Embrace a life full of hope

THE ART OF STARTING AFRESH: Every now and then it’s good to cut yourself free from the shackles of the life you’ve been living and treat yourself to a fresh start. A New Year is the perfect time to do it.

Having your face reconstructed and changing your name is one option. Another is just to brush your teeth and put on some clean undies.

Then, while taking yourself very seriously, you can say something like, “Right, that’s it,” which is a little internal announcement that all the disappointment and disaster of recent months is over and you’re instead going to have a really good time.

Forget the recession and the fact that we’re all going to die in a flood due to climate change. Forget it all.

A new year brings new hope which means 2010 is worthy of optimism for at least the next few weeks.

Children will be born, you can sign up for another credit card and perhaps, just perhaps “Britain’s Got Talent” will unearth another singing spinster.

You might get fit or a bit less fat, you could even meet the love of your life or decide that the one you’re with already isn’t that bad.

Opportunity may already be on its way and this time you’re going to embrace it. I mean proper snog it.

Don’t hang about, mind. Starting afresh isn’t something you can dawdle over for a month or so before deciding you might give it a go.

It’s instant, instinctive, even urgent. Anything is possible, apart from that. And probably that aswell. But apart from those two things, anything else might be possible.

It’s as if you’ve given yourself a good shake and had a right talking to. You’ve drawn a line, the only way is up.

You can open the 2010 diary you got for Christmas and start jotting down ideas and dates for what might come. “February 24 . . . Dentist.”

If things don’t go to plan and you end up back in the same old ruts, watching the same old rubbish telly and wondering why everyone else seems to be doing something with their life, don’t worry.

Everyone else isn’t doing something else with their lives, they’re just like you.

You can always just start afresh again next year anyway. Only 12 months to go.


Next week — The art of putting the bins out