Dry January just ended, and many people choose to completely ignore it in favour of a very wet one! I don't bloody blame you, life is challenging enough right now so yes, enjoy your tipples, why not. But for some it may have been a good opportunity to kick the habit. A starting point to make healthy changes.

I had my last drink four and a half months ago. It was nothing eventful or remarkable. There was no drama, not even an unbearable hangover. I had planned to go with a bang, to make it count. Instead, I went camping on the beach with my family, drank my normal bottle of red wine and drained my plastic cup under the stars.

Do you want to become a game writer? So, do I! Unfortunately, it is no easy task. However, my recommendation is this: if you love gaming and you love writing, then I would urge you to write stories inspired by your gaming passions if that is a desire that enthrals you.

But before you sign up to your first challenge, or buy that yearly discounted gym membership, consider this? ‘Health is for life, not just for Christmas’. We are all too often sold the quick, one dimensional approach to fitness and exercise. After X weeks we are left floating in a small boat emblazoned ‘life after diet’ wandering what the hell to do now!

This rabbit-like inability to be sick is sadly not evidence of a super-human immune system, nor is it an indication that I possess what my friend Eve would describe as the hardy ‘stomach of a goat’. Instead, it’s the result of a life-long and exhausting struggle with severe emetophobia – one that, up until the recent pandemic, I believed I was finally overcoming.

Breast implants or the, ‘Boob Job,’ has been the number one cosmetic procedure carried out for the past 13 years, in the USA alone 300,000 people opted for the procedure in 2019. But many are not aware of Breast Implant Illness and the impact it can have.

At some point I made the mistake of saying ‘yes baby, I will always give you a massage whenever you need one’. This was a seriously misjudged error on so many levels. One, I didn’t realise quite how long forever is.

Now it’s three months later (keep up people), and I am back in the specialist's office. After 5 minutes of silence and tapping at the computer, she spins around on her chair and rather flippantly states, ‘Yes you have Narcolepsy. You know it cannot be cured, right?’

The notion that pole dancing is easier or even specifically ‘made’ for skinny women does not hold any merit – look at the amazing Nicole Byers. The truth is that pole dance is not easy, period. If it were, we would all be paid professionals! Your body type does not determine your pole journey.

Photographs have always helped to remind me of and feel connected to my own lived experience and anything that can achieve that sense of knowing is definitely worth being grateful for.

The warmth, the campness, the glitter, the critical, sarcastic humour, the unspoken sadness- there is a comfort I find in the entertainment we Brits watch through our boxes, and this year more than ever, I am particularly grateful for it.

I started a blog, that sadly wasn’t taken care of enough (but maybe to be added on my new year’s resolutions), but then I found The Everyday, and it really offered me another chance to write. I’m incredibly grateful to this magazine for getting my creative juices flowing, but also for challenging my ideas of what writing needs to be and how it needs to be done.

I'm not going to dwell on the bad stuff. We don't need reminding what has happened. We're all living it, but in amongst the pile of steaming horse manure, there have been some gold nuggets – if you move too fast you may have missed it twinkling in the sun. And that's what I am grateful for—the ability to slow down, to just stop and take a collective breath.