It has been a strange few years, to say the least. Ever since the world went to pieces in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, things have not felt at all “normal” — even though for the most part, things these days seem to primarily be operating as they once were.

I still maintain that this isn’t necessarily a good thing, as the threat of COVID most certainly isn’t over, even if its impact is considerably lessened from what it once was. And I feel like society being forced “back to normal” too early likely made the whole recovery process more lengthy and difficult than it perhaps could have been. But, of course, there were plenty of additional considerations.

I feel like a lot of people have been feeling like 2023 will be a “better” year for one reason or another. There’s no tangible evidence to suggest this will actually be the case — I’m pretty sure we’ve all been thinking “surely next year can’t be as bad as this one” for as long as I can remember, even before killer viruses entered the equation — but I suppose it’s an attempt to bring oneself comfort. After all, proceeding forward thinking that things are miserable and awful and only likely to get worse is not really going to help matters.

A new year doesn’t really mean anything. Nothing magical happens at midnight as December 31st ticks over to January 1st. And yet it’s as good a time as any to decide that you want to have a fresh start, make some changes, improve some things about yourself and perhaps escape from things that have been holding you back for one reason or another.

In contrast to some of the previous years on this blog, I’m in a relatively “all right” position life-wise right now, and so I’m not in a position where I feel like I need to make any particularly radical changes in my life in order to be something approaching “happy”. I don’t feel like I need to change jobs — I love my current job — and I don’t want or need to change anything about my living situation, as my wife Andie and I are both in a good place; the excruciating rise in cost of living in the last year occasionally puts a bit of strain on our collective finances, but other than that we can’t complain too much.

All this means that we — well, I, as far as this post is concerned — can focus on the relatively “smaller” things to try and sort out. Chief among these for me is my overall health and wellbeing; I want to do something about my weight, and do something that hopefully lasts, because I’m fucking sick of having this hernia and not being able to have anything done about it because I’m too fat.

Slimming World worked for me a few years back, as past entries will show, but when Andie and I went back after various personal circumstances caused us both to have a fairly drastic “rebound”, we found that it didn’t really work for us. Calorie-counting didn’t really work for us either, and nor did self-directed Weight Watchers (or “WW”, as they now prefer to call themselves). Last time I saw my doctor, though, they did say that they could refer me to a “health coach” to help sort me out, but this was dependent on getting a blood test to ensure that there was nothing major wrong with me.

I’d never had a blood test before, so I was kind of perturbed by the whole experience. I don’t like hospitals at the best of times — my mind has them permanently associated as “the place where people die”, even though the rational part of my brain knows that this is a vastly unfair assessment to our hard-working healthcare workers — and the prospect of having mildly invasive procedures carried out on me was not helping matters.

This only got worse when they had a bit of trouble finding a vein on the inside of my elbow and had to draw from my hand instead, and as the whole process went on a bit longer that was comfortable I found myself having a cold sweat and feeling nauseated. Thankfully I didn’t throw up over the nurse who was working on me, but my condition did cause enough concern for her to get me a glass of water and give me a moment to recover after she was all finished. Thankfully, the results of the blood test showed nothing of concern, so hopefully I won’t have to deal with that again for a while.

Anyway, getting advice and/or referral from my doctor on what to do next was dependent on those blood test results, so now the holiday period is over I need to go back to them and figure out what to do next. I’m certain it will be a difficult process, but it’s something that needs to be done, as not only is my hernia continually bugging me, but I’m having a lot of joint pains and suchlike also, and I suspect losing some weight will help all those problems.

Aside from this, I feel like I might need to shake things up with regard to friendships and personal relationships also. Over the course of… probably the last decade or so, really, I’ve been dismayed at how far a lot of people with whom I used to be very close have drifted away for one reason or another. In some cases this was down to lives going in different directions, in others it was down to misunderstandings and in others still it can be attributed to some seemingly being more willing to make a bit of an effort to maintain a relationship than others.

I can’t pretend that I’m not at fault in some of these situations, but there are also plenty of cases where I have been the one who has been making an effort, only to get things either thrown back in my face or met with silent indifference. I won’t go into specifics right now as this isn’t about naming and shaming or anything like that, but when discussing a couple of instances privately with some more recent acquaintances, I felt somewhat vindicated when these relatively neutral “outsiders” (to the situation in question, anyway) confirmed my suspicions that yes, indeed, the things that I had previously felt were a bit out of order were indeed out of order.

It’s hard to know what to do in cases like this, though. Do you just cut and run? That’s probably the sensible thing to do; if you’re the only one willing to make an effort, that’s not a friendship, and it’s really not worth trying to maintain something that isn’t there. But at the same time you have to ask if you’re having unreasonable expectations of people whose circumstances have changed, as your own have. In that instance, is it appropriate to “punish” them for just the natural process of your lives going down different roads?

There isn’t really a right answer, but I do feel like in this new year I want to have another go at rekindling some of these friendships where possible. There are, I’m sure, multiple instances where I can still do more to try and fix things, but equally there are also plenty of cases where I’m sure the situation is beyond “help”, for want of a better word. And that’s sad, but it’s also supposedly a natural part of life. I vaguely recall reading something the other day that suggested men of my age generally only have one honest-to-goodness friend that they feel they can rely on — and I’m certainly in this position now.

Well, just make new friends, you might say. But, well, social anxiety tends to put paid to such plans when you explicitly make them — although in the last year or so I have added a number of new people to my personal acquaintances through both work and online socialisation. So I suspect it’s probably going to be worth cultivating those friendships further rather than continuing to make an effort in cases where I feel increasingly excluded.

But anyway. That’s enough rambling for today. Because aside from all of the above, I’ll also be making more regular use of this blog in 2023, too. With the general collapse of my enthusiasm for social media — coupled with the right hash Elon Musk has been making of Twitter — it’s probably the optimal means for me to freely express myself and communicate with others. So if you’re not already following me here, hit up the links at the side (or wherever they are on your screen) and stay up to date with me that way. This place is probably going to be the most reliable means of “seeing” me online from hereon.

Happy new year. And may your own “fresh starts”, however small or grand they might be, bring you joy and satisfaction.