New Years is always a blues-inspiring time for me. Whether I’ve achieved things in my life, be they personal or professional, in the past twelve months, they usually don’t play a big part when I’m reflecting upon the year. And reflecting on 2005 was no different really. I thought of what I could have done but didn’t. Who I should have talked to but couldn’t work up the courage too. Where I should have gone but stayed put instead. What I should have said but kept to myself. I think of all those missed opportunities. Those squandered moments I should have seized.

 

It’s weird to look back on an entire year like that. To realise how much I’ve changed and grown. To become so suddenly conscious of my age. I’m twenty-two. On New Year’s Eve I was standing in a queue when an old woman in front of me turned and said "Going out tonight?" Yes, I answered. I’m going to the pub. "You’re right," she smiled. "You’re only young once." Lot’s of people use that phrase. It’s just one of those sentences that pops out in small-talk. We all use them. They hold truth but we use them so often that that truth is sometimes concealed. "You’re only young once," she said and then added "I never thought I’d be like this." And that’s what did it for me. I was suddenly imagining this woman when she was twenty-two. I could see her standing there in front of me but in the blink of an eye she was old again. Unable to achieve what is achievable only through youth. When she said "I never thought I’d be like this" it was as if her twenty-two year old self was speaking to me. Drowning me in that clichéd statement, "You’re only young once" but then bringing me to the surface gasping to make sure I got the message. Strange something like that should happen to me on New Years Eve but it was exactly what I needed. A slap in the face just before 2006.

 

Resolutions now come to mind. Usually resolutions are nothing more than lies that you tell yourself in order to make the new year seem better. As if by saying "This year I’m going to visit Finland and quit smoking" that you’ll actually do those things. But in my current state of mind (which could easily be delirium) I’m making resolutions with every intent of keeping them. They’re not going to be only resolutions but arrows to give me some much needed direction in my life. I’ve reached that point, that cliff from which I have to jump off. This is it.

 

Just now the phone rings. It’s a private number so it could be anyone but thank God of all the people it could be it turns out to be Anthony, an old friend from college now living in England. "How are you taking the new year?" he asks. Well, I say, funny you should ask. I’m just in the middle of writing the answer down. I proceed to read out this to him, up until six sentences ago. I can hear him sighing on the other end of the phone. "Liam," he says, "You’re beginning to sound like Ed." Ed is an acquaintance of ours who generally whines about how his life is so depressing. I can’t deny the merits of the comparison entirely but I’m glad it seems like I might have gotten over this current mindset. That now, armed with my resolutions and blind ambition to create, I might be able to be happy. "So you’re in the middle of writing the column?" Anthony asks. "Put this in it: What’s the deal with bubble gum flavoured sweets anyway? It’s like trying to create a species of fish with a monkey or a sloth." This time it’s my turn to sigh down the phone. "With any luck," I say, "by the end of 2006 all I’ll have to worry about is bubble gum flavoured sweets."