Someone said to me, as we exchanged the obligatory festive small talk this week, that she hoped 2018 would be a better year for me. ‘You must be glad to see the back of 2017’, she said.

Must I? It’s been a tricky year, definitely. But really, what year isn’t? It kind of depends on how you chunk up your life. I mean, taking things day by day, there’s a limited amount of stuff that can go wrong within a 24-hour period. And then you wake up, and hey, it’s a new day. Take it year by year, though, and it’s pretty unlikely you’ll get through the whole 365 days without a few issues arising. On the other hand, you have to have a pretty big bunch of issues to completely wipe out a whole year. A whole day, however, pretty easily written off.

Either way, though, 2017 has been a bit of a mixed bag. And that’s ok. It can actually be a good thing – sometimes you only notice the good stuff when it takes you by surprise, or provides a bit of welcome relief. It’s the only reason anyone ever buys a bag of revels. Absolutely no one wants the coffee one. Very few people want the orange one. But for the anticipation and occasional delight of getting the one that tastes like a malteser, it’s sometimes worth the risk.

There have been an unusually large number of coffee revels in my bag this year, but it’s taught me two things (neither of which, incidentally, is that I like the coffee ones). Firstly, we have an infinitely greater capacity for dealing with stuff than we think we do. That last straw is very rarely the last straw – the camel’s back always seems to be able to take just one more. All those people patting me kindly and telling me I was stronger than I knew, well maybe they were right. Incredibly irritating, but right. Secondly, and slightly counter to that, we seem to have a maximum worry level that is set, not by the degree to which the stuff we are dealing with merits it, but by the relative level of worryingness of the various current worries in our lives. By which I mean, if the worst thing I have to deal with is whether I’ve prepared for a presentation at work the next day, then that’s the thing that will keep me up at night. If it’s whether I’m likely to be alive in a few weeks’ time, then it’ll be that that does it. Obviously there are a few shades in between. But give me a space and I’ll fill it.

So I guess in conclusion, I can deal with a tonne of stuff, but even if I’m not dealing with anything much, I’ll be freaking out just the same. And whether I’m dealing with a lot, or freaking out at nothing, maltesers are always a big help.