I am writing this in 2015, which still scarily sounds like The Future. I will be 31 this year, and have lived my life almost exactly half and half in the 20th and 21st centuries. Just gimme another year. And so my thoughts turn to resolutions and my lack every year thereof. When I was in the Priory, one of my resolutions was to ‘try something new each day’. This was then revised to ‘each week’, then ‘whenever’, then was abandoned and discarded. That was January 2009. SIX YEARS AGO. So, I return to the notion of resolutions.

Why we make them is beyond me. I know it’s an ideal and convenient starting point for turning over a new leaf, but so is May 1st, which is a much less depressing time of year to be abstaining from all sorts of joys. It’s also the time of year when one might conceivably want to display one’s wobbly bits. If you lost your weight in January, then you’ll be so fed up with being good by May, that it’s a severe case of Return of the Flab. Losing weight would make sense in, say, April. Or March, if you’ve got a load to lose. Anyway.

Slightly hypocritically then, I have made some January-specific resolutions. 1. The first one does involve weight. I’ve put on five stone since going on my medication, and I would be deeeelighted if I were to shed, oh I don’t know, about 3.5 of them. I don’t want to go back to people being worried about me or my eating habits, but I do miss being able to wear anything I wanted. So that’s numerò uno: cut down on my porklife mate, get some exercise.

2. Keep in touch. We all love Facebook, don’t we? Yeahhhh, it’s great. Does mean, sometimes, that you can get a bit lazy with the old actual talking to people. I received Christmas cards this year off people I haven’t seen for a 7 years, and it’s spurred me into semi-action. I will write letters and send cards!*

* Incidentally, feel free to send me a postcard with how long this one will last. We’ll have a sweep.

3. Become friends with myself. I have Big Plans for this year (more later) which I can do, cos I iz gr8.

4. Make friends with my sewing machine. I got a dusky pink one for Christmas and ooh, it’s lovely. Sadly, my 8 year old niece also got a sewing machine and it turns out that she’s much better than I am already. She’s managed to sew a skirt for her cuddly panda. I have managed to bend a needle and make vital parts of the machine fall out. Still…

5. THIS IS THE BIG ONE. Every other Thursday, I toddle along to central London, to the imaginatively named Central London OCD Support Group. We introduce ourselves and there are some people who introduce themselves by saying things like “Hi, I’m _________ and I used to suffer from OCD”. Well, that’s it for me. No more letting the thoughts rule my life. I, by the end of December, will introduce myself as an ex-sufferer of OCD. I will get better. I will take charge of my life. I will, I will, I will.

Let’s see…