2017 in review.

It seems only a moment ago that I was with my family, complete with a glass of Champagne to hand, watching the fireworks around Big Ben on the BBC.

For me, it marked a lot of change, some achievements, a few let downs, and more.

I had finally finished college, going on to do my NCTJ diploma. (I go twice a week for lectures, learning skills such as Shorthand, film production, how to write features.) This was after I applied to the Journalism Diversity Fund, a fund that supports diverse people to complete the qualification. This was after an interview at the Financial Times-complete with the world’s worst cold!-with five journalists, asking “why do you want to be a journalist?”

I have also been lucky enough to attend the book launch for The Summer Of Impossible Things by Rowan Coleman.

Similarly, I also attend a conference for the Journalism Diversity Fund at the Google News Labs. This was a great day amongst fellow journalists, networking, and partaking in seminars related to the subject of diversity.

The most stressful thing? I’ve blogged daily this year. I write about Aspergers, and this is in the form of essays, opinion pieces, interviews, brand collaborations, poetry, photo diairies, and more. (First there’s having the idea of what to write, scheduling it, then adding social media to increase the people who read it. Believe me, it’s a lot of work.)

I have also learnt a lot of lessons.

If you do not ask, you do not get. When I received the phone call saying that I could do the Journalism diploma, I could not believe it. (I was in a politics lesson at the time, so there was no chance that I would focus on Primaries and Caucuses.) But, if I had not dared to apply, I would not have known if I’d have got on to the course.

Value your friends. This I learnt the hard way. I can get frustrated, having to explain what my version of Aspergers is, and how I find it incredibly hard to make friends. There were some people that I have meet that would make fun of me because of this. But friends are the people who try to understand, but still like you for being you, and who do not care about the condition.

Say sorry. Exactly what it says.

Have fun with what you do. I’ve previously been criticised for being too serious, or too obsessive. (At secondary school, I liked to talk about history; this later became politics at college. Not the latest hairstyle, boyband, new make up release..) But I could not be a trainee journalist, a Blogger, and an online columnist for this very paper without having a little bit of fun.

Your time is precious.

Be grateful. For family, for friends, for pets, what you achieve, this country, your rights and liberties.

I wish you all a Happy Christmas, and New Year; I’ll be back in the new year.

Currently I’m hankering after: The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown.

Listening to: A curious thing by Amy MacDonald.

Writing: “My kind of Christmas”.