New Year’s Day. What resolutions have you made?

Yesterday, I resolved not to make any. Yet today, as I chewed my nails (must stop doing that) I realised I would have to revisit one of last year’s: tidy the loft.

There are three reasons for this:

1. I was looking for something this time last year. Now I am looking for two things. Neither are terribly important, but I want them.
2. The household ghost has gone very quiet, and this is either because he’s hiding from all the Christmas and New Year friends and relations or because he’s got stuck between all the additional boxes which have appeared in the last twelve months.
3. The loft is now more chaotic than it was last year for reasons which defy explanation and despite my untidy genes, it is doing my head in.

Our home is, as I might have said before, something of a ‘house that Jack built’. It started as a bungalow and had various parts added at various times since the 1950s and we have yet to find a right angle. Anyway, all that aside, one of the previous owners must have had plans to turn the loft into another room because they put a window in one of the gable ends. They didn’t quite finish the job – you can still see breeze blocks and there is no sill – but the point is, subject to building regulations, an additional staircase and a chunk of cash, if I could only clear it out, we could have a loft room.

For years, this was my dream. I yearned for a place where I could hide away from the family and write, beyond the playstation, the kitchen, the washing machine, the TV. But it wasn’t financially feasible, so I turned my attention to the corner of the garden which had foundations from an old shed and longed for a new one. Not a dusty wooden box but a fancy garden-room: a place where I could hide away from the family and write, beyond the playstation, the kitchen, blah-blah-blah. The trouble was, even if I’d been able to find the money, I had better things to spend it on.

In the end, one day in Autumn 2015, I decided that it wasn’t the lack of a silent room of my own which was holding me back. It was myself. A year later, having got used to writing on my lap, on trains, in the kitchen, in whatever quietish corner I could find, I published ‘Kindling’.

What has any of this to do with New Year?

Well I still want to clear the loft, or at least get it organised. But the need to convert it, or have a garden-room is pretty much gone. My children are eighteen and sixteen. In a year or two, I will have more empty rooms and more quiet than I will know what to do with.

Now I feel slightly richer for the things I haven’t got because I’ve realised I didn’t need them in the first place. Ask me what I want for my birthday – go on ask me… I want nothing but a nice day out to make memories. I am fortunate enough to have the material things I need and the things I’d like for myself and others: health, world peace, freedom from anger, grief and fear cannot be purchased no matter how rich you are.

The only thing that I do lack is determination and you can’t buy me that either. I have to find it myself and I am inspired by others who, with much bigger things to worry about, demonstrate it.

Last year, I wept for many friends. For some of them, 2017 was the continuation of previous miserable years. For others, sickness, bereavement or betrayal came out of nowhere as the year unfolded. And then there were those who suffer ongoing chronic pain and/or fatigue. I know some of you will read this. I want to say to you – be proud of yourself, I am in awe of you.

You did amazing things: a writing group was started in the face of resistance; despite physical pain and exhaustion, a joyous wedding was prepared and celebrated; some of you are still bruised and damaged from your own childhoods, yet you are determined history will not repeat itself as you pour out love and provide guidance to your own children.

I know you are looking at another year and wondering how to keep going. I hope it helps a little to know that your true friends have cheered each tiny step you’ve taken against the odds and are urging you onward.

So yes, I do have plans for this year. Some of them are writing plans, some of them are not. Some of them involve getting fitter (yes, I know, I say this every year). All of them require determination. And of course, I don’t know what may happen which may make one or all of them difficult or impossible.

A tip I saw recently on Facebook (a tip which appears to have been doing the rounds since 2008) is to have a jar and inside it drop a note of each positive thing that happens whether it’s something big like the passing of an exam or simply the only thing you could find that day to make you smile or give you hope: the sun on a flower, the glow of the moon, a small kindness. This way, at the end of the year, you have a jar of happiness to read through and rejoice in.

So those are my resolutions: clear the loft, get fitter, note down every little joy which comes my way. I am determined to do at least the last one.

So whatever you plan for 2018, whatever the barriers you face, I hope you find the determination you need and can celebrate each triumph, big or small as it appears so that this time next year, you can open a jar of happiness…

Photograph is from the inside of Somerset House.

Words and photograph copyright 2018 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.