Success! A New Year’s Eve with a minimum of Fear of Missing Out or Cosmic Party Syndrome…I actually had fun! NYE is usually the worst for these afflictions, whose symptoms include wondering where all the really cool people are, why you weren’t invited and promising yourself that next year you WILL BE. Or else trying to go to everything, only to end up at The Lord Napier in Hackney Wick (or ‘Secret East London Location’ as it was called on somewhat hopeful flyers) after traipsing the rain-swept streets at 4am and generally having a shit time all round.

But there is a (good) reason why so many of us get into a flap over NYE plans; it’s the one night of the year when everyone you know will be doing something- even if that something is having a quiet one at home with their boyfs. Its still a choice, an option, a potential…hmm should I be doing that? Would that be more fun? Well, probably not (for me that is- for them, quite possibly, since ‘quiet one’ is probably couple code for ‘noisy sex’).
And if you choose one gang of friends to spend the night with, you automatically miss out on seeing the other ones. Or else, you could go to three different parties, which worked for me this year and I was still in bed by 8- pretty respectable.

However, my reasonable bedtime has not helped the hangover jitters- which I was rather prematurely bigging myself up for having conquered in the last post. Having mulled over the potential reasons for this plunge back into half-drowsy, half-neurotic jitters and anxiety (the worst of both worlds), I established that there was no real reason to worry; I did absolutely nothing inappropriate, hence nothing to ruminate, cringe or feel bad over.

Except, perhaps my liver – or is it the kidneys?- which hate all forms of bubbly, and white, wine; normally I avoid the stuff like the plague as it makes me ill (the sulphites! yes, definitely). But hey, it’s New Year’s Eve, right? Bring on the endless top-ups! Fortunately my hosts had much more of the nice stuff than the cheap ‘n’ nasty stuff, so it could have been (a lot) worse.

So I wondered if I should blame my jitters on the difficulty I have in doing downtime and properly chilling out. This difficulty is greatly exacerbated by two things- no TV, and living in my studio/ office. No TV means no crap to zone out to; it also means feeling hopelessly out of touch when completing stupid personality tests (for research, ok?) which require ‘identification’ with one of three characters, none of whom I’ve ever heard of. Actually I should probably be thankful for that.

As for the live/work situation, it means that even when I’m at home and hung-over, or feeling anxious, or feeling anything in fact, I am always also at my place of work. There’s no escaping it.

Sitting at my desk in my PJs, with a headache, trying to focus on Frozen Planet (especially hard as I’m currently running the internet off my iPhone, which means continuous cutting out – bloody nightmare) while being visually and mentally assaulted by my wall of neon post-it notes saying cheerful stuff like ‘resist psychic death’, its no surprise chillaxing is a challenge. So, I give in and do some work instead- at least it keeps me busy.

Anyway for what it’s worth, and knowing that they usually fail by mid-January- this is my Near Year’s resolution: try to actually relax and stop turning everything into some form of ‘work’.