Looking back and forwards (part 2)

Happy New Year!!!!

I hope your hangovers aren’t too bad, and that you have lovely/exciting/chilled out/hangover-curing plans [delete as appropriate] for the rest of the day. Thanks to my man 'flu I don't have a hangover... but I do feel rough. Thankfully not as rough as I did this time last year. Yeuch!

Following on from my NYE post about what a great year 2011 was (apart from NYD - obvs!) and how I have high hopes for 2012 I thought I’d make some new year resolutions and reflect on the ones I made last year.

And seeing as they’ll now be posted here in cyber space, rather than hidden away in the back of my diary, I can be held accountable for ever more. Well, until New Year’s day 2013, that is.

2011 Resolutions

1. Eat “clean” healthier food (always good after a month of over-indulgence, train-home fast food and morning after hangover-curing junk).This one gets a tick, if you exclude December, and the nine days I spent in Rio
2. Drink less alcohol (again, always included, but particularly applicable after my painfully embarrassing NYE antics last year!). This one also gets a tick, seeing as I abstained for about two months, and reined it in significantly thereafter, with only a few minor slips. I also lost a stone in de-bloating! Score!
3. Live tidy and de-clutter my life/home/mind. I think I get to tick this one too, I removed about 80% of the cr*p in my bedroom when we re-decorated it. I gave about six bags of stuff to charity shops, sold a lot at a boot fair and set up an eBay account. Go me!
4. Make plans happen. I think I get a half tick. I started renting out my vintage china, I set up this blog and I did lots of research in to possible plans and business ideas with my Vision Buddy, Laura. Watch this space in 2012!
5. Save money. Save money. Save money. Again I think I get a half tick. I didn’t pay off all of my debt, but I cleared my student loan, I cleared more than half of my other debts and I managed to pull together a respectable savings pot, despite spending about half of it on holidays! Well… if I can’t have a holiday, what’s the point in saving…….
6. Exercise more. Yip. I think I get a tick for this. I may have stopped going to yoga at the work gym, but I got well in to the Zumba game. It tailed off toward the end of the year with all the events going on that clashed with classes. But I do intend to get back in to it
7. Be nicer to people and rise above rudeness/bad service/commuter attitude. By this I meant less snarling at below-standard service industry staff and walking away when they slap me in the face with their incompetence. I’m not going to lie. I did not achieve this. I may have yelled at a bus driver the other day, when, in the pouring rain he was incapable of grasping my desired destination, over charged me for the pleasure of half a trip and then told me I was in the wrong for not announcing my required stop in Polish
8. Make some career plans. Erm… well. Let’s talk again next year
9. Learn a new skill. Well – I learned to blog, I learned to Zumba and I learned to make cake pops. Are they skills? If so, I get a tick. If not, whoops!
10. Get glasses. Hmmmmm. My bad!

2012 Resolutions

1. Drink less (and when I do drink – keep it classy. Bubbles and high-end cocktails only!)
2. Eat healthier food
3. Spend more time at the gym
4. Take up yoga
5. Save money
6. Clear the last of my debts
7. Create a lovely family home (after buying a new one that is)
8. Throw lots of parties (in above mentioned family home) and be the Hostess with the Mostess* 
9. Be creative: make things, design things and (god forbid) cook things
10. Travel more, including within the UK and Ireland (at Christmas we get a new geography puzzle every year and it took me seconds to put together the world one and the one of the states of the USA - the counties of GB? well over three hours and even then it was mainly due to space and shape, not geographical knowledge!)
11. Aim to achieve a higher level of domestic goddessness (i.e. the lowest level there is!)
12. Spend more QT with my loved ones
13. Grow my hair (is this a resolution or a goal?)
14. Learn to Tweet
15. Say “no” more
16. Donate blood again (or attempt to. The last few times they turned me away due to anaemia)
17. Be ruthless with my wardrobe editing (I do not need everything I own)
18. Make better career plans and decisions
19. Be generally happy, grateful and more positive
20. Endeavour to make those around me happy, grateful and more positive

Ten more than last year. Let’s chat in 366 days (2012 is a leap year, yes?) and see how I did

* surely it’s not possible to be this hostessy with the mostessy in real life, with real life money, and real life time? But if it is, I shall undertake to be so. What an amazing blog!

