Hello 2019.

Photo by Sylwia Forysińska on Unsplash

Seasoned readers of this little space will know that, rather than set a number of resolutions for the year ahead, over the last few years I've decided to choose a word for the year instead - an intention, of sorts. I love the feeling of a new year, like a brand new notebook it sits before me fresh and unmarked and full of opportunities.

I usually start pondering which word to choose when Christmas passes, a word that encapsulates how I'm feeling at this moment in time, but also how I feel looking back over the year that was and what I'd like to accomplish over the year to come. Lots of words popped into my head but after a little thought, I quickly discounted them thinking that they would be too easy to forget as the months pass. I wanted something that encapsulated something more, the little things that are important to me but which I so often lose track off as work takes over - family; friends; my little home and transforming it into our space; travelling and discovering new places; art, writing and the time to be creative in a myriad of small ways; health; and also considering our impact on the world and what can be done to make the world a better place.

This year, I've opted for 'priorities' as my word to focus on for 2019, to help me keep sight of the all-important 'life' in the 'work/life balance' and to do my best to prioritise each of the above. 

And with that, I'll leave you in the hands of Neil Gaiman who has written many new year wishes over the years and who always manages to send a message that is both touching and empowering at the same time, and so much better than I feel I ever could:

Be kind to yourself in the year ahead.

Remember to forgive yourself, and to forgive others. It's too easy to be outraged these days, so much harder to change things, to reach out, to understand.

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.

Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them.


Hug too much. Smile too much. And, when you can, love.

****

Happy New Year to you all and thank you for stopping by over the last year, for every comment and every friendship sparked by these pages. Here's to 2019 being everything you wish it to be and more! Do let me know if you've chosen a word or an intention for the year - I'd love to know!

A festive to-do list

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Yesterday my Mum and I visited the Country Living Christmas Fair in London where we spent a wonderful few hours browsing all the festive goodies, picking up some treats and enjoying planning the weeks to come (primarily food-related!) I treated myself to a Christmassy candle, some new decorations for our tree (I do this every year!) and some amazing cheddar and chutneys, which I'm already excited about digging into on Christmas day.

I love this time of year, it's my favourite. As Autumn gets colder and crisper, the leaves change colour and fall, and then the nights get darker but interspersed with the festive lights twinkling from windows and trees. This year will be our first Christmas in our own home so it feels extra special.

A few years ago I sat down and wrote a wishlist of things I wanted to do over the festive season. It was a really good chance to reflect on what's important to me and all the little things that I look forward to this time of year, so I've decided to do it again this year.

Here are a few things that I'd like to spending some time doing over the course of the weeks leading up to Christmas and the festive period itself:

• Write Christmas cards while listing to my favourite Christmas songs.
• Crafting some more Christmas decorations - last year I made reams of paper chains and it was so fun to do and they looked wonderful!
• Go out to look at some Christmas lights while sipping on something hot and preferably mulled!
• Visit a Christmas tree farm and choose our tree.
• Buy a tub of Christmas chocolates (we're a Cadbury Roses household!) to enjoy over the Christmas period.
• Decorate the tree by candlelight - bring on all of the hygge cosiness. 
• Bake some festive treats.
• Donate to our local Foodbank and Toybank.
• Enjoy my favourite Christmas films - Gremlins, White Christmas, Home Alone, Muppet Christmas Carol, The Holiday, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Scrooged...it's a long list and that doesn't even include the cheesy holiday specials on Netflix, which I looooved last year.
• Attend a carol service.
• Partake in some favourite festive foods - mince pies, cheeses accompanied by chutney and picked onions (I could eat them on their own really!), sprouts, bread sauce and allll of the chocolate. 
• Go to the ballet - this one's already booked, we're going to watch the Nutcracker!
• Wrap presents by the tree.
• Jólabókaflóð - this is the Icelandic tradition of exchanging books on Christmas Eve before spending some time together reading. Isn't that a lovely idea? Apparently people tend to take their books to bed with some chocolate, which sounds extra cosy. We'll probably be very busy on Christmas Eve as we're hosting this year (eep!) but I'm hoping that we can make the time to do this.

Do you enjoy this time of year? What would be on your festive wishlist?

Too many tabs...

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So, I sat down with my laptop on Tuesday night to type up a Wonderful Wednesday post for the next day and...didn't get any further than the first few lines. 

I did, however, watch a TV show with my husband, catch up on Instagram and Twitter, browse birthday gift ideas for my mum and research some places to visit during our holiday next month. But if you asked me anything specific about what I was looking at or even what happened in the particular episode we were watching, I doubt I'd be able to tell you. 

I know that so many of us are guilty of doing too much, trying to cram too many things into every free moment we have and becoming distracted, particularly by social media (Instagram is a huge vice for me!) I've read so many posts about the quest to spend less time on our phones, which are a real distraction now and especially when you should be doing something else or even just devoting your time to one specific task. When did these little devices become so all-consuming? It's got to the point where I struggle to even sit down and focus on one thing without my brain constantly running through a to-do list of other things I should be doing at that very moment. So instead of just focusing on one task, I'm trying to achieve that and 8 others but getting very little done instead - so nothing is actually getting crossed off the list and the cycle repeats itself. I feel like my brain has too many tabs open and, just like they would on a computer, they're slowing everything down!

How to resolve this? As of right now, I really don't know. I suppose, like anything, it will take work and focus, which is an appropriate word for the task at hand - focusing on one thing at a time. And, as I do in the office when  I write my to do lists, I need to look at things in terms of the order of importance and just cross them off, one at a time. And, perhaps most importantly of all, recognise that when I'm doing something relaxing like reading a book, watching TV with my husband or sitting down to collect the happy highlights of the previous week, that those things are good and necessary too, so I shouldn't have to try to cross off other must-dos at the same time. Just being a little more mindful in my actions.

