DEAR CLAIRE 2015

Though I love Christmas, if I'm really honest, I find this time of year to be filled with all kinds of pressures on my time and my general well-being that I don't feel as much during the rest of the year.

One of them is to have an extended family to take up copious amounts of the time in between Christmas and New Year's, and of course to tell hilarious eye-roll inducing anecdotes about to everyone in the first days of January. The other is to have a huge friendship group to spend the other portions of my time with.

If I'm honest I spend most of the Christmas/New Year period by myself. I spent a lot of that time sleeping. If I'm really honest I'm too exhausted by now to imagine that anything else could have worked without me collapsing by January 2nd.

I also think that this period is rife with people telling you to think about yourself and the ways you want to change.

So based on these few things, I'd like to send my own incredibly non-reflection inducing messages into the new year of 2015, for myself, and anyone else who might find them useful.

xx

Dear 2015 Claire, 

First of all, please take your make-up off every night. You never get home later than 9 so the fact that you get into bed straight away and never get up again, whilst understandable, is making you spotty. It's taken ten long years to get your skin into this state, stop ruining it for us.

Next, do more exercise, or don't. And eat better...or don't. You do whatever the hell you want as long as you promise to love yourself and feel happy in your own skin every single day. Keep on blowing metaphorical (and literal) raspberries in the face of '#fitspo' and '#strongisthenewskinny' and you go running to clear your head and help you sleep better and if you don't like it just stay in bed and read books and watch shit TV and eat to your heart's content. Basically keep doing what you're doing. 

I do want you to do one thing though, well really it's more like two things. I want you to write more, and read more. Those are the things you really love and I want you to dedicate more time to them please. You'll be loads happier and more confident in your potential, I promise. 

We're probably still going to be stony-ass broke by this time next year, so don't worry about travelling or seeing more of the world or any of that crap. You focus on moving out and visiting your friends and stuff that will promote your emotional well-being and the relationships you put so much work into so far with the people you love. You don't need to find yourself, you're fine.

You don't smoke and you don't drink. Good job. Pretty sure we'll keep that up. 

You're fairly good at saving money. You've paid for everything yourself so far so you have everyone reason to be proud of yourself for that if nothing else. And no overdraft. 

You're really, really good at kicking out people who don't treat you properly and don't love and respect you. You carry on doing that scary-side of Claire. Carry on being an absolute, unforgiving bitch when it's necessary. 

You're also really, really good at loving other people. And you can carry on with that until the cows come home. You can do the aforementioned scary-Claire shit because you know what you deserve and you deserve care. I hope that by this time next year you're still texting the same people at midnight that you'll be texting tonight. You put everything into those relationships because the people you have them with are amazing. They're worth it and so are you. 

You got good grades! And you're trying really hard and you love your subject. Everything you ever wanted since you made that careers presentation in Year 12 and someone laughed when you said you wanted to get a PhD is so so close.* You can do it. 

You don't need to be better, in any way, you're fine as you are. You just keep on going just like you are.

I'm so proud of you, I hope you're proud of you this time next year too. 

Lots and lots of love, 

Claire 

xx

*I did not make life decisions and direct my career in this direction just because someone laughed at me when I was 17. But I am very excited about achieving what they thought I couldn't nonetheless.