Time

It flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?

It waits for no man. And no woman.

The years, they go quicker when you get older, don’t they?

Our body clocks, they’re meant to be ticking, right?

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick…. (anyone else seeing old men, surfboards, horses, pints? Legendary advert)

Whatever the cliché, the message is the same. TIME IS RUNNING OUT MY GOOD PEOPLE. But time for what?  

NYE outfit?

The career break?

Babies?

A catch up with a long lost friend?

Spending time with your loved ones?

Learning a new skill?

Whatever it is, people will always tell you that time is just rushing by and they don’t have time for [something], because they are so busy with [other things].

I’m the worst culprit. I sat down with Kim on New Year’s Eve 2010/2011 and went through my iPhone calendar with her and we talked about all the amazing things I had planned for 2011 and we agreed that it’d be NYE 2011/2012 before we knew it. And do you know what? It nearly is! How did that happen? I started writing this post in October, having thought about it in June. And now it’s nearly January. Yikes.

That was a conversation I’ll never forget, but I suspect it’s one she’d very much like to.

(As a quick aside, we were concealing her very early pregnancy from the party so I turned up with the usual alcohol provisions for us both so as not to arouse suspicion, and then, being the good bestie that I am, I ploughed my way through the entire lot single handedly, again, purely for selfless reasons. By the time we had the conversation about how UHHHHH-MAAAAAAY-ZIIIIING 2011 was going to be, I think I was well on the way to full on alcohol poisoning. Kim was still very much in the world of sobriety and trying very hard to deflect the attention from us as I slipped in to what can only be described as a parallel universe where I re-visited my teenage “20-20 and various snaffled spirits” years. Yes, there was vomit. Yes, that vomit was other-worldly in its hue. Yes, that neon vomit ended up on my person, the host’s carpet, and Kim’s poor husband, who really took one for the team that night. Unlike Mr G who had to head home early from his yearly NYE night shift to supervise my alcohol-induced coma-like state, but chose to retreat to the spare bedroom as I apparently assaulted and insulted all his senses. I think that day our marriage vows really were tested. 24 hours later I was still being sick, two days later I was still unable to eat, and three months later not a single drop of alcohol had passed my lips. Oh, and to add further insult to injury, this whole drama took place with me dressed in a full-on Marie Antoinette costume. Obvs.)

Anyway, back to the original topic. We spent a long time that night discussing how we had so much to look forward to, but also how little time we’d have to do it all.

And therein lies my problem. I have so much going on, I’m doing so much, seeing so much, spending so much time on “stuff” that sometimes I feel like I haven’t spent enough time just chilling out, or just having sofa time with my hubby, visiting elderly relatives for a cup of tea, or enjoying the simple things, like doing a puzzle with a friend or cooking breakfast with the family. Or, you know what, just taking the time to savour the things that I do, rather than rushing through them to the next thing.

For example, I went to Rio carnival this year. For many that is a life dream. I was so involved in the “waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, let’s go to Ipanema, where’s my glitter face paint?, quick, get tickets for the Christ the Redeemer bus” I didn’t actually stand there and think “woah, I’m doing something amazing right now”.

I know that is one of my personal traits that I need to work on. I’m always about the next thing, I’m always about booking up the future and having something to look forward to so that I’m always excited and happy. I spend very little time appreciating what I have now. I get on plane home from somewhere amazing, life changing, even, and I open the in-flight magazine to see where I should go next, rather than using a few hours to ponder what I’ve just been lucky enough to do. I’m not being ungrateful, I’m just impatient and desperate to do and have everything and I have difficulty motivating myself unless there’s a grand plan in place.

It reminds me of a Daphne Guinness quote, in relation to being offered a meal, she replied “I’ll eat when I’m dead”.

No, darling, you won’t.

I don’t care what your thoughts are on the afterlife, even in heaven, food will never be as pleasurable as it is in life. Whether it’s high-calorie peanut paste in aid packets for a starving child (donate donate donate) or wagyu beef, slathered in truffle oil and caviar, food is one of life’s simplest pleasures (as well as a necessity) and I for one will spend a lot more time being thankful for and appreciative of what I have, when I have it and I shall try to apply that mentality to more than just food.

Which leads me on to some New Year’s resolutions… which are coming soon!