There’s hardly a more opportune time for self-reflection and sentimentality than New Year’s. It’s clean. Zero one, zero one. A fresh start. A clean slate. As though the previous 12 months were just a warm-up. And now, in this brand-new day in this brand-new year, you are now perfectly placed to reinvent yourself: newfound discipline, hobbies, and ambition - as though the turning of the calendar is the trigger for some grand metamorphosis. This is the year. It always is.
That is not to say that I’m in any way above such thoughts. Quite the contrary. This year, more than most, has subjected me to a particularly severe case of self-reflection and sentimentality. There’s been a sense of being stuck on the sidelines, watching as my peers establish themselves in their respective careers, get engaged and married, buy houses and have kids. A new normal is being established and I’m not part of it.
It can be hard at the bookend of twelve months to look back objectively; reflection outweighed by the thoughts and feelings of the past few weeks. Beyond that, my self-critical nature struggles to acknowledge any sort of "objective" success, but fixates on the failures, of which it feels as though there have been plenty. Though in reality, in my stagnation, there has been an absence of any real failure or success. I’ve failed to even fail. And that hurts more than failure itself.
Since arriving in New Zealand in 2019, I’ve tried to spend the Christmas break embarking on some sort of adventure, be it traversing mountaintops, whacking through the bush or, simply, hours spent on the road to see and experience new parts of this beautiful country. Having arrived with no family or friends, Christmas in particular can be a suffocatingly lonely time, should you let it. With my introverted disposition, such as it is, I’ve never quite managed to find myself adopted and taken in as part of someone else's Christmas. Hence, the need to keep it moving and creating my own experience and adventure.
This year, however, has felt different. Slower. Less adventurous, which has allowed some of that loneliness to creep its way in. A loneliness I otherwise take pride in not allowing myself to become subject to.
Work closed its doors for the year on Christmas Eve, which instinctively drew comparisons to the previous year, where at that time I’d already driven to the South Island, spent a day running the Queen Charlotte Track and had set up camp to see in Christmas Day.
This year, I spent Christmas Day on the couch before mustering the strength and energy to head north, to Ahipara. A five-hour drive with the best intentions of a reset, physically and mentally, free from distractions to train and think. Unfortunately, I was met with nothing but rain and a campsite pitch posted next to the playground, so whatever dry spells there were, were accompanied by the screams of joyous children. Joyous as the screams may have been and as soothing as the raindrops on the tarp above me were, the environment was not as conducive to a reset as had been anticipated.
A play-by-play of my ill-fated trip would be a waste of everyone's time. However, there are certainly parallels to be drawn between the last two weeks-and this particular trip-and the last twelve months: enthusiasm and grand ideas, ambitions and goals all dampened, stalled and frustrated.
The start of the year, starry-eyed and ambitious as I was, saw me training for the Christchurch Marathon, having been unable to participate in the Auckland Marathon in late 2024. A redemption song. And with my visa expiring in August and my future in New Zealand uncertain, this was, possibly, the last opportunity for a big race before having to move on.
Anybody who has trained for a marathon will understand the hours, week after week, that are accumulated into preparing your body for running the distance. With the possibility of this being my "last dance," I poured myself into the process. As the old cliché goes-leave no stone unturned.
What I did not account for, what I could have never accounted for, was at the 32-kilometre mark where a child ran across the road unexpectedly and cut across me mid-stride, sending me spiralling to the pavement. What remains vivid in my memory is lying on the pavement, staring at the sky, and thinking to myself, ‘this is the perfect time to quit.’ I had an excuse; I was grazed and bruised, exhausted and starting to fade, the weight of the previous kilometres starting to catch up. It would be untruthful to say I rose to my feet, teeth gritted with a newfound determination - not even a stray bullet can stop me. No. It was my pride, stubbornness and an injection of adrenaline which saw me stride away, rhythm and pace all but broken.
In anticipation of the Christmas break and my intentions of reclaiming some fitness after an injury-plagued year, I’d built a couple of itineraries in an attempt to effectively boot-camp myself back to shape. What had originally been intended as an East Coast road-trip with hiking and nights in huts, got moved to Ahipara: a fitness camp on the sand-dunes and a 100km cycling route mapped out with hills that would bulletproof my quads and have my cardio brought back to life.
When, finally, the rain eased enough to provide a window to put tyres on the tarmac, I managed 30km down rural roads before I felt that distinctive rumbling from my rear wheel. A puncture, and without a spare or the means to get back to camp. Stranded. The occasion was celebrated with yet more rain. Thankfully, the trees on the side of the road offered some shelter, so I at last got that thinking time I’d so longed for.
Bad luck? Yes. Poor planning? Equally, yes. But such has been the year in its entirety. Where whatever plans and ambitions I’ve had have been challenged and called into question by the universe. Some higher power repeatedly asserting their dominance and saying, "we’ll see about that."
