Life lessons learnt, and questions still to be answered

This year, I felt learned the rules of Christmas and New Year. Eating and drinking, naturally; watching telly: tick; general hibernation, not trying to do anything too ambitious beyond cooking for family (and when I say cooking, I mean, making things look pretty) and a light stroll followed by the promise of more booze. It’s a letting slide of the rules that apply the rest of the year, and by letting them slide with more or less total gay abandon, you can hope to stick rather better to them the other 350 days of the following year.

This morning, as I woke at 10.40 am – something of a decade record – I realised that tomorrow, even with a welcome inset day to break up the return to routine, with Tom back to work, would come as something of a brutal awakening. And even then, without a job to return to, it’s not as if I have to make myself ready for public consumption before 8.30 in the morning. Compared to other years, it really will be a gentle break in.

Oh, I have some plans, so as not to feel bereft of a life or indeed a livelihood. Some editing work from home plans to go to the exercise playground with Reprobate Kate after school drop off in the morning. Vague promises to myself to be more selfish as long as it involves something edifying – like going to a lecture on Philosophy at Conway Hall, reading books, or learning to cook something that doesn’t contain meat, vegetables and be made in one pot.

I’ve ruled out anything too ambitious, like going back to uni. Too expensive, and with no clear benefit, given I would probably study something that is as hard to monetise as my first degree, which was if you’re interested, English Lit. I rather fancy economics, but I’m scared of exposing the gaping holes in my maths knowledge, or psychology and philosophy, but I already failed an application to Kings, and having got all the qualifications for that, I think it boiled down to the fact I admitted being a mum. Oh, I’ll plug on with the writing, but I rather suspect without a more specific qualification, much of what I say is redundant; mere guesswork, and therefore probably unpublishable, unless I get a sudden, latent desire to write fiction, and that’s not happened in a decade.

And unless Tom’s bonus really does come up trumps (at the moment I’m just crossing my fingers it will cover the hole in my wages, the mortgage, and if we’re lucky, get us a summer holiday – probably somewhere European and on Air BnB) investments or business opportunities are out of the question, so I can’t really see my life changing all that much this year. Not at the moment.

In fact, the one thing I did convince myself of, after years of convincing myself I would never do it again, something I felt strangely, secretly joyous and strangely hopeful about, in the way only women can fantasise, with nothing but an inkling, sore boobs and a sense of conviction about how the future might pan out – that I might be expecting – has not come to pass. Probably it’s a good thing. After all, there’s no one to pay my maternity leave, although in a way, that also means I have no one whose expectations I have to live up to, which is probably better than money, in the end. And I know my secret joy (and fear – I know now how awful it can be, and for how long) was in part, about putting off thinking seriously about the rest of my life, offering, as it would, a solid plan for the next decade, in the absence of actually having one. And that’s not a good enough reason to bring a person into the world. Not really.

At least now, with time on my hands to ponder that question, without fear of not being able to eat or have anywhere to live, pressures I faced when I last asked myself back in my 20s, I can address the things that I have also been shirking when time was more at a premium; learning to play Minecraft so I can commune with the kids (I have as much of a mental block about this as I do about maths); spending less time on my phone, for all it’s mainly browsing the Guardian; reaching out to people and being a better friend (my New Year’s Facebook message got upwards of 50 likes, having woken up to some marketing claptrap and a solitary salutation from my mother) and asking more questions; perhaps even volunteering.

Being nicer to Tom (he will enable me to be horrid though), to set a better example to the kids if nothing else, which will be easier when I’m not knackered or stressed by what’s going on at work; and working out for once and for all, what I do want to do with the rest of my life. And if that’s having another baby, which probably it isn’t, then finding a way to do it that isn’t quite so stressful as it was the first time round – where first Tom then I coped with nigh on a decade of cyclical redundancies that sucked the joy out of our children’s early childhoods and made it harder, each time to get back on our feet. And if it isn’t, then being as good to myself as I would if I was: giving up my e-fag (to be fair, I’m down to 0% nicotine, but I definitely still have chest pains), drinking less, eating well and recognising I can only do so much, and that only one day at a time.