Our way
Of the holiday season, New Year’s Eve is my favourite day and I still have to wait one whole day for it.
Having had the feast on Christmas Day (turned out really well, despite some miscommunication), and cleared it and the left overs away (final meal today, largely thanks to visiting friends and relatives), I consider what I would like to happen next year.
I don’t make resolutions. I do set targets of what I think I’d like to look back on and think “I did that” this time next year.
This doesn’t mean the plans are unfolded in January – on 31st Dec 2005 I decided I was going to learn to ride a motorbike. It took until April to save up enough to buy a small bike, so that’s when consolidation happened. The next year, I decided to learn the piano (like the motorbike, not something you completely achieve in a year) and started by buying a descant recorder on the basis that was significantly cheaper and if I didn’t stick with it, a piano was not a reasonable thing to get.
I bought my electric piano in June. It cost less than the motorbike and I got to grade 4 over the next 5 years.
It’s very hard not to just focus on clearing the mortgage, because that shouldn’t take the whole of 2024. It’s a notable achievement but a bit empty, if you know what I mean.
I normally try to think of something I’d like to be able to do, somewhere I’d like to travel, and something that would help enrich my life. I appreciate that for many the first two items would do that, but I’m talking more about the day to day things that make life easier or bring a smile to my face.
On New Year’s Eve 2017, we made the decision to put in fitted units to our bedroom and facilitate reorganising our ensuite for example. Thanks to lockdown, the ensuite wasn’t done until 2021, but the task was significantly easier thanks the groundwork undertaken in 2018.
Of course, being in a partnership, it’s not just about me. My husband is looking at building a path to our back fence and inserting a gate so we can walk and get our paper on a Sunday more easily. This should be an easy task but the fence is a little unusual being completely custom. Which may mean completely replacing the fence.
A year long task, perhaps?
BSL has become a GCSE option, so I could do some groundwork on that. Our niece has moved from America to the Netherlands, so that’s somewhere to go… Happy New Year x
Posted: December 30th, 2023 under 42.