Maybe it wasn't such a bad year after all

January
The year is kicked off in Iceland where I see all my old friends again for the first time in ages. Everybody is really rich and we whizz about in jeeps and drink cocktails with dinner and don't know how good we've got it. I decide to move back to Reykjavik as soon as I've finished my masters.

February
The boyfriend takes me to New York for Valentine's Day and I don't know how good I've got it. It is all impossibly romantic and I decide we should move to Manhattan as soon as I've finished my masters. I neglect to consult the boyfriend over whether or not this is what he wants, too.

March
I work on the set design for a student film and come to the conclusion that I'll be moving to Hollywood as soon as I've finished my masters.

April
The boyfriend takes me to Italy for my birthday and I don't know how good I've got it. It is all impossibly romantic and I decide we should move to Venice as soon as I've finished my masters. I neglect to consult the boyfriend over whether or not this is what he wants, too.

May
The boyfriend points out that actually he is quite happy living right here in Dublin. Except now he wants to break up with me. Uh-oh. A summer of heartbreak, pain, and soulful blogging ensues.

June
I finish my masters and end up moving to the suburbs of Wicklow. I am saved only by an exciting new job on a TV show.
*Unfortunately, that semi-naked picture of Jonathan Rhys Meyers up there was just stolen from the internet as I was too busy worrying about heartbreak and pain to take any of my own photographs.

July
I spend all my earnings on over-priced face creams and leather boots in a fruitless attempt to make myself attractive to the opposite sex. I fail miserably in pulling anyone; not even a desperate guy on a dating site who calls himself 'Bobo' and looks like a stuffed animal.

August
I make a new friend, Rosie, who saves me from myself by making me go out to the pub and stuff. Still, the pub just seems a bit depressing. So she lets me photograph her naked in a bath of milk instead.

September
The only way to truly get over being dumped, I concur, is to trek around the Wild West like a cowboy. I book a flight in a flurry and write an imaginative but entirely unrealistic blog post about America falling in love with me. Little do I know that it is all about to come true.

October
I put all the face-cream in the bin and head off to the New World, where Brian gets me a ticket to Grant Park to watch the election results come in. Later, Barack Obama gets up on stage and says something about a puppy, making a quarter-million people burst into tears around me. This is mega, I think, wiping my nose with my sleeve. This is bigger than The X-Factor.

November
I get my heart broken again in Michigan and so I head south to see if I can break it in Tennessee too, where I have a passionate fling with a hot Israeli. It takes me nearly two weeks to realise that boys and romance are completely overrated and actually I was much happier by myself. I get on a bus for Jackson the next day.

December
I run out of money in Texas, broke and exhausted but completely cured of any heartbreak, and so I head back to Ireland where I have no home and no job and everybody keeps saying there's a recession going on. I don't mind though. In fact, I am feeling pretty excited about the future, all in all.

Happy Christmas, blonkettes, with love from Little Pinch.