I started 2019 with a promise to be a bit kinder to myself. Sounds good, clear and worthy, right? Wrong. Because for me, being kinder to myself involves a weird and sizeable gamut of Things That I Should Probably Stop Doing and Things That I Should Probably Start Doing that range from the typical (eat a bit less, move a bit more / start writing again to fix that chronic writers block situation you’ve got going on) to the atypical (6 cans of Diet Coke in one day is straight up mental, please stop it / try to leave the house without being covered in cat hair occasionally).
Faced with this horrendous mess of necessary lifestyle changes, my innate need to plan forced me to realise there were a few clear parts to the story of my 2019 ‘self improvement journey’ (apparently this is a thing). So what better way to start my blog than to introduce you all to the themes I’ll be blogging on this year.
Read on to find out more about how David Suchet is scuppering my evening plans, why I can’t look at a cheese and onion crisp in the same way anymore, and why the structural integrity of my property is at risk.
Part One: Work Life Balance
A large part of this whole ‘self kindness’ thing for me is about getting a better work life balance. Not because I work ungodly hours (I don’t anymore, which is lovely) but because my job stresses me out and leaves me all mangled and mentally misshapen in the evenings and weekends. This isn’t healthy and leads me to doing mad things like clearing cupboards out at 11pm on a Sunday night or having dreams about my colleagues wanting to share a bath with me whilst eating cheese and onion crisps.
Now, I love my job, so whilst I harbour aspirations to go freelance one day or make millions from writing children’s books (one needs a realistic plan b, am I right?) I have no intention to be packing it all in just yet. The goal, therefore, is to make the most of my free time, live better in that free time so that I can do my best work when I’m on the clock, and to do anything (and I mean anything) physically possible to avoid nocturnal visions of Graham from Accounts and his rubber duckie.
In practice, I’ll be doing a bit more of what I love, a bit less of sitting on my arse grinding my teeth over an ill-phrased email someone sent and trying to dodge that ‘sleep, work, eat, repeat’ reality that’s crept in for me over the past year.
Part Two: The 30-Something Cliché
I’m in my coughmidcough 30s now, so it’s alright to be a little bit more padded than I was in my 20s, isn’t it? And it’s perfectly normal to feel slightly winded after going up two flights of stairs in the office, right? And fish fingers, chips and beans on one’s lap in front of a repeat of Poirot on ITV3 is definitely a totally acceptable meal for an adult woman in a senior management role, no two ways about it. Oh, the lies we tell ourselves.
I do not have the excuse of a toddler and that post-baby weight that goes with it – I don’t think pedigree cats are what usually springs to mind when I tell colleagues I have a 7 year old and a 3 year old. The only excuses I have are a lack of sticking-power, a tumultuous domestic travel schedule with work and a penchant for late night cheese and crackers that’s made all the worse by a suspected lactose intolerance. So 2019 will be the year of moderation – I don’t plan on following some whacko diet, but I do plan on trying to make better choices and finding fun ways to burn off the many inevitable snacks (not as kinky as it sounds, I promise. It’s not that type of blog, guys.)
But that’s just part of the story – we need to address the elephant in the room: that Belgian moustachioed legend, Poirot. No, really, what is a self-respecting coughmidcough thirty year old doing watching David Suchet of an evening? Yep, you guessed it, I’m going to try to broaden my horizons hobby-wise in 2019. Heaven help us all.
Part Three: Stuff, Stuff and More Stuff
I have a lot of stuff. I trip over books, cats and piles of things regularly. I have a wardrobe full to the brim with things I never wear and a whole ottoman bed full of shoes – and this is despite executing my very best attempts to clear everything out last summer.
I’m hoping to move house in 2019/2020 to somewhere with more space (namely, a home office and a bit more room for visitors), so it’ll be important that I have a jolly good clear out this year. Most importantly, however, it is for my own wellbeing. I can’t keep having to move things to get to what I want every time and quite frankly my 1800s cottage will probably not hold up under the sheer weight of stuff for much longer.
It ends this year. Time to be ruthless. Join me as I weep over the ceremonial chucking of scarves I haven’t worn since 2002, pray for me as I avoid the temptations of eBay and laugh at me as I sneak out at dead of night to retrieve said scarf from 2002, now covered in potato peelings and cat litter, from the wheelie bin.
So there we have it, folks: three noble quests for 2019. Do you have any aspirations for 2019 or have you had any equally creepy dreams about colleagues? If so, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. Over and out!
Good(ish) Intentions 