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A new year, a new project.

New Year’s Eve is a very loaded day.

It can be a day of great release. Of great sadness. Of great pressure.

This New Year’s Eve is going to be the best night ever.

It has to be the best night ever.

A day to kick terrible years into touch and vow to never speak of them again.

How next year was going to be better.

How next year had to be better.

It’s also a chance to start anew. The clean slate that you have been waiting for that may propel you on to greater things, or to cast off old habits and behaviours that are doing you no favours. To try a new activity or gain some more discipline in something you already do.

I like New Year’s Eve in a symbolic sense. The space for reflection, the sense of excitement of what this next year could bring.

The possibility of it all.

(I’ve also felt the pressure of it all, and have certainly woken up on New Year’s Day with a sense that nothing had changed at all.)

This is why I’ve chosen New Year’s Eve to start this project, alongside my Counselling Practice.

Today may be New Year’s Eve 2022, but change can happen now.

It’s up to you.

It’s as easy and as difficult as that.

A bit about me.

I quit my job in October 2019 with the idea that I was going to take the (Australian) summer off and find work again in early 2020.

You know what happened next.

I’ve had a lot of time to think since October 2019. I’ve gone back to school and got a Diploma of Counselling, as well as being 5 subjects away from finishing my Psychology undergrad.

Perhaps most importantly - I’ve also been in therapy since January 2016. I’ve learned a lot about myself in that time, a hell of a lot. I hope some of it will be useful.

So, what’s the point of this blog? Stop wasting my time, spit it out!

Ok, ok - I’m getting there.

I have a few annoying habits, one of them being that I have the tendency to think that I am the first person to have ever thought of a certain idea, or to have felt a particular way.

One of these feelings is that life is pretty complicated, and for a lot of people it is really quite hard to grapple with what life throws at them.

I believe that this can be particularly true for men.

I mean, it was for me, and surely that extrapolates!

But frustrating self-deprecation aside, I believe there is some use in a man who has been in therapy for a while, discussing some of the things he has learned and can share with other men (Editor’s note - this can be read by anyone, of course!). I am certainly not the first man to think this, I am not even the first Richard Browne in this field - but I hope you find some use in some of the things I will be writing about.

You’ll learn a lot about me - you may even learn a bit about yourself.

Happy New Year. Take it easy on yourself - you’ve had a big year.

Onwards.

Richard Browne

Sydney, Australia

31/12/2022