What I hope to accomplish this year

It's a question I hesitate to answer. Stability, consolidation and refocussing are the words which immediately spring to mind. Simple and modest aspirations. My response to complex and traumatic forces which have torn through the fabric of my life during the last year.

2004 was the year a bomb went off in my world, sending the pillars of my reality tumbling in a perverse domino effect. Changing plans, painful revelations, destroyed dreams and an ever-shifting future were the defining features of the last year. Whenever I dared to think ahead, to dream, fate seemed ready to throw yet another obstacle in my path.

Perhaps destiny has been at work in my life. Perhaps this will continue in 2005. Certainly the signs are ominous, as this year has begun with yet another major change in my life that has required me to consider my future anew.

So to some extent it is a case of once bitten, twice shy. Why set ambitious goals for myself when I seem to be in the midst of powerful forces with their own ideas. Yet I know that laziness and procrastination are a part of my nature, and must be resisted. I also know that I have grown through this experience. I am stronger, smarter and more courageous than before. I have also finally found a burning fire of ambition within. An almost desperate desire to start fulfilling my potential.

2005 will be the year I take control. I will overcome feelings of helplessness and a lack of confidence and start doing what I know in my heart I am meant to do.

Last year I made a number of lifestyle changes in response to serious mental and physical health issues which arose. I have recently learned, the hard way, that I cannot afford to slacken in my resolve on these matters.

This year I will refocus and recommit myself to these changes. They include eating properly, keeping fit, meditating, quitting smoking (for good this time), exploring natural medicine and writing.

For me writing has been an essential means of self expression and seeking to understand myself and the challenges I face. My journal is the place I hold myself to account and analyse the events and relationships which make up my life.

In the year ahead I want to take my writing beyond the realm of therapy and self analysis. I want to build a body of work, short stories and essays, and gain in skill and confidence. I aim to enter short story contests, have some work published and have a go at making a short film of one of my stories.

I will also use my writing to seek a better understanding of what has occurred in my life in recent times, and how events from long ago have had an influence. As I have gained a sense of perspective on matters I have found that, in hindsight, my story has a strong sense of narrative logic to it. I have already begun working on an outline for a fictionalised account of my experience, and hope to have made significant progress on this project by year's end.

It will be a story of self realisation, with powerful themes of abuse, love, loss, grief, spirituality and courage, set against the backdrop of a doomed love story and, in the words of Prince and the Revolution, "a big disease with a little name".

I feel that my experience has given me insight and some important things to say on these issues. It just may be that this is the story I was born to tell.