New Year's Peeve,

 I used to love New Year's Eve, but I have to admit that there are a few things about it that just get on my nerves. It's not the fireworks, because I do actually kind of love that we celebrate the idea of the world making it around the sun again by filling the sky with pretty lights; I just wish they didn't scare the shih out of my dog when they happened, because she turns into a total basket case and I don't like to see her scared. Or more scared than she is of the world on a daily basis, the poor kid. It's not even the drinking. I love that it's such a celebration and people get a bit drunk and a bit daft and in the morning, there's all these different places where people do a dip in the FREEZING COLD sea (or lakes where there is no beach close) and it tends to be for charities. I love having a Prosecco (or six) and feeling in the spirit of it. 

But mother of God, I hate the new year, new me bollox, because things do not change that quickly. The previously mentioned fireworks and drinking mean I will be staying at my mum's so the dogs can feel a bit of solidarity in their terror, so I won't be waking up in the same house I live in all year, but some time during New Year's Day I'll come back and all of the same laundry that's sitting waiting to be done will be sat here, and everything will be just as I left it. For a few years, I spent New Year's Eve doing SO MUCH cleaning because it felt imperative to start the New Year with a clean slate, or if not, at least a pristinely clean flat. It didn't matter that everything would be everywhere again in a few days time because cleaning means tidying and tidying means moving things and moving things means I can't find anything, because it was all about New Year. 

One year, I can't remember if it was before I went to university or after at this stage, but it was probably a couple of years after, I chose to do Veganuary and I regretted my life choices by the middle of the month because there was so much that I just couldn't eat and I threw a few wobblers about why I was doing it. I stuck to oat milk in coffee and tea for a long while afterwards (I'm not sure I made it a full year, but it was a while) until I struggled to get my hands on the one I liked, went back to 'normal' milk for a bit and then tried to just switch back straight onto oat milk and couldn't cope with the taste of it. Honestly, one of the big reasons people "fail" Veganuary is it's too much, too soon and it's too strict. I'm not specifically saying I'm going to try and use less animal products next year, because I'm not really a big resolutions person, but I've been vegetarian for over nearly 18 years and whilst I have oscillated between being pescatarian (still eating fish) and vegetarian (no meat, no sea meat, nothing) with occasional steps into veganism which I have never intended to be permanent, I have always tried to be more aware of the impact of what I eat, drink and consume in general, and *surprisingly* that's going to continue in the New Year. I'm interested to see the new plant based products that all the supermarkets are going to come out with and I'm really interested to see which ones make it past February before being discontinued.

In a similar way to Veganuary, I understand why people do RED January (Run Every Day) but it feels like the same sort of thing to me: too much, too fast. I know from experience that if you want to improve with running you need to commit to it and commit hard, but at the same time, you need to give your body time to rest, especially if you're not stepping up from your previous running and you're actually just starting afresh. I briefly considered thinking about RED January, but I've done it before, and it did not go well. My knees didn't thank me for it and I don't need to do anything to make them worse. Also, when I think about it, I'm not a hundred percent sure I WANT to get back into running. It was never something I did for the love of it, but I did love the community of park run and I loved pushing myself at the end of park run to sprint the last bit. I loved the sprinting, I was just crap at it. I didn't love the number of times I needed to find a tree to 'slightly' spew up under, because I pushed myself a bit too hard. One thing I do want to do - though I wasn't waiting for the New Year to do it - is go back to spending more time outside. With events of this year being what they have been, I've spent all together too much time inside which hasn't been good for my head and hasn't been good for my health either. I'm still not going to go running every day though, because that is a recipe for disaster (for me, at least).

Sadly, that brings me to my next peeve: the gym. Honestly, I haven't been to a gym for a long while and part of that is not having felt comfortable in one for a number of reasons, and partly it's because I really liked my old guy and pool situation and the pools around here are cold. I did briefly flirt with the idea of getting into wild swimming this year, and yes, I realise that's even colder, and that's the reason I didn't do it. Cold makes me hurt. Cold causes pain for me. I don't know why, I don't really care why, I just deal with it, but it does mean I struggle a bit with swimming. I quite like it even though I panic in the water sometimes, and even though I'm slow. But as soon as New Year rolls around, everyone starts going to the gym and swimming and things, and it annoyed me the few years I was training for half marathons and such, because suddenly there were more people around and it was harder to get to the equipment I needed, and things got broken more often. It's highly unlikely that I'm going to be going back to the gym in the next few weeks, but I am probably going to see all the New Year, New Me crowd on Facebook and Instagram and by the middle of the month, or if not, by March, suddenly the gym selfies stop and life "returns to normal".

