New Year's Resolutions

I am sitting comfortably at my desk, with a hot cup of tea (Yorkshire Tea, for hard water - bought in error by a friend since our Scottish water is soap-bubble-heaven soft - but really rather good) - and pondering what to write in my inaugural post in my first ever blog.

I feel it should be something, well, important, goddammit, but then since this blog is starting life on little better than a whim perhaps I'm expecting too much of both my brain and the concept. I wonder how many blogs are, like this one, started as a New Year's resolution; one of those many hastily-formed and often swiftly-broken promises to oneself as the slow ticking of the calendar clock ('06, '07, '08) reminds us of the legion of things left undone and the dwindling time left for the doing. Which all sounds pretty downbeat, but I think resolutions, if you can keep them, are all about taking control and making sure you do in fact do the things that matter to you. Whether that's as simple as being nicer to some irritating family member who is nevertheless fond of you, just because you know you should, or as daring as starting a new life in Australia. Now I think Bridget Jones is wetter than the Pacific ocean and don't give a flying f**k for her obsessive daily charting of weight, fags and Chardonnay consumption but at least, given she was possessed by the burning desire to find fulfilment in bagging and banging her very own Mr Darcy substitute, she was trying in her own fictional, fluff-headed way to do something about it. Not necessarily the right things, but the things that seemed important to her. (Of the seeming importance of things that are not, more later.) And, hurrah, the very words I am typing now are evidence that I'm also doing something. I've kept one resolution at least! One down, four major and three minor to go.

So why blogging? What am I hoping to get out of this? What's it going to help me achieve? Not to find my very own Mr Darcy since, happily, he is in the kitchen making Beef Wellington right now. (Wow, there's everything good about that sentence!) No, I'm hoping this blog will do two things:
1. help me keep my other resolutions, major and minor, by letting me reflect on what I'm doing and where I'm going; and
2. be a kind of outlet for all the crap that's in my head, and an excuse to do something vaguely creative by producing writing that has no connection whatsoever, not even a 'do I know you?' passing acquaintance, with reports, shopping lists, email exchanges, studying, finances spreadsheets, or any of the other thousand reasons I usually find myself sitting at this desk with a cup of tea in my hand.