Don’t look back in anger

It’s that time of the year when my mind slips itself off the lead and bounds along the snow-covered, hedgerow-lined fields of memories, like a mental three-year-old Dalmatian.

It pokes its nose in little tumps of snow; sniffing, sneezing and snorting, it teases and playfully worries things that aren’t there.

And things that are.

At the moment my mind is playing around in the field that I like to call 2009.

How’s it been for you?

I don’t know if I’m deluding myself but I think I’d classify 2009 as ‘Not Too Bad Really’.

And yet straight away I’m on the back foot, defending my performance with a concession that the planned 2009 Eventing season didn’t occur; Vin developed headshaking and that immediately killed off all prospects of competing.

And I’ll defend again with the statement that after six months of looking, I found Tom and he seems to be Perfect In Every Way (to quote Mary Poppins).

Except he isn’t, because I’m paying £1,000 to have an 8′-fenced paddock built for him.

But that’s horses, eh? Except this puts the balance in to the debit side of things.

But on the plus side of the overall balance sheet, I’ve been very busy, both in my ‘day’ job and in the world of my various writing projects (reviewer, feature-writer, novelist and short-storyist).

And yes, I know being very busy is brilliant, but there exists, in my head at least, a general air of dissatisfaction in this field. There’s a feeling that I could have done everything so much better, with a more qualitative attention to detail, if only I’d tried.

Or had the time. And thus begins the vicious circle…

[pause]

The music side of things has gone brilliantly.

I almost grudgingly concede this, as if I am reluctant to set the thought free because the counterbalancing thought might be too much in the negative.

But really, there isn’t a counterbalancing thought. My own guitar playing has been scant, but that was never really on the radar anyway.

And all things Podcasting have been excellent, the growth of our audience has been tremendous.

And the web statistics indicate that the redesigned website is popular with feed-readers and googlers, and besides – and indeed over-ridingly – the Podcast is fun to produce.

Recording it is never a chore and I usually start feeling a growing sense of anticipation about three days before Studio Day. It’s fun, it’s a regular weekly event and I love doing it.

And, of course, as a result of producing the Podcast we have been fortunate enough to listen to some excellent musicians – and doubly fortunate to be able to go on and number some of these very talented individuals as friends.

No, there’s nothing in the debit column on this one.

So that’s music and horses and work and writing.

[another pause]

Family, at first glance, looks like it might be all debit and no credit, but that isn’t how I see it.

There have been two cataclysmic events in this aspect of my life this year. Each shook my self-confidence and erased the ability to believe in myself to the point where, for a while, I didn’t really have a life, I was just going through a series of daily processes and trying to come out the other end unscathed.

The earth-shattering nature of these events isn’t for public discussion, but there was a while, back in 2009, when I lost my rudder and just drifted along, buffeted by the big stormy waves.

But now the rudder is back on and the big stormy waves have abated and although things are a little more choppy than they used to be, at least the water now more closely resembles a boating pond and not a Force 9 in the South Atlantic.

Generally I feel positive about family; the dysfunctional relationship that separates my siblings and me is a source of amusement and not a concern. I was surprised that one of my brothers popped up and left a comment, but when I pinged the email address he’d left and found it to be a dead one, my surprise turned to much laughing out loud.

The Soph and me family feels good and I am optimistic for the future.

And I’m comfortable with my relationship with Soph’s family, though heaven knows what they reckon to me.

So if I had to sum up the whole family thing under one heading it would probably be on the positive side of ‘Meh’.

Which makes me wonder why I’ve spent so much time, this morning, thinking about the past. The deep distant past.

I blame Christmas.

There’s something about this ‘festive’ season that seems to encourage this free-ranging introverted retrospective; the bonkers Dalmatian looning around snowy fields metaphor is a good one. Hang on to it.

I might use it again next year.

2010 promises so much potential; horses, music, writing, family. But I’ve stopped banking on future events. What will be will be.

And other clichés.