HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR! from Penny Dolan

Hello again, at the start of another New Year!

Yesterday, home after family travels, I skipped sociability and spent the afternoon simply tidying my desk: a most wonderfully satisfying activity. I removed a set of seasonal shopping receipts, discarded the now-cryptic notes to self, popped different categories of pen into their own pots and stuck together the remnants of post-it pads. I even gathered several scrunched and scribbled notes into a real-world folder marked “Possible Blog Ideas???”

Several fireworks and peals of bells later, I considered today’s date – the first day of the first month of the new year, ta da! – and suddenly my bright golden glow of smugness faded.  I realised I had no idea what to write for my post today.

I could explain that my big desk-clearing was also a way of making space in my head for some work I need to do. Two useful tasks in one!

I could mention a Christmas present from a well-wisher: a good-quality, carry-around-able notebook obtained from a bespoke bookbinder, which has these rather pointed words on the cover:

                              SHE BELIEVED SHE COULD

                              SO SHE DID.

Hmmm. Should this be my mantra for 2019?

I could flick through the pages of two more book gifts: RAVILIOUS & CO: THE PATTERN OF FRIENDSHIP by Andy Friend or THE SECRET LIVES OF COLOUR by Kassia St Clair, which will remind me that art – in all its forms – is calming and inspiring to me, and that I need to follow those paths more readily during the months ahead, and also that non-fiction – in all its forms - can be more helpful middle-of-the-night reading for insomniacs than compelling fiction. Or twitter. Or Mick Herron’s Slough House series . . .

Or I could write about my new diary.

Now, I must admit that I was feeling daunted and depressed by the flurry of book publicity and prizes hanging like bunting across media all through the last months of 2018. Good luck to them all, truly, I thought, although my confidence and voice shrank a little more and my horrible cold continued for another week.

So when I saw the PERPETUAL DISAPPOINTMENTS DIARY, my heart lifted, because the thing has been designed to bolster the naturally pessimistic. The journal might look rather like those Moleskines diaries used by the great achievers and explorers, but it definitely isn’t aimed at success.

For example, the On this Day section lists includes events such as  

Edward Munch inspired to paint the Scream 22 January 1892 

or M25 Orbital Road completed in UK 29 October 1986  

or Mary Celeste sets sail 7 November 1872.

The inspirational Quote for the Week roams from 

Tomorrow is just another day

to It’s no use sobbing uncontrollably over spilt milk

or Burn that bridge when you come to it.

There are pages at the end too, to enter your details of  

Real Enemies,

or Notes Towards a Dull Novel, 

or Notes Towards an Unnecessary Verse Drama,

or Ideas You’ll Never Follow Up and more.

Oh, how I know this place! I thought. Although this rather negative angle might not appeal to you, by heavens, it does cheer up my own inner Eeyore!

I intend to keep my Disappointments Diary as a quiet and secret place for recording those things I should note – word count, progress of projects, daily walks, and so on – on the basis that anything at all hopeful that I write down will feel good against that delightfully dark mood and help me feel better.

I could write about all these odd things, I decided, and now . . . 

I find my first post of the year is writ!

However, if my entry seems sad or dark, tomorrow you’ll be able to enjoy Dianne Hofmeyer’s bright and lovely post for Awfully Big Blog Adventure.

Do call in!

Meanwhile, in the most cheerful and hopeful way, I hope you have a very Happy New Year, with good wishes for you and your year ahead. Despite – you know, just everything - I hope you have a good 2019, with good reading and good words when you need them. 

Penny Dolan