I'm going away tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to it. For one thing it's nice to get away and it will be nice to spend some time away with the family. And I hope it will be a time to relax and reflect.

It's now been over a year since I started this blog. It's been a time of great change for me as a person, and I wanted this blog to be a record of that. And for a time, it was all going the way I'd hoped. I wanted to move forward with my life, and I realised that for me, part of that was being honest with myself. It seems an odd thing to do to write honestly about your thoughts and leave them for the world to see, but for me it works. It's no coincidence that during the period I was writing, I had a very clear feeling that things were on the up for me.

But, then it all stopped. Everything that was working so well suddenly stopped. The optimism ebbed away. Pessimism has crept in to replace it. Let's face it. There was a crunch.

We're all familiar with the feeling today. The stock market's down. The pound is down. House prices are down. Employment is down. The whole world's heading down.

But let's get this straight. I've still got a job. I've got a new boss who I trust and respect. I've got all I need materially. I have a house and a car. I want for nothing.

But still it's not there. I have the feeling that this isn't what I want. So I ask myself, what if anything has changed? What brings me to the conclusion that I'm not that further forward than I was a year ago? After all, who would have thought that even this time last year I would have lost so much weight? Who could have guessed that I would start to cycle to work. Or run in a 10k race? Or have a nice garden. Or even (and whisper it quietly) that I could begin to like my work again?

It's often such a little event that tips things in the wrong direction. So it was with me. I knew in May that things weren't moving as quickly forward as I'd liked. I knew that night in May that I'd turned a corner in my healthy eating and drinking regime. I knew that because I was pretty drunk. And a pretty easy target for muggers.

As with these things it's over in seconds. But things changed from then on in. For a start, it exposed the fact that I'd made a mistake moving here three years ago. It made me think about where I am in my life once again. And it jolted me out of thinking it doesn't really matter where I live. Because in that instant it made me realise it did.

I don't like living here. There. I've said it. I admit it. I don't fit in here. I don't like the area. I wish I had a nice middle class flat in a nice middle class area. With nice middle class stripped floorboards. Near a nice middle class pub. Full of nice middle class people reading their nice middle class papers with their nice middle class partner.

It's taken a while to get to this point of realisation, but it's something I can't hold off forever. My choice of where I live has made a big impact on my life and it's taken such a long time to realise it. It affects the way I feel in so many ways. But mainly it gives me such a lack of confidence that I haven't achieved much that I'm apologetic about saying where I live. This has to change.

But then there's this other crunch. Only this one makes the other one worse. Should I sell? Can I sell? What should I do? I'm not the most decisive of people at the best of times. And that only makes it worse. It's a times like these one needs to be decisive. And so I sit and wait. Only I'm not sure what I'm waiting for.

I know what I want. I've said it before. One thing's for sure though, I won't find it here. I need to kick myself up the arse and keep things moving forward. I need to find that momentum again. I need to do all the good things I was doing before. Making plans, being disciplined and making progress.

It's all too easy to fall in to the trap of believing that the sky is falling in. Perhaps it is for those that believe it. But it's time for me to take responsibility for myself and prove to myself that it's not all bad news.

"So what's happened? What's new?" I'm sure anyone who reads this will recognise these questions when they catch up with someone they haven't seen for a while.

"What have you been up to?" is the killer question. You might not have seen this person for a couple of months. It might have been a little longer. Who knows? One year runs into another, doesn't it? Suddenly you're asked to sum up your life over a pint of lager and a packet of cheese and onion. The only problem is that the packet of crisps will probably last longer than your life summary.

Depressing doesn't quite give give this scenario justice.

So, it turns out (surprise, surprise) I was asked this tonight. My answer troubled me. It was half way through the answer that I gave that I realised I didn't have such a lot to say. I'd not been to Mozambique. I'd not met the love of my life. I'd not reorganised my worklplace to make it more efficient. What scared me was I couldn't pick up on a single thing that was worth talking about. And it was about five months since I'd seen this person.

I'm not sure what it was that worried me about revealing what's most been intersting me to the chap I was talking too. Maybe it was because I looked up to him in some way. Maybe it was that it was he that had was in a big way the inspiration to the only thing that I had to say. Maybe I was just aware that the only real thing that had had happened in my life of any importance to me really wasn't that interesting.

But there I was, talking about cycling to work as if noone has ever done it before. It's an odd thing trying to tell someone about something that's of real importance to you, but really isn't that interesting in itself. For me, cycling is a big thing. I wouldn't have imagined me cycling over a 100 miles a week even a year ago. But I'm doing it and what's more I'm loving it.

But I worry that noone wants to hear about it. I'm worried that I'm turning into a new hobby bore. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I've talked too much about it. Perhaps this entry in my blog is just a symptom of that.

Perhaps I shouldn't worry about it though. I'd much prefer to have something to say rather than nothing at all. I sometimes get the impression that when someone asks you what you've been up to they want to know the answers to the following questions ( in no particular order) :

Who have you been shagging?
Have you been on holiday?
Have you got a new job?

Other than that there's not a load of interest. So how do I answer the question?

"I keep falling off my bike"

is the best I can muster. I'm suddenly struck that this isn't much more to say than a 14 year old might say when asked the same question. This worries me a little, but is it really something to worry about? I think the question to answer would be "Are you happy?".