Another year over. What have you done? Big question, that. In many ways, an irritating question. It's all very well if you are, like my friend, disciplined enough to use this time for a long, hard look back over the past 12 months, reliving the recent past to better negotiate the near future.
His assessment of 2005 led him to make a life-changing decision about what he would be doing in 2006. I applaud him. Maybe even envy him. But taking that kind of personal inventory has always sounded too much like hard work to me.
I'm not a fan of end-of-year newspaper reviews, either, although I know most readers can't get enough. Maybe all that stuff happened too recently for me to want to live it again, poring over the details of hurricanes and anti-poverty rallies and the demise of footballing legends and superstar popes as though they were new happenings instead of events we had already lived every second of, and not that long ago, courtesy of rolling news.
I've escaped the end-of-year assignment this time around, but if my boss had asked me I would have had no problem looking back on someone else's 2005. I'd very much enjoy researching and assessing the year of the X Factor winner, the not-at-all-ugly and refreshingly humble Shayne Ward, for example. For Shayne, January was all about selling shoes. By December he was selling records. This is the kind of fairy tale that deserves to be documented.
As much as I am interested in his life, however, the thought of taking stock of my own leaves me cold.
We had some friends over for dinner the other night. It's been a big year for both of them, so they have been doing an end-of-year inventory, as an experiment. At the beginning of the year one of them couldn't have told you that she'd be sitting eating my orange chocolate cake - subsiding slightly in the middle under the weight of the icing but delicious nonetheless - happier, more fulfilled and healthier than ever. There have been career changes. Massive personal development. Untold rejuvenation and regrowth. At the end of the year she sits with her hands on her belly, all the better to feel the new life growing there and marvelling at the immense possibility of 2006.
For all my reluctance to look back, I thought I'd try my own experiment. I had a nagging feeling that otherwise I'd just be trundling along aimlessly - and that I might keep trundling forever. So in an anti-trundling measure, in no particular order, these are the random moments that, for better or worse, stood out for me in 2005.
Experiencing the thrill of paying someone to clean the house. Hearing about the death of the talented chef and all-round decent man Robbie Millar. Meeting Mary Robinson. Getting emotional watching U2 at Croke Park. Getting high on reggae beats while watching an entrancing Sinéad O'Connor at the Helix. My brother's wife having their first baby, Charlie.
Writing a piece of work longer - much, much longer - than anything I'd written before. Having it published. In an actual book with my name on the cover. Gilbert O'Sullivan sending flowers to my book launch. Walking in single file and in silence through the French countryside. Eating baguettes filled with cheese and lettuce. Learning about lying-down meditation, then lying down for a week in the converted barn of a Spanish farm, meditating. Drinking sangria in Barcelona. Having a horrible row with my boyfriend about me always dragging him on self-improvement holidays and not somewhere like the Bahamas. Making up.
Walking the mini marathon within my target time. Having to cancel a plan to walk the full marathon because of an extreme lack of training. Discovering Touche Éclat 10 years after everyone else. Getting nominated in a lovely-legs competition. Not getting nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Making several failed attempts at writing a novel. Being blown away by Kazuo Ishiguro's book Never Let Me Go. Giving up on novel. Giving up drink. For a month. First glass of champagne after not drinking for a month. Phew.
Drained by this mini trawl through my recent past, and none the wiser about where I was going in the near future, I asked my boyfriend about the highs of his year. The best, he said without missing a beat, was Liverpool winning the Champions League. I tried to explain that it didn't count, because he had flip all to do with the win. It's a high because it made him extremely happy, he said, insisting that football victories very much counted. Another high, he said, was getting rid of the car for a few months and discovering the joys of public transport.
Fortunately, one life-changing decision we have made is that we'll get another car in the new year. If we are going to trundle along, we might as well do it in style.
