I don't intend to publish posts every other day but it's in the nature of the stroke-rehabilitation process that the action happens in bursts. You go for weeks without a medical appointment, without hearing from anyone in the benefits world and then suddenly everything happens at once.

Thus it was that yesterday, I had an appointment with an adviser from the National Careers Service at my local Job Centre. This was a follow-up to a meeting with a Disability Employment Adviser, with the aim being to find ways in which I can use my skills in reading, writing and talking to make some sort of a living.

I had no idea of what to expect but thought the meeting might last 30 minutes at most. After two hours, I came away with a comprehensive report about the discussion including identifying my goals for 2015, the skills I can use to help me achieve those goals and looking at ways in which I can move forward, given the mental and physical restrictions placed on me by my stroke.

It was suggested that getting involved in voluntary work would be a good move; I'm already an active business networker and it was suggested that becoming part of the voluntary sector should help me showcase my skills and my situation to a whole new range of people.

In an ideal world, I would use those skills to help people who are going through what I've been through over the past year. I would like to get into counselling, at least on a part-time basis, so I've signed up to do an introductory course in counselling skills at my local college. I'm also having public-speaking coaching; standing up in front of a room full of people doesn't faze me and I think I have an interesting story to tell, so it's a matter of polishing my skills to a level where people will pay to hear me talk about it.

All of these things wouldn't have occurred to me up until the afternoon of December 16 2013. I was a journalist who worked on newspapers, magazines and websites and wanted to stay like that until I retired.

But life sometimes has a way of taking you along fresh paths and encouraging you to do things which you haven't tried previously. Having come so close to being run over by a bus, I really feel I've been given a chance to take my life in a new direction. The year 2014 has mainly been spent recovering from the worst experience of my life. What does 2015 hold?