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?

Luckily you don’t have to go out with a graphic designer to have a fancy business card – Moo do lush typewriter and vintage notebook designs. Let me know if you want to order any, as I can wangle you a 10% discount.

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!

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.

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

This bothers me. I may appear to be an adult, but really I’m just a small child jumping up and down to get a pat on the head from my mum. Just once, I’d like her to dance around and shriek MY DAUGHTER IS BRILLIANT and then go and tell all the neighbours. But she’s not much of a shrieker.

My girlfriend Susie’s mum, in contrast, is utterly floored by everything that Susie does. When she graduated from graphic design school, her mum was amazed. When she got a job as a graphic designer, her mum was astounded. When she got a better job with a better graphic design company, her mum just couldn’t believe it was possible. When she plays the guitar or paints a picture or programmes a website, her mum gapes open-mouthed in wonder that a child of hers could do such things. Susie does not like this. She thinks it suggests that her mum thinks she’s an idiot, and anything she achieves is laudable because holy crap this fool did something good.

I’m jealous of the way Susie’s mum is so impressed by all of her achievements.

Susie is jealous of the way my mum thinks I can achieve anything.

Whoever we’re trying to impress – and don’t lie, there’s always someone – they’re never quite as impressed as we’d like them to be. But really, what do we want them to say? If my mum fainted in amazement every time I got a Facebook friend request, I would be annoyed. If Susie’s mum just shrugged and made a cup of tea every time she got a freelance job, Susie would be annoyed. Whatever the level of enthusiasm, it’s not quite right. Jumping and screaming seems insincere, and anything less is underwhelming.

So I am trying to appreciate what I get from my mum. I am a big girl, after all, and she can’t be patting me on the head forever. Sometimes when I meet someone new or meet up with family I haven’t seen for a while, they know all about what I’ve been doing. My mum does think I’m worth bragging about. And if I ever get shortlisted for the Orange Prize I know she’ll be in the audience clapping until her hands go numb, so I’ll just wait until then. Any day now…

But I have a little white MacBook and the battery lasts for hours and so I carry it around the house with me. Portability means no excuses.

Say I spend the morning working at the kitchen table. By coffee-time (which, as you know, is around 11am) I’ll decide that this cushion isn’t soft enough and my bumcheeks hurt, or that the edge of the table is too sharp and my elbows hurt, or that the light is too dark and my eyes hurt. It would be very easy to stop at that point. To go and watch some daytime TV or vacuum the carpet or rearrange books for no apparent reason.

But the laptop can be in any room I am in, so I take it with me. I take it into the front room and write on the comfy library chair for an hour, then I take it into the bedroom and sit up in bed for an hour, and then I take it into my girlfriend Susie’s studio and plug it into her giant graphic designer’s computer screen and work on that for an hour.

When I’m writing I’m like a bratty toddler – the only way anything gets done is bribery, threats, and a desperate avoidance of boredom. By changing my surroundings and moving around my (rather small) flat, I manage to alter the scenery often enough that I don’t get bored.

Picture #1 is the kitchen table. I usually start my day here because it’s quiet and the table is big and I can make tea often. The right side (with the notebooks and paperbacks and empty cup) is my side and the left (the neat one with the fruit bowl) is Susie’s. I feel that the neatness of our sides of the table serve as metaphors for our respective brains: hers is tidy and healthy, and mine is just a chaos of loose papers.

Picture #2 is the bed. I only work here during the day because Susie and I have a strict no-laptops-in-bed rule. It’s nicest in the afternoon when the sun slants in and warms my feet. The obvious problem is nap temptation.

Picture #3 is the library area in the front room. It’s good to work here in the evening because the lamp gives a soft glow and being surrounded by books always inspires me. I can also use them as bribery: “Edit another 500 words and you can read something!”

Writers and creative people, do you work all over the place like me? Or do you have a dedicated workspace? Show me!

One photo is me, one is the girl from the video. Spot the difference!

I can’t even claim that as a celebrity lookalike, really. Although I do enjoy dancing around with stuffed otters. (If that doesn’t make sense, you can watch the whole video here).

I love this video. It makes me homesick.