It was, in all fairness, a very long Christmas day with very little actual sleep, but as that day staggered, bloated and full, to its natural conclusion I couldn’t help but start the annual stock-take. Apparently the average calorie consumption on Christmas day is 7000. I had carefully and deliberately lost track of my own eating shortly after a nourishing breakfast of Cadbury’s Caramels, and had themed the day largely around eating anything that stayed still long enough. When the last of the meals had been duly consumed I felt confident that 7000 was within my grasp, and that was, possibly, what lead to the bleary introspection later on.
Once tucked up in bed next to a feverish boyfriend and underneath a stomach now several sizes larger than the previous day my mind gathered together the achievements of the last 12 months and invited me to consider what I had done. I had done nothing. Quit the well paid job I liked, taken on the 60 hour-a-week torment of restaurant management. Quit of out protest at the hours only to join a failing restaurant that hadn’t even opened. Made redundant a month later when that project folded and drifted into another customer services job. Square one, thy name is now. All in all, the summary was pants. I had achieved nothing of note, had annoyed a local restaurant group by quitting and had scalded myself on the iron of actual work. Nothing had worked out in 2010. It had been a year of not quite achievement. A year for trying and failing. A year that I was glad to see the end of. For this reason, I decided, with a level of optimism that surprised both myself and the flu-ridden boyfriend, 2011 would be different. So different, in fact, that I would declare publicly that this would be the case.
So avast ye, people of both present and future who have gotten thus far through my meanderings; I declare Two thousand and eleven the year of the Jabberwocky!
Looking back, I think you’ve both achieved a lot. To 2012 being even better 🙂