funny old month, January

And so. We reach the end of 2012's first month. How's it been for you?

I started January pretty positively, and feeling good about the year. Has the past 30 days changed that? Well, yes and no. Its just been a funny old month really; with ups, downs, and inbetweens.

Health-wise, things are good. The diet (the no-carb no-fun diet as I'm calling it) has been a good change, and the walking has been good too. I've done one Munro this month. Incidentally, Schiehallion is the 59th highest mountain in Scotland, which impresses me more.

Career-wise, well the jury is still out on that one. Standby for more news, but I'm working on it.

Anxiety-wise, I've been doing pretty good. In fact, I learnt something recently that really made me think. Somebody put a thought in my mind, and the thought was this: that anxiety is actually a part of me, not something I can change or alter, but something I need to accept and then work with.

Which puts my blog sub-title slightly into jeopardy. It is not as if I genuinely thought there was an actual cure for anxiety. But I have to say, I kind of thought I could...get rid of it.

However, this thought - that anxiety is a part of me - is novel, new, and necessary. Maybe if I learnt to embrace that part of me, I'd start to realise that it is not necessarily a bad thing, and therefore acceptance will make me happier. I've always had a very negative perspective on my anxiety. It is hard not to. Nerves are never nice - not for me anyway. I believe that my anxiety is very obvious to others, and so I'm always trying to rid myself of it. But apparently I may not be as transparent as I first thought. Maybe - just maybe - it makes me who I am. And who I am is....well, possibly not as bad as I seem to think.

It all comes down to confidence. Oh, confidence, my old foe. You've always been just out of my reach. Well, perhaps in a year that I have promised myself to ford every stream climb every mountain chase every pot of gold at the end of each rainbow etc I may just extend my reach slightly and gain what I have sought for so long. Sometimes I feel I'm almost touching it, with my fingertips, but then it slivers from me, as elusive as its always been. But with a bit more effort, who knows, I might just grab on and see what happens.

In the meantime, I am just me. And I hope that this year I can finally learn that me is not such a bad thing.

February - what will you bring?