That is not to say I believe that the universe is conspiring against me. Despite how much, some days, it feels as though it is trying to convince me that it is. Rather, that thought is contradictory to what I truly believe: that the universe is conspiring for you. It wants you to win, should you allow it. Though what this year has repeatedly failed to do, is serve up many of those reminders. Rather, there’s been a sense that whatever win or accomplishment I find myself reaching for has had to come at some sort of compromise.
Whilst I largely lack any sort of ego and have an inclination for self-deprecation and general pessimism, allow me to be so self-indulgent as to say I’m a serial under-achiever. I’ve spent a large part of my twenties convinced I had some higher purpose - not divine, to be clear - but as though I was destined for more, that I am better than "this," whatever "that" was at any particular time. And though I will never be the smartest in any given room, the most ambitious, the highest achiever, the richest or most athletic, some blind faith - or narcissism - has led me to believe that I was going to be part of something bigger than myself.
This year has been especially confrontational in that respect. I’ve been stripped bare, forced to look at myself in the mirror and ask uncomfortable questions: about identity, my place in the world, where I’m going, and what I’m doing. And more pressingly, what I’m not doing.
A combination of visa and future uncertainty with the confrontational-though equally as arbitrary as the new year - milestone birthday of 30 years has not quite brewed the perfect storm, as much as it has cast a cloud of melancholy that has haunted me for the better part of the year.
I recognise now that I’d in part used my visa uncertainty as an excuse for my stagnation; too scared to commit to any sort of development on the pretence that it is futile. I’ll be asked to leave the country soon anyway. What’s the point?
Under normal circumstances, I’d have the ability to swerve and deflect these uncomfortable questions. Under normal circumstances, I could hyper-fixate on training. Running one-hundred miles a week hardly leaves much time for existential crisis, what between the 12 hours of training, the rest, the eating and the sleeping.
Under normal circumstances I could both literally and figuratively run away from those difficult, confrontational questions about my place in the world. This year, however, has largely not been under normal circumstances. Tendonitis has seen running suspended for two-thirds of the year, and with it, a large part of my identity and, little as it may have been, my social circle with it. Whilst I am far from fond of the idea that running is my identity, when you spend twelve hours a week doing something and are involved in local races and events, it is a natural byproduct that you become associated with it and your social circle forms around it.
Instead, training time has largely been substituted with commute time. Under the new ownership of my employers and a change of office, my commute has transitioned from a 10-minute drive, to over an hour each way via public transport. This commute time, particularly in the winter-the cold, the wet and the dark-has been a breeding ground for contempt: for myself, and a bitterness and a jealousy towards everyone and everything who I perceived to "have it better" than me. In a world of social media which features little else but life's highlights and personal showreels, this is no healthy way to feel or think. Whatever preconceived ideas of higher purpose and universal right I thought I’d had, were only cultivating a life of misery and cynicism.
It took until the last couple of months of the year to really figure out how to free myself from the handcuffs of tendonitis and the prison cell that was the bus, and for a time I felt lost and angry. Having spent months with my visa and future uncertain, the lost time transcended not only training, but a sense of waste of what could be my remaining few months in New Zealand. But this new ownership is the reason that instead of packing my life away, which extends far beyond the 65L backpack it’d arrived in, I’ve seen my immediate future and security confirmed. Such is the nature of compromises that has followed me this year.
Though tendonitis may not be debilitating in the truest sense of the word-I’ve still had function and the ability to move-it is just debilitating in my ability to run. What has been exceptionally difficult is the first steps of every day being a reminder that I cannot do the thing I love and so desperately want to do. What is almost sinister about tendonitis is its ability to lull you into a false sense of hope. When blood starts flowing and the tendon warms up throughout the day, it starts to try and convince you that it is healing or healed. I’d find myself doing one-legged hops and calf raises throughout the day and thinking to myself, "I think it’s finally better." But whatever optimism and confidence that was built up throughout the day was soon dosed with ice-cold water. The first few steps of every morning being a confronting reminder that no, you’re still not ready. You’re still not capable. But you are still in pain.
Rehab, too, has unfortunately been far from a linear process. For a time, and in my ignorance, I was convinced that the tendonitis was subsiding and I was perfectly equipped to manage it and my own rehabilitation process. When common sense did eventually prevail and I found myself on the treatment table, I managed three weeks of appointments before my physiotherapist not only cancelled within hours of my appointment, but seemingly vanished into thin air. I’d not been broken up with. I’d been ghosted.
What remains constant, despite it all, is that time continues on; the days and the weeks, the months and the years will pass by all the same. It doesn’t wait for clarity, closure, or permission. It happens regardless. In all the time on the sidelines this year, what have I really done to try and change my direction? Whatever excuses I’ve used, future uncertainty and injury, are no longer valid.
My immediate future is secure. My tendonitis subsiding.
There is no list of resolutions I find myself clutching to as the clock turns midnight. The change of date is meaningless, but for the change of calendar pages. Rather, the New Year starts with a sense of anticipation and optimism. An understanding and refusal to reach December next year and look back on the previous 12 months with as much disdain and disappointment as I do the last.
This is the year. It always is.