There’s something special about January, despite it usually being the coldest month in Ireland, and that’s the promise of a new year laid before us — untainted yet by our actions and events and existing only in our minds. The whole year stretches out before us like an unfurling fern on a nature programme; a blank canvas for us to fill with whatever we want. The promises and plans that we make this month can actually happen before life gets in the way.

In my house in Derry there is excitement over what the year will bring. It’s another year to be filled with firsts and promises to do more and be better. A good friend of mine is getting married in June, so we’ve begun the wedding day countdown and have resolved to join various exercise classes to make sure we all look our best on the big day. I’ve been given the huge honour of being a bridesmaid, so Operation Slim-Down-To-Fit-Into-Gorgeous-Dress is in full throttle. It’ll be my second time as a bridesmaid — the first being at my sister’s wedding many years ago — and I can’t wait so see all the planning and preparations culminate in a spectacular day dedicated to my friend and her husband-to-be. They deserve all the happiness in the world and the rest of us deserve a good knees up. With all the dressing up, seeing everyone else at their best and then partying the night away, it’s just what weddings are all about. Oh, and a bit of love, of course.

The months will slide by and hopefully the dial on the scales will slide down. It’s funny that this time last year, I was in Dubai, enjoying my work, my friends and the life I had built for myself. Now, only a year later, I’m in Ireland studying a masters and watching my nieces and nephew grow up. It’s wonderful being surrounded by family and being looked up to by the little ones. It’s such an honour for me to be able to spend time with them, play with them, give them books to read and answer their questions on every topic imaginable.

A year is not a long period of time, but so many things can change. I wonder where I’ll be next year. Maybe Dubai again. I do miss the sun. I’m as pasty as Casper the Friendly Ghost. (Surely that name’s a bit disparaging of other ghosts; are the rest of them rude? I’ve never met a rude ghost.) This year I’d like to go back and visit Dubai to see what new wonders have been built in my absence.

Apart from fitting into my bridesmaid dress, I want to try and paint more this year. I have dabbled in the past with some amateur painting and I find it therapeutic. I love finishing a piece and finding a place for it to go. My walls are becoming filled with them, so I’ll have to start giving them away. Most of them are based around water — say what you will about that, Freud. I love watching water (I mean rivers, seas and oceans, I don’t just sit staring at a glass of tap water like a nutter, yet) and I love painting it, using as many shades of blue and green as I can.

The possibilities are as endless as the ocean is deep. (Maybe I should start writing cheesy song lyrics too).

January is just January for many people; another month in a continuous line of time. There’s something comforting in that, too: The thought that wherever we are, as human beings we’re all on the same journey and it’s up to us to decide how to live it.

Christina Curran is a journalist currently studying a Masters in International Relations at Queen’s University, Belfast.