I guess my big gripe with everything about New Year is tied up in this idea of what I have always loved about the holiday. It's this idea of starting the year as you mean to go on. I have always wanted to spend it with the person I'm in a relationship with, seeing, whatever terms people are using these days that I struggle to understand, because I want to start the year as I mean to go on; being with them. I guess if I were to take that to it's extreme I should be at least tipsy all year (another thing I don't really understand is giving up all alcohol through January and then binge drinking all the way into August, but I did try Dry January once and made it to pretty close to my birthday before realising that I actually like having a drink and that form of self limiting just didn't feel good anymore). Given I have no intention of spending the whole year vegan or running every day, I would rather start the New Year being realistic, both about who I am and what I can do to change the things I don't like this year. 

This year is different because I have my ADHD diagnosis and one of the biggest things with that is realising that there are reasons why things like Dry Jan/RED Jan/Veganuary don't work for me (or work for a little while and then I get bored). This year, 2023, I have spent some good time trying to come to understand myself better, and that's something I'm planning on carrying on. I mean, even if I didn't plan on it, it's something that happens to us all anyway, but I want to intentionally try and understand myself better, so I can try and make things easier for myself, be more the person I want to be and feel less hemmed in by the things I struggle with. 2024 is already shaping up to be a good year, with Green Day tickets already booked, heading back to Red Rose 20 years after I went as a child (Christ, that makes me feel old) and The BIG Finish - Mr Big's final world tour, which I'm sure I will be a total weeping mess after, but I am thankful for one thing with it - at least I know it's coming. There are plenty of times that people don't know that the last time they see a favourite band live will be the last time, so I am so very thankful for that. 

By the way, none of this is to disrespect anyone who does Dry Jan/ Red Jan/ Veganuary. I appreciate that not everyone feels the same way that I do towards it and many people find all of them helpful in some way or other. I guess many people's livers do thank them for Dry January after the excesses of Christmas and New Year all in the space of just over a week, it's just something I am peeved at from my own perspective because for me they don't work.

I hope everyone enjoys New Year's Eve and doesn't feel too sore on New Year's Day, and I hope one of the things I do in the New Year is start pressing 'publish' on a few more blogs, rather than leaving everything sitting in drafts. Again. 

Rugby Again,

 By the point I'm brining myself to write about this the news has been out for a while and a few people have had the chance to weigh in on it, and it's getting on my nerves. 

What happened? 

Owen Farrell finally took a step back from the England squad and honestly, I was so excited when it happened, and then I read an article about it, and I got kind of annoyed about it. 

Why did the article get on my nerves? 

Because everything is saying that he's stepping back for his and his family's mental health and whilst I think that's a good reason to step back and I think it's great to hear sports personalities choosing to speak openly about mental health issues and I also think that some of the comments online were ridiculous I also think that sometimes the vitriol and the response to it clouds over the issues which started that in the first place. 

During the early run up to the World Cup, Owen Farrell did something really stupid that he's been penalised for already this year, and due to the nature of what it was it put another person's safety and health at risk. There was, understandably, a lot of frustration about that, and not just from me. His absence wasn't the reason England didn't get through to the final, and actually they played amazingly well without him, and yet he's still treated as the be all and end all, and that gets on my nerves personally, because it means other good players in the squad either don't get a look in or they get played out of position and then don't perform the way that they would in their normal position. 

A lot of that got blamed on Farrell, and that's not really fair because a lot of it was the coach. Farrell got a lot of abuse, including online and also with people booing him at a match. Whilst I absolutely can't say I would have been cheering for him if I was there - because I wouldn't - I think booing someone is a bit of an extreme reaction in this sort of sport. Let's face it, it's not a panto, so it's really not acceptable. It's also not fair to be making threats or personal attacks. You can criticise people for their bad actions without condemning them as a whole person. I'm a very big believer in the idea that we're not wholly bad or good. 

That being sad, it does grate a little that this pause to his international career and the reasoning given for the break is painting him as something of a wrong martyr and that's not a narrative I have a lot of time for. I don't feel like he ever really owned his actions and his mistake, the ban that he was given was done under duress because it had initially been dropped and there was a lot of outrage because of it, and rightly so, but now this narrative is about online trolls (which is important) and it seems to be getting away from us talking about red cards for high tackles (which should be red carded) and the way that these rules seem to disproportionately affect tier 2 teams. Sadly people aren't talking about the two things, and the issues for tier 2 teams never got the attention that it deserved and now most people seem to have moved on completely. 

I'm glad England will be having a new captain though I am disappointed about the really limited number of names that have been put about as the new captain names (especially given that George Ford isn't being mentioned) and there seems to have been less discussion around who the new 10 will be, and to me that's more important given the importance of the kicker in the game.

What Happens Now?

As NaNoWriMo23 comes to a close, I'm realising how weird it is that I've spent the month writing, but without recording it on the NaNo site and actually it was only when it was 'over' and I had finished the fifty thousand words that NaNo requires that I actually started writing the sequel I have been trying to write for a long time and it was probably the best thing I've tried to write for a long time. I thought it was going to be harder to let go of the whole of NaNo if that was what it came to, but what I have realised in the last few days has been that even though this has been the last fourteen years of my life, if it no longer fits it's okay to put it down and focus on the things which do. It's not like I'm resigning my typewriter to the scrap pile or trying to figure out being happy without writing (never works, or not for long anyway) or even like I'm giving up on something that puts on its boots only to kick them square up my butt to get me writing - metaphorically, of course.

