Don't let our youth go to waste

I headed into Christmas wearing what I thought were my best jeans, of the darkest denim. Turns out they've faded more than I thought. My brother turned up wearing new denim (I'm sure he always does this trick of buying all his clothes a week before Christmas so everything's brand new). So next to him I noticed how old my jeans actually were. A bit like how you still feel young until you see teenagers with their fresh faces and their big hair, and you think I know why you're talking do excitedly - it's because you have so little past.

So today I headed into town to buy new jeans. At Angel a girl with a clipboard came up to me and tried to sign me up to do her job.

"Are you leaving?"

"No, we're just recruiting."

"I've got a job."

She was explaining that the job was something to do with being a superhero (this was a bit confusing - she told me she was Wonder Woman, but she wasn't dressed up), and then presumably selling something to passers-by, but she didn't actually say that. She asked me what I did.

"Oh that sounds good."

"Yes, I'm on my holidays. The last thing I want to do is sign up for extra work."

"Sorry, am I annoying you?"

"No." She wasn't, she was quite endearing.

Holidays are good, but they move fast. By the time I've bought my new dark denim jeans and reached home it's two o' clock. I've just been through the four o' clock lull. Do you get that? It reaches four and then everything feels awful for around three hours. I feel restless, I get little done, the music I listen to depresses me, I put the TV on but it annoys me. I think it's something to do with it being around going home time during a normal working week. Normally you'd leave work and head home, feeling that elation of the day's work being finished. But because you don't feel that elation everything feels bad. It's so deeply ingrained. I always get it if I'm indoors at this time. Seriously. I ended up going through my CDs looking for ones to take to the charity shop. I ended up with a huge pile, because everything looked rubbish. I better check that pile before I take them down.

This year is nearly through. Has anything changed, have I learned anything along the way? Am I all prepared for next year. Possibly not, as ever I'm unsure, I think 2010 has been a good year though. I need to make plans for 2011. I'm heading towards the new year in new jeans, so that's a good start.