game in it, so it was better than yours. Obvs. Or sadder. Depends on which way you look at it. Whatever, my team won! Give me a big, posh "hooray!"

I have great, big, sexy feelings about 2013. Yesterday, I had nauseous, hungry and sleepy feelings, but a dangerous nap in the bath in the middle of the day (because I like to live dangerously) followed by an early bedtime has left me feeling pretty optimistic today!

One of my favourite things about the new year is making resolutions I almost never...no, wait, never keep. And up until now, (and I think that this is what most people do too) they have mostly been based around making myself a bit less shit. Here are some familiar ones that might overlap some, if not all fellow resolut...ers' (?!) January to-do lists:

* stop biting nails
* be less wobbly/rotund/jiggly/skinny-impaired than previous years
* get off arse and exercise til lady-beefcake style buff
* be less socially inept
* kill less often

Sound familiar? ... The last one was a joke, by the way.

*hastily nudges hatchet behind sofa with foot*

In recent months, I've had the odd epiphany that has brought me to my temporary sanity, and looking at these old, pretty pointless and ultimately stress inducing goals, I've realised that if I were to choose a resolution from such a list this year, I'll do what I always do. And this means sitting on the sofa, wailing and fretting about not achieving my new "goals" for a while, and then biting my nails, stuffing myself with chocolate and sleeping because it's February and I'm not Wonder Woman yet.

This year I'm doing something different. I have allowed myself two achievements that I want bragging rights to by 2014, and neither of them involve changing myself too drastically. And I know that failing to achieve them won't leave me sobbing in my jammies about what a lardy, lazy she-klutz I am. And this lack of pressure makes them feel much more achievable. By the end of the year, I want to:

*run at least a 10k race
* get paid for at least one piece of writing. Any writing.

Easy peasy! And to make me feel even better about this decision, the fates have handed me a bit of luck already! My manager overheard me talking about wanting to write anything at all for money, and instead of firing me on the spot, he's arranged for me to meet a freelancer friend for advice and lunch on Friday. I love advice! I love lunch!!

Mmm. Lunch.

But, seriously, handful of mostly anonymous readers... My soppy bit of advice (you listening, self?!), stop trying to change yourself and just get on with just doing stuff. Less worrying, more scurrying!

2013.... The Year of Doing!

*nods self importantly, gets up with purpose, heads to fridge*