The power of redemption

Monday 1 January

6 degrees, cloudy at sea level with blue skies above

2018, an 11 year, and my super lucky number.  I am a great believer in the starting over principle offered by the 1 January.  Redemption for the sins of the previous years and not even an inch of the new year has yet been nibbled.  Instead of resolutions, things to be achieved and what a good time of year to think about what can be done.  No gardening, no work to speak of, no great lists of things to do which take up time but do not use it usefully - the difference between being active and being productive.

1.  I will be productive rather than active

I have started by unsubscribing from the newsletters which clog up by various inboxes.  And so I will feel able to read the ones which interest me, such as the wonderful Brain Pickings, run by Maria Popover, which describes it as an Inventory of a Meaningful Life

https://www.brainpickings.org/

This fits the productive category very well as it is stimulating and leads to further reading and, often, phrases or ideas pop back into my mind when working or driving.  Little insights from bright minds, or warnings from ones plagued by dark thoughts.

I will lick my blogs into publishable form and find an agent.

I will do craft instead of thinking about crafting and buying yet more crafting stuff

I will start cooking from my cook books instead of just dusting them



2.  I will do things which are important but not urgent.

Steven Covey introduced the idea of the Time Management Matrix in his 1988 book, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  Time is taken up by the following activities

• urgent and important.: your baby/dog needs feeding, your boss wants the report
• urgent and not important: things which you wail about on Facebook, saying you dont have time to do them
• not urgent and not important: social media, trivia, trashy telly
• urgent and not important: vocation, planning, exercise

Urgent because they are things which contribute to your real happiness, your future and your health.

I have put my daily step counter up to 8000 and joined the igloo challenge on Samsung to do 200 000 steps.

I will write every day on this blog.  (voice in my head saying, oh God, that was really hard to keep up in 2015 - other voice saying,  yes but now you have something to edit)

I will start sending letters and postcards to friends.  Remember how lovely it was to get a letter?  I havent had a letter from a real person, filled with chatty news, since the 1980's.  I found one in my dressing table drawer, from Mrs Noddi, and in lovely lavender ink, written with a fountain pen, and addressed to me when I was down in the YMCA in Watford.  It still makes me laugh, as she writes that she must go because if she told me everything she had to tell me, she would have to go on, and on, and on, and on, and on (turn page) and on.... 

Can you remember the last letter you received?  Who was it from?  Do you have any old letters?  I also found a postcard from my Aunt Laura, on a Christmas visit to Las Vegas in the 1960s.  She lived in another and more glamorous world.  One filled with sparkle and glamour, Elnet hair spray and kalaedoscopic patterned A-line dresses. We lived in rural Lancashire with hot and cold running damp. California was a very, very long way away;

I will make new friends - ones who I can ring up and physically go and see.  

I will learn something new.  I did ask OH for a ukelele and he bought me walking sticks and a rucksack.  (nb I will learn better communication skills) (nnb and buy myself a ukelele).  I will contact the rather strange lady I met in a bar, who said she would set up ukelele lessons.  I have never seen an adult with pigtails before.  Then again, our little town is chock full of oddities.  Makes you wonder what the French think of us, as they have no reference point other than what is in front of their nez, usually holding a water glass filled with wine.  Oh the embarrassment of being asked if I wanted a French glass of wine (holds up small glass) or an English one (holds up vat)

I will stop buying things to fill the void.  And I will stop drinking coffee every time I go out.  I must fritter ten euros a week, easily.  Almost the price of two English vats of wine.....

I will put 1 euro in the large pickle jar every day.

I will stop being a people pleaser because I hate myself for it.

Lastly, this year I am going to be glamorous and go through the door feeling good.  And not catch a view of myself and think it is the mad cat woman from the Simpsons.

And really, really lastly, I will sell our lovely house and we will set off to new horizons.

Sad update:  dog is no longer; we lost him on Bastille Day.  He is mouldering in the garden, by the stream where he loved to dig.  I like to think that the sun will warm his old bones and he will dream of chasing frisbees and leaping from haybales and eating cheese and opening his Christmas present. RIP Teddie.  It is not the same without you and we are the poorer for it. xx