The New Year is always a time for review. Last year I went into an in-depth review of what I had written over the previous twelve months but this year I haven’t even started to re-read the words I have splashed out onto these pages (although I am getting excited at the thought of the On This Day link turning up three or four years against some future entries).

However, this is always a time of retrospective analysis. Did I do anything important, relevant or useful in 2004? Of course, I think a great deal of what I did was interesting or else I would not have done it but what was really important? Of course, many important things happened in the world but this isn’t about them, it’s a self-indulgent review.

I was about to admit that nothing I did was that important and much of it was far too frivolous but then I thought again. It took me a while to realise that the most important thing that I did in 2004 I did for me. Nobody told me to do it and it really doesn’t benefit anybody else (except perhaps in the longer term) but I decided that I really had to stop uncontrolled consumption of food and generally unhealthiness and do some exercise. And, with that, the whole Gym Buddy experience was born.

I have relaxed a over the past few weeks – especially on the parts that monitor my calorie intake – but I will start 2005 with a new program at the gym which will include some of the resistance machines that I find so intimidating. My battle will be to overcome my feelings of inferiority when it comes to those machines which is a battle with perceptions of myself.

It’s very hard to put into words how I feel about this whole process. It has been an entirely positive life changing experience for me: I am not wealthier, I have less free time and it didn’t help other people but I wouldn’t change a single moment of it all.

On this day…