Will Johnston: Has 2019 sucked for you?

As 2019 nears an end, Hits radio station host Will Johnston reflects on Christmas. Photo / NZME

Has 2019 sucked for you?

Or was it just the best year?

Either way, who really cares but you, right?!

I'm sorry to be so brutal, but if 2019 has taught me anything it's to be more honest with how I'm feeling.

So crack in to your reflection and make your peace with it, smile about it, cry about it, get irreconcilably drunk alone and wake up in a pool of your own sad sad tears about it, but in the end sort it with yourself and head to a new year with less tears on board.

Or less fulfilment if it went well.

I know that's weird, me, a radio announcer who is at times paid to be positive, and with basically no qualifications in anything, telling you to be less fulfilled in your life.

But I am.

Fulfilment is boring.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing more fulfilling to me than living my entitled straight white male life with my beautiful girlfriend in a house we love on a comfy couch watching a movie and waiting for the Uber Eats to arrive.

But that fulfilment is only temporary.

Do that every day and I'm gonna be vitamin D deficient and super fat.

What we actually love is the journey to get to that fulfilment.

Well don't I sound like I'm about to align my chakras in activewear drinking something green after a wheatgrass aenema on an Indonesian island?!

But it's true!

I've always kind of found fulfilment as bland as the proverbial dangling carrot. Sure, it's nourishing, but does it really help you see better?

Fulfilment is only fun if it's partial; like, it's one of the steps along the way to the ultimate goal.

And then when you get to that goal, set a new one.

Sure Christmas is fun, I'll spend it with my girlfriend's family and then my sister and her two toddlers arrive from Wellington on Boxing Day.

Then I work from December 27 until I die (maybe inaccurate, but you get it).

But I look forward to all of this — half of the fun for me is in the anticipation.

For me looking forward 2020: I want to travel.

We are saving for a big holiday late next year. The exciting bit is we don't know where, we just want one. The planning is half the fun!

I want to start a podcast ... It's going to be a real love/hate podcast.

As in some people will love it (if I'm lucky) and others will hate it as much as a New Year's Day when you have to work after not accepting your rapidly diminishing ability to recover from a 2.30am night out.

I want an outdoor umbrella.

I know that doesn't seem like a big goal, but it's Christmas and I like to challenge Santa to carry bulky items and keep them a secret until the day.

But mainly, I just want to be healthy and laugh doing jobs I love, spend time with people I love, and not take life too seriously.

All sounds generic and lame. But it's what I want, so I don't care.

I choose not to focus on 'the year that's been' at this time of year. Looking to the future helps me be calm, focused and happy in the present.

And there's nothing wrong with that. In the words of the Persians and then ripped off by Abraham Lincoln: 'This too shall pass'.

If that's too deep for you, then in the words of Ariana Grande: 'Thank you, next'.

• Will Johnston is the local 9am-3pm host for The Hits Bay of Plenty 95FM. He's also a celebrant and MC. Follow Will on Instagram on @radiowill