I love resolutions, and sometimes I even stick to them. I reckon everyone could take the time to sit down and think of a new things they’d like to do differently in 2012. Even if we don’t fully achieve these goals, it’s good to feel like we’re moving in the right direction.

My ambitions are not grand, I know. I’m happy with the way my life is at the moment, so I don’t feel the need to try for any huge changes – but there are always things that can be worked on! Here are my resolutions:

1. Stand up straight.
2. Spend one Sunday per month lying in bed, reading books and watching films.
3. Practise grace, kindness, and passion in all things.

What would you like to do differently in 2012?

Dad died two months ago today. Every day I am thankful that he raised me on the principles of kindness, curiosity and fearlessness. I will always try to live my life in a way that would make him proud.

Offline February is over, and I am back online! Observe this visual representation of being back on Facebook/Twitter:

I missed reading about people’s lives as lived online, but I kept myself busy. Things I did:

• Listened to a lot of 90s hip-hop.
• Wrote a short story for Algebra, the new lit-mag app from the Tramway.
• Read eight books (mostly trashy).
• Had new stories/poems published in Parcel, Gertrude, and Frostwriting.
• Found the notes my father made for a novel he never wrote.
• Went on a lot of bus trips across the city.
• Played SushiBoy on my phone for far too long.
• Had an article in the Boston Globe.
• Developed a crush on every girl in the ‘Do It Like a Dude’ video.
• FINISHED MY GODDAMN NOVEL.

That last one was really the point of the whole exercise, so that’s good. I won’t say that a month off social networks changed my life in any large or small way, but I liked having a bit of quiet inside my head.

Now tell me all the interesting, unusual, exciting, boring, pointless, bizarre things you did in February!

British people are polite. We say please and thank-you and get very uptight when other people don’t say please and thank-you. I have visited eight countries in the past few years, and the only place where people were more polite than me was Japan (+1 manner skills to me). So I strut around, thinking that I really appreciate it when other people hold doors for me or give me presents or drop my name, thinking that I always send thank-you cards and tidy up after myself, thinking I’m just so bloody nice. But when do I ever stop to give thanks for the bigger things? For my life and the way I get to live it?

Brits say thank-you, but we don’t give thanks. I don’t just mean that we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving (which, as far as I can tell, is something to do with families and turkeys and land-stealing and making peace or something); I mean that we just don’t stop to appreciate.

Because I love my life. I seriously fucking love it. I love waking up in the morning and I love getting into bed at night. I love my girlfriend and my family and my friends, I love my internship and my teaching job, I love my writing and my lit mag editing and my book reviewing. I even love my horrible, malformed novel draft.

I love the days when I don’t have to get up early, and I can just laze around drinking tea and reading books. I love the days when I get up pre-dawn to catch a train to another city for my internship, and I get to spend an hour watching the fields roll past and sipping coffee slowly so that the caffeine seeps into my veins. I love the work I do, and I love the work I don’t have to do.

It won’t last forever. Eventually I’ll want kids, and a bigger house, and a car, and shelves full of shiny things; and that means A Real Job. Real Jobs don’t let you read in bed all day or have three-hour lunches or decide not to do something just because it looks boring. Writing takes time, and A Real Job won’t give me time.

But that’s okay. It’s all okay. Because I’m happy, every day I am happy and content and excited and in love. Every day I am striving for more more more, but I am happy doing it.

This is cheesy and sentimental. I know it is. But just for one wee blog post, I want to stop complaining and questioning and struggling and feeling sorry for myself. And here it is. Tomorrow I’ll be back to the bitching and swearing, but for today I want to give thanks for this life that I have. So to everyone in my life who makes it what it is: thank you.

Dear drunk dudes in bars,

You know those times I go to the bar and leave my girlfriend sitting by herself looking all cute? And you know how sometimes you come over and sit next to her and get all like ‘awright doll, how yeh doin’?’ Well, I get that. She looks adorable and fascinating, which is why I go out with her.

And you know how I come back from the bar and I put down the drinks and I sit right next to my girlfriend and put my arm around her? That doesn’t mean TWO FOR ONE.

And you know how I say ‘no thanks, we’re together’? Again, not TWO FOR ONE.

And you know how I then say ’seriously mate, we’re girlfriends’? Once more, not TWO FOR ONE.

And you know how I say ‘go away now’? I don’t think I need to say this again.

I get it. We are two women in a bar and we don’t have big flashing labels saying NO PENIS WANTED, so you may well assume that we do in fact want some penis. But I am telling you now, once and for all: no thank-you.

Putting my arm around my girlfriend means that we are together and would like you to go away so we can have a quiet drink together. It does not, and has never, meant that we both want to fuck you. This is Glasgow, not a bad porno.

Try repeating that to yourself on a night out: Glasgow, not porno. Glasgow, not porno.

I hope this helps.

Kirsty x