Are you guilty of the 'too many tabs' mentality too?!

A poem.

I've never been someone who has really appreciated poetry. I remember liking some of the poetry we studied at school and enjoying some of the poems that my husband has shown me over the years we've been together but I've never felt the urge to pick up a poetry book and just lose myself in it, as I would with a novel.

But last weekend I was listening to Cerys Matthews' show on BBC 6 Music while I was getting ready to go out and she was talking to William Sieghart, who founded the Forward Poetry Prize. He said that people turn to poetry in times of need and often the challenge is finding the right poem for the right difficulty. This made perfect sense to me, that sometimes you discover things and they stay with you when you need them most. 

He then read out a poem which gripped me so completely that I forgot what I was doing for those few moments and just listened. 

It felt like the perfect poem to read at the beginning of a new year, with all its new adventures to come, because how dull would life be if you planned every moment and knew what was to come around every corner? I'm sharing it here because I thought you might like to read it too - who knows, perhaps this is the right poem for your difficulty too?

What If This Road by Sheenah Pugh

What if this road, that has held no surprises

these many years, decided not to go

home after all; what if it could turn

left or right with no more ado

than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin

were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,

that is shaken and rolled out, and takes

a new shape from the contours beneath?

And if it chose to lay itself down

in a new way; around a blind corner,

across hills you must climb without knowing

what’s on the other side; who would not hanker

to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know

a story’s end, or where a road will go?

Hello 2018.

Hello hello and happy New Year to you!

It feels like forever since I last sat down at my computer, loaded up this page and tapped out a post...about 4 months ago. There was no sinister reason for my absence, or even an exciting one. It was just that little thing called life getting in the way as usual.

Over Christmas I stumbled across a link to Susannah Conway's Unravel your Year workbooks. I downloaded this year's and sat down on New Year's Eve to start working my way through it, unravelling 2017's highs and lows, and noting down my dreams and plans for the year to come. It's a really lovely idea and something I think I'll try to come back to year after year. It made me take some time to take stock and, what I think was most important for 2017, to look for the good times in a year that I've really struggled to see the good in. It has monthly reflection posts for 2018 too so I have no excuse not to check in and do the exercise on a smaller scale each month.

As I was completing my workbook and thinking back to January 2017, all those months ago, when I wrote this post about my chosen word for 2017 - 'balance' - I came to realise that despite my best intentions it's something that I'm just not very good at! When things get stressful (and 2017 really had its moments!), I often lose sight of what's important to me - the little important things that I need to keep me going and retain a sense of self. For a while there I couldn't even focus on reading and hello to the 4 months hiatus on this little space! In fact, looking back at last year's post, I said exactly the same thing at the end of 2016 (perhaps the lead-up to Christmas is particularly stressful?!) which in turn made me feel even more stressed because I hadn't achieved enough/done enough/ticked enough off my to do list. I think the quest for balance in my life is something that will take time and I don't think I'm alone in that.

It took me a while to decide what to choose for this year's word but I eventually landed on 'kindness' - kindness to others is something I think I'm ok at (right, people who know me in real life?!) although that's also not something to ever stop doing, but to be a bit kinder to myself and to try not to heap so much pressure on these shoulders. Practising self-kindness will involve reading, yoga, blogging, more adventures with my love and saying no more. As a dear dear (half Danish) friend said to me, "you need to find more time for hygge!" and that's particularly pertinent on this chilly January evening. So instead of listing 801 things that I should be doing tomorrow, I'm curled up by candlelight with a big mug of tea, a chocolate egg (because yes, they're already in the supermarkets!) and catching up on some of my favourite blogs. 2018's off to a good start.

What are your plans for the year ahead?

Hello 2017.

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."

 - Neil Gaiman

I've never been a great one with new year's resolutions. I would sit down, think hard and write a long list of things, which I would valiantly abide by for about a week, then spend the rest of the year feeling ever so slightly guilty that I just couldn't manage the life overhaul I'd imagined for myself at the beginning of the year.

A few years ago, I decided instead to give myself a word for the year, which I find a far less oppressive solution. You see, I like the idea of a new year being a fresh start and a chance to make some important changes or set out some goals, but without all the pressure that a list of resolutions imposes.

I've been thinking about what to choose for this year's word over the Christmas period and I've decided that my word for 2017 is 'balance'. The last few months of 2016 were exhausting and, until I had a little time off in December, I felt as if the weeks were racing by and I was struggling to focus on anything apart from work and a series of seemingly never-ending to-do lists. I love my job and I really feel like my career is going in a direction that I'm proud of but I want to make time for other things too, which I know will only help me to be more focused and balanced in all aspects of my life.

So how to bring more balance to my life? This year, I'm planning to really set aside some quality time with my husband and friends, exploring more of this amazing city/country of ours and putting my phone to one side as much as possible and really give all my attention to these moments, which can be so fleeting. At the same time, part of the balance I think I need will be learning to say no when necessary - that may take some work. I want to pay more attention to my health and focus on some me-time, by reading more, getting back into yoga and taking some time for crafts and baking (which I loved doing during my days off over the last few weeks!). I think it'll be an important lifestyle change for me but one I can implement gradually and which will make me happier, healthier and more productive in the long term. I'm excited!

Starting as I mean to go on...with tea and a good book.

What are your plans for the new year? Have you made any resolutions or chosen a word to live by over the coming months? Whatever you've decided to do, I hope you have wonderful, peaceful starts to 2017. Here's to the year ahead!