Well, what a year it’s been.
2013 has had so many highlights that I’m a little sad to see it come to an end. I got married, I learnt how to cook cauliflower cheese, I bought the correct type of bulb for our new lamp all by myself… I achieved so much.
But we must move on; 2014 will be here in just a few days and with the wedding behind me, our menu planned for the next 12 months and all our lighting equipment in full working order, I’m going to need a strong list of activities to keep me entertained for the next year.
So here it is, the inevitable New Year’s resolutions post – and, for a special treat, I’ve even included a few that I actually intend to keep.
1. Get out more
As a lover of slippers, radiators and going for days without wearing make-up, leaving the house is not always top of my agenda. But with a new year on the horizon, a bus stop 10 seconds from my house and the excellent bobble hat I got for Christmas to show off, it feels like a good time to commit to getting the hell out the front door and seeing a little more of the world. So this year I resolve to see more of London, the UK and, if I’m extra lucky, perhaps an extra country or two (though ideally the ones that have good central heating.)
2. Do more writing
As you may have noticed, I am partial to a little writing. So much so that for the past year and a half, I have written and posted a new blog post on here every single Sunday (with the small exception of the time I took off for our honeymoon – it’s good to at least pretend you find one another more interesting than the Internet for the first few weeks of marriage). And it’s been great. But next year, I’m going to do things a little differently.
Thanks to this very blog, I became a Huffington Post blogger and a Funny Women contributor this year, and I also came up with an idea for a book I’d rather like to write (though whether I can string more than 500 coherent words together remains to be seen). So in the interests of making the most of these opportunities, and keeping up with the areas of my life that inspire the things I write (twitter, the odd evening class, ghastly television programmes, relationships with actual human beings…), I’m going to split my writing energy between each of them, this blog, and anything else that might happen to come up. So I’ll still be here, but just a little less frequently, and in a less regimented way than before.
3. See more of my chums
There’s nothing like a wedding to highlight how:
a) Super swell your friends and family are; or
b) That everybody you know is deranged and that THANK GOODNESS you only have to bring them all together once.
Thankfully it’s a for us (and if it were b, this would be a very cruel way to say so) and so, this year, I want to spend more time with all of them. Whether it’s a resolution of theirs to spend more time with me is yet to be confirmed.
4. Stop looking at my phone and read a chuffing book
I don’t even want to look at my phone as frequently as I do, it’s just become a reflex, like checking that your purse is where you left it, or that your flies aren’t undone. And, as a result, it takes me four times as long as it should to finish a book because instead of making the most of every reading opportunity I get, I find myself staring at my phone screen and laughing at the latest gif somebody has uploaded of a dog wearing a jumper. So this year I will dedicate more time to stories and less to the animals of the Internet, however well-dressed they may be.
5. Exercise (if I must…)
There always has to be one resolution that you make because you have to, rather than because you want to and mine – just like every year – is exercise. But it’s not so much the exercise itself that I dislike – though if I could just take a pill that would do the same work for me, I’d stick my tongue out right now – it’s all the kerfuffle that comes with it: the complicated gym tops I always get stuck in, the sweating, the constant need for showers… it’s a wonder anybody has the strength for it. But if I want to keep eating Cadbury’s Boosts as frequently as I do, I’m going to need to see past all the fuss and get in that gym. I’m already doing better than last year because I have actually joined one this time. And if there was ever going to be anything that got me out the door and onto an exercise bike – or whatever godforsaken machines they have in those places – it was the promise of hard cash leaving my account every month.
I’ll let you know how I get on.
A very happy new year to you all.