Whilst saying goodbye to NaNoWriMo is not a certainty at the moment - it's going to depend on a few things - I definitely don't feel as distraught as I would have expected to and whilst that's strange, it is a very welcome thing. Although I did manage to let go of some things with NaNoWriMo what I will say is that this blog was typed during the mad dash before midnight which happens to have been my favourite part of NaNo each year and has been the sort of thing that was either the mad sprint to finish or the period where I tried to write enough to mirror what I had done on the first day (nailed it, just saying) and I have previously had a bottle of Prosecco in the house so that I could pop the cork and have a glass at midnight to celebrate it's over. I'm tempted to do that now, but at the same time I think I should leave it until the finish of the draft of the sequel. (Though I have a few bottles so there's nothing to stop me from having a glass tonight and then a glass from another bottle when the draft is finished. It would have to be different bottles because it's not going to be done in the next few days!)

Anyway, yes, NaNoWriMo is over and I am glad that the pressure is off of the whole thing, but at the same time, I can't wait for a conclusion to the whole thing to happen. The whole thing really does feel like a sword of Damacles over the head of the organisation, the community, and the whole damn thing. I hate it because it doesn't feel real and it doesn't feel like something that ever should have happened (obviously) and, in the strange way that NaNoWriMo counts things, we've not even quite reached 25 years for the organisation. If all we ever get to be is an organisation who had an amazing idea and wanted to bring together writers young and old, I hope the legacy looks like what we wanted it to, but if it doesn't, I hope that those of us who remember the best parts of it are able to look back and remember the best of it fondly. I know there are a lot of things that I will remember fondly, particularly getting to meet Chris Baty and discussing everything from the start of NaNoWriMo to his trip to Brighton and London, the trip to San Francisco and getting to meet some of the other Over Achievers in person and so many Municipal Liaisons, and most especially the train trip. And only in part because of getting to cuddle a puppy husky who was only about six weeks old and the most gorgeous little thing I had ever seen (to date, because I hadn't met Chai then.) And of course there will always be the write ins at KRO in Manchester before I left, my first year at university when the Manchester group called me and shouted 'We love you, Charlie' down the phone when my heart was breaking from missing home so much and I couldn't get the train back to Manchester to spend all of my time with them or to attend all of the events that the region were throwing. There were all of those All Night Lock Ins - the good, the bad and the online - train trips to Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton and then also the NaNoRillas where we explored more of London that some of us ever did alone. These memories might end up being all that is left, but if they are, then I guess it is a pretty great legacy. 

I guess the question is then, if I wrote this the night of the 30th November into 1st December, why has it taken me until now to post, because clearly I'm not doing what I was doing at the end of October where I was writing a few blogs in one day and scheduling them to go up one per day? Well, the answer is because a few things have still been hitting the fan with NaNoWriMo that are making me question whether what I have already done to step back are enough or whether I need to follow suit from what a few people (many of whom are former MLs or other long time supporters of the organisation) have already made the decision to do and make the decision to delete my account entirely. One of the things that makes me really reluctant to do that is that I don't want to lose the data and I have a really bad history with losing data, particularly when it is emotionally valuable to me. I also can't imagine getting to November next year and NOT going through all of my NaNoWriMo rituals and spending at least the first few days of the month seeing what taking things to the extremes can do (trying to write 50K in the least time possible is definitely taking things to the extremes) and taking it as an opportunity - if I need it - to recommit myself to writing when I've fallen off of the wagon a bit. Even if that's not done sitting under the NaNo banner, which this year wasn't really, it's always going to be connected to NaNo because that's where it comes from and the history is important to me. 

Decisions haven't been made yet by the board, or at least not announced yet, and I guess that I am still hoping that the right decisions are made that mean that the ship doesn't sink and we can keep NaNoWriMo or at least have a new and improved version as close to the original as humanly possible. I don't want to lose the good parts of what we have in NaNoWriMo, and I'm holding out hope that it can be saved, but maybe that is being unrealistically optimistic, and I just need to accept that it's time to walk away from any association with it. At the moment, I'm still sitting on the fence getting a splintery ass rather than making a decision one way or the other.

Since I wrote all of the above there has been a little bit more from the board, but it's not really been decisions other than bringing in a consultant... A few people have made the really big decision to leave, and honestly, I can't blame them, and I think it's going to continue to feel like a sinking ship until there is a good, solid outcome - like a change of personnel or really solid consequences for the things that happened and a lot of changes in certain areas that have been highlighted a number of times, or the majority of the community leaves, whether we have a new home or not.