I really wish there was this magic ‘difference’ that January 1st had. To me it’s like going on holiday, everything about it is different except the one thing which actually makes a difference …. us! How annoying is it that no matter how far we go we always have to take ourselves along? What we really want is to be a different person, a better person, we think that a change of year or location will make all the difference but, it won’t.

If we want to be a different, better person then it is up to us to change. No more excuses. Most of us already know what we probably need to do but we’ve built up this buffer zone between what we need to be and what we are. Too many of us are held back by those around us, we can’t always change that, that’s a result of decisions we made years ago that we just have to wait out. Some of us choose to be in a friend group which actively holds us back. If our friends are irresponsible and immature, rising above that may well mean a choice, a future life how we want it or those friends.

The bottom line is, most likely all of us are terrified of change, even more so of what we don’t know. Where we are now is comfortable, it might be horrible but comfortable. We are, in effect, in our own self made prison yet, we have the key we’re just afraid to use it.

I know I have the key but I also know my prison is stupidly complex. It has so many doors the key won’t fit and so many that it will fit but which will take me somewhere worse and I am at an age where we start to consider, we don’t have so many healthy years left to chuck away trying things out!

The next couple of years is dead scary for me, I appreciate it is for many of you. The only reason it is scary is that I need to change everything. Anything which has been an important part of who I am is going to change, nothing I can do about it. I honestly don’t think I am going to know the right door to walk though because I am too trusting. The story of my entire life has been one of trusting and helping others with the usual result that I get used and abused. That is my issue, I need to stop that, stop being something I always valued about me. I got to say no to just about everyone not because they don’t deserve it but because I obviously don’t know who to and not to trust.

Wow, it’s scary!

Let me take you into my thinking … this isn’t speculation it is how life is, what I experience.

This is a set of my ‘excuses’ to stay in my comfort zone.

I am on my own because I chose to do the right thing and get married, I then chose to do the right thing, be honest and get divorced.

Then I chose to be with some guys who either had too many of their own issues to understand the complexity of my life or, they just plain cheated on me.

The complexities, what are they?

I am a totally gay man with 4 children, two of them mentally handicapped and I have 4 grandchildren. I am below average height, have poor eyesight and am partially deaf so need hearing aids. Because of the caring role for the kids I’ve not worked since 1993. I am effectively, the anti-gay. Not many can relate to that at all even less can they to my living arrangements and they do actively tell me this. On top of this I left school with poor qualifications, I come across as reasonable intelligent but my grades say otherwise to any prospective employer. To them I am long term unemployed, the wrong side of 50 and not overly bright.

Where does this leave me, what are the options?

Do nothing, wait on everyone eventually moving out the house and seeing where I am at the time.

Go get a job if I can. I might get to meet some good people. Financially I am unlikely to be any better off but it will mean I have an excuse to say no to more people.

Go get a job and try and build up the photography. Only slight issue there which I have to be realistic about is that the cyst which occurs in my eye I have been told will likely keep happening. That means for 3-4 months of the year I cannot see well enough to take pictures, it could also affect any job I do.

Can you see another of my issues here. No decision I could make is going to be fool proof, just about anything has something in the way, something I’ve got no control over.

Meet the perfect man who will overlook all the issues above so that with two incomes we can have a comfortable life – hey, it could happen, not everyone on the planet is a dick.

If someone else was in my situation and asking my advice I honestly think I’d conclude they were screwed!

But, it’s not someone else, it’s me and I somehow have to make my future, somehow I have to make it on my own as there is no one else who is going to be there alongside me propping me up.

Yeah, it’s scary and, annoyingly, that second which changed 2014 into 2015 doesn’t help at all