This is Panic 17 – New Year Blues

Well folks, happy new year to one and all from TIP. Obviously the blog posts have become spaced out as time has gone on and it's been nearly a month since issue 16. Christmas was a busy time for me personally with 2 weddings, working till Christmas Eve, travelling to Cornwall and then to Warminster then back to work in the new year.

Either way time is rumbling on and we're into 2010. As I said, it was a hectic but a really fun December festive period for me. The weddings I went to were really good fun as well as giving me and my fiancé some useful ideas for our own wedding.
Christmas (in spite of the 4 hour train journey to Cornwall on Christmas Eve) was a lot of fun where I spent time with my in-laws and my mum, ate some good food, went out to Plymouth for football and Bath for some shopping. I got to relax loads, rest up from a hard year where I started unemployed and ended it really busy with a job I love.

We all, for the most part, have a really good time over Christmas. There's our families, people we may not see, presents, parties, any and everything can happen and the time is generally a fun one had by all.

What comes after that, when we return to our regular lives of work/school, sometimes relationships have come under a bit of stress for a variety of reasons and some of us are left with a nice hefty bill for a few things. It's what most of us call the new year blues.

The thing that occurred to me about this year is that I have a lot of things smacking me in the face with the start of this year. I will be a married man by the end of the year, I'll be renting a flat with my wife, I'll be dealing with bills for everything where before landlords were dealing with it for me. To me it feels like I am becoming a grown up and it scares me a bit to go with the post Christmas downer.

There are a couple of ways to look at it. We can either let it overwhelm us or we can look at ways to get through it all:

Know what you needs a new start and what doesn't: It's really easy to say “oh it's a new year and everything is new” and you can make a clean break but we all know that's not possible and sometimes not sensible either. The key is making sure that you take a bit of time to be reflective, pick your directions for the important things you're doing and go for it.
Take things one step at a time: if there's a long list of things that need seeing to, prioritise the list and work through it sensibly. Over stretching yourself is a sure fire way to lead to panicking as you end up trying to do too much at one time.
It's only the beginning: some people will try and say stuff like “this year is the year I do this” and think that if they don't have something concrete in place by 25th January, the resolutions they've made are voided as they're not close to what they want to be. The year is a week or so old and there's 52 of them. If you plan stuff out well rather than jumping blindly into stuff, chances are you'll do better with it.

2010 is the start of a new decade and it's another chance to re-evaluate where we are in terms of improving things when it comes to our mental health. I feel a lot better than I have for a while though I know there are some challenges to come. We all have them and we can face this one together.

In the spirit of New Year, 3, 2, 1...