New Year Resolutions
North East Quine
Purgatory Host
in All Saints
Here are mine:
1. Prepare and organise for Christmas throughout the year, to avoid a stressy December.
2. Study Gaelic in an organised and sensible manner (prelim in February, exam in May).
3. Get fitter / lose weight / feel more energetic and positive and cheerful. Do more gardening for a win/win fresh air / exercise / nice environment to sit in and enjoy.
4. Continue what appears to be a winning formula of ignoring housework as much as possible, then intensive tidying and cleaning for visitors. Thus freeing up time to focus on writing.
1. Prepare and organise for Christmas throughout the year, to avoid a stressy December.
2. Study Gaelic in an organised and sensible manner (prelim in February, exam in May).
3. Get fitter / lose weight / feel more energetic and positive and cheerful. Do more gardening for a win/win fresh air / exercise / nice environment to sit in and enjoy.
4. Continue what appears to be a winning formula of ignoring housework as much as possible, then intensive tidying and cleaning for visitors. Thus freeing up time to focus on writing.
Comments
Spend money on books and time on reading, rather than on computer games.
Aim for at least one art/painting day a week.
As for housework @North East Quine I'm waaay ahead of you in the ignoring.
Redacted x 2
Boring section
Fitness / Diet - plan made, implement plan
Organise games collection, decide what to donate & sell
Organise finances better - aim not to run an overdraft
Sort under stairs cupboard
Fun section
Complete Baldur’s Gate 3
Try Civ 6 with the Barbarian Clans option
Organise city break for next period of leave
Start drawing again
Start poetry again
Me, too!
@Gramps49 This feels like it needs a hug. Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you too.
Yep, I did get slammed for using AI the way I did. Just trying to make light of it, though.
This is mine.
Woo hoo! I retired at Memorial Day this year. I highly recommend it. Not working is definitely working for me.
I've officially put off retirement until 67 but I think in practice I'll go on until at least 70 if I can. I quite enjoy my job and I like the structure - it would be too easy to let things slide, until I'm regularly staying up late reading into the small hours, and not bothered about getting out of pyjamas the next day, unless I have to go out.
That said, 2023 has been a year of staggering failures and disappointments. Our community food gardening project fell apart because we had no power for the irrigation pump and floods in October washed away topsoil and retaining walls. Our adult literacy campaign lost government funding. I had to withdraw from writing and translation projects because the power cuts meant I was missing deadlines and holding everyone up. Worsening global conflicts and atrocities make many of us scared to look at the news each day. What I need this year is to build resilience and have no idea how to do that.
May 2024 be kinder to all of us.
@Lily Pad it's all so relative to context and expectations, though. When I've spent time in the UK working and living there, life seemed so easy, manageable and safe for the first few months and after a while I'd find myself complaining about late buses and bureaucratic snarls and bad weather like everyone else. Then I'd fly back to the national airport in Harare (Zimbabwe) and discover the electricity had been turned off at 6pm, so passengers had to buy handheld torches to find our way though the airport and try to locate luggage heaped onto an unmoving baggage carousel in pitch darkness. Different challenges, and for those enduring war or famine it is so much more extreme.
1. Complete the dispersal of the late Mr Puzzler’s things and some of mine as well, then clean the newly exposed areas prior to some redecoration. Deadline -end of March.
2. Make some holiday plans. I am not brave like my 19 yr old granddaughter about to embark on a solo trip for two months. *Being rather unadventurous and very risk adverse this is not easy.
3. Sort out some new priorities for my life as a single, not quite elderly person, before it is too late. * see above.
Like @Puzzler , not really a resolution but Mr Nen and I need to do some serious sorting and decluttering this year. We may be moving house, in which case we only want to take with us things that are necessary and/or valuable (to us). We may not move house, in which case we don't want to leave the Nenlets with all this to sort out when we're no longer here.
@puzzler, there are lots of companies out there that specialise in solo travel. I hope you find a holiday you fancy.
Took me a while to work that out!
I do hope your eyesight isn't a serious problem.
Nah. Just regular 50s rigid lenses. Can't get on with varifocals so it's infinity or what my