Coming out the closet

So 2007 is here, we knew it was coming. What's so important is the possibility of a fresh start somehow, the chance to do those things we meant to and didn't get round to, the chance to be slightly better somehow. We can do this anytime, but sometimes need a new calender to remind us to think about it again. It's like that feeling when you are at school and you reach the end of your exercise book, can't wait for the new one so you can write more neatly, and for the first few pages there are no mistakes.

I think I've already laid the groundwork, spent a great deal of 2006 thinking about things that aren't quite as they should be, and wondering how this can change. I decided I didn't know how to have fun anymore (I thought I did, but just drinking a few beers I realised isn't the same.) I am too shy, too awkward, find it hard to open up, to string a sentence together and talk to strangers (and sometimes friends.) The result was that people found me aloof, arrogant, distant or just a miserable twat. I think for years I blamed people for this, but it would have been simple to set them right, make them reconsider at least with a bit of conversation or a smile. If I don't give them anything to go on what do I expect? These aren't things I can change overnight, it takes a lifetime to make you shy and doubt what you have to say will be of interest to anyone, but I am trying. I am blogging, being open- it's a start.

I realised you don't automatically become self important, a show-off, insensitive or attention stealing by just being visible. I have been the invisible woman in so many ways, not saying things, hunching into nothing, giving off an air of being sorry for breathing your air. Sometimes invisibility is something that is done to me, most times I do it to myself. I don't want to be overly visible, I just don't want to come back from every social event feeling misunderstood and pissed off with myself that I really would have liked to speak to so and so, and ask them about that poem, but in the end decided they wouldn't be interested. I need to give myself a chance, by not doing so I'm not giving much chance to other people either. This is something I'm going to work on in 2007. My main resolution is that I'm just going to be kinder to myself. I don't have to love myself, not entirely, but I don't have to flush my head down the bog and steal my lunch money either.

So, in the interests of self improvement and less apology, this is a photo of me on New years Eve. Someone messaged me recently and mentioned a photo of me they had seen on the web- and I realised, that for all my careful exclusion of photo's, if people are curious about what you look like they can find them out there. I had my entire website done without a single one, which seems a bit unusual. I want to say this is purely because I have strong opinions about writers being judged exclusively on their work, not their appearance (I do think this, but that's not all.) The truth is I was just hiding, and I was being mean to every photo I considered- 'too fat', 'too miserable looking', 'too weird looking', 'too ugly'- the list goes on. The fact is people seem to like to put a face to a voice. I look at photos of writers and think they look quite laid back, like their work, or this person looks very outdoorsy; they must write on their mountain bike. That's about it. It's rare for me to look at a photo and think what a twat, and if it was an awful photo would it stop me reading the work? Not really.

So happy New year.
This is me, putting on the slap, about to step through the mirror.