mns  2009-02-04 09:52   

Christmas came and went and the New Year approached, first to be celebrated in Dublin and then in France later in January.
I always have the feeling of some unseen momentum come the First of January, a feeling that I need to be doing something and an awareness that it has sneaked up on me and that suddenly I’m there with the chance of a whole new beginning. This of course is total nonsense as every day is a new beginning with a chance to get things right or to improve things or to bring about some damage limitation on the previous day.
Once upon a time on New Year’s Eve, I used to think, ‘next year I will lose weight’. This phrase used to come to mind as champagne glasses were lifted to toast in the New Year and everyone said, ‘have you made your resolutions?’ I even said it to myself when I weighed a mere 6 ½ stone as I couldn’t think of anything else to wish for.
Years ago as the old year ended and 2001 began I stood at one o’clock in the morning on a balcony in Malta overlooking the sea and for the first time ever I really thought about what I wanted to do. I was frightened and I was alone and I found myself looking into that New Year with a feeling of emptiness and dread. Below is an article I wrote about The Optimism List – a list I began in 2001 and I am still adding to it and working on it.

2000 had been the worst year of my life. In the space of a couple of months I had been diagnosed with a benign but inoperable tumour in my head that was growing, my husband and left me and my mother had died. I went away alone for New Year not with the idea of thinking or planning, but with the idea of forgetting and getting through one more bad night.
As I stood there with the sea lapping just feet away it finally occurred to me that I couldn’t go on living just the way I was. I tried to imagine something to look forward to, some reason to exist other than just going through the motions for the sake of my children. It was then, for the first time in years that I thought about ‘me.’

It occurred to me that we can get dulled by existence and that the dreams of our youth dissipate with time; that we slot into routine and then something happens to destroy that routine and an aching void opens in front of us.
And that was me, standing in the dark on a balcony. I remember thinking ‘who cares whether I am 6 ½ stone or 10 ½ stone?’ At that moment not even I cared. I had a sickening awareness of the meaningless of my existence. I have always loved being a mother and that is sacrosanct, but the other roles I had fulfilled had now emptied. I was no longer anyone’s daughter, nor was I someone’s wife.
The only thing that I could think of having to do was to write a novel. My first was finished and with a publisher and the signed contract stated that they wanted another.
I went back inside and I wrote on a piece of paper ‘write a second novel.’ That was the first thing on my Optimism List.

I have always found that if I make a list of things to do during the day I am much more likely to fulfil it. There are a thousand things I mean to do but unless I have them written down I forget them or I put them on the long finger, even things like do the ironing, go to the bank, and collect the dry-cleaning – everyday things on an everyday list.
That night I started what was to become the first of my New Year Optimism lists, a list of things to do over the course of a year, a reason to get up in the morning and to achieve something during the next 365 days.
And so it began: Write a second novel; See my first novel published; Paint my bedroom white and make white curtains so that I will feel like I am floating when the window is open and the wind is blowing; Don’t be afraid, face the bills and the leaking roof; Get on top of the garden; Go on a holiday with my children.

I look back and I see that it was a list on how to survive. I put it on my laptop, and each year since I go through the current list, ticking off what I have achieved, carrying forward anything that did not happen if it is still worth the aspiration. Last month I began my list for 2009. I look at the world and I know that my list is very small in the light of everything that is happening, but it is my list, my reasons for getting up and doing something, my way of knowing that the year will not pass me by ever again.

After I met my partner Justin in 2004 and discovered that he played the piano, I wrote on my list that year that I would hear him play. It’s taken over four years for that to come to fruition as we lived in small apartments in England where there was no room for a piano. But this year, coming back to live in Ireland, there was finally room for his piano and so it was taken out of storage and came with us, and finally I get to tick it off the list. Last year on my list of fifteen goals was the plan to go abroad. I’ve never been to Venice and we had wanted to go back to Florence where we had spent a wonderful week the previous year. As it happens we moved back to Ireland instead of having a holiday so that will be carried forward to the list for 2009. I am not sure if we will achieve this in 2009, but I want to see Venice, and if I don’t get there this coming year, I will carry the aspiration forward to the next.

In the year 2001 I had met Tacchi, the World Bridge Federation photographer, and he invited me to stay with him and his wife in their home in France. Every year I go back; we play bridge in his local club, eat a lot (he’s a truly brilliant chef) and drink even more. Visiting him is on my list every single year and in fact I hope it will be the first item on the new list that I will be ticking as we are planning on going over in January.

There are things on my list that I am a bit embarrassed to write about, things to do with equilibrium and peace of mind, things that I lost in 2000. I fight to find that equilibrium again. I have on my list that I must not be grumpy – that is an ongoing battle. I try to live more within the moment rather than waiting for the next one; and at the same time I try to keep the door open for new things to happen and to find reasons to embrace the future. One thing I am very sure of is that I really wish I had started writing an annual list a lot earlier in my life.

It’s very easy to make half-hearted resolutions as I did for years. The best resolutions are small ones because small things are easily achievable. But if you add up a dozen small things you can actually change quite a lot. I recommend an optimism list to others as a way to see fulfilment.

Even now when New Year sneaks up on me I still have the Optimism List and I make the time to add to it and to work on its content.

We can’t always get what we want but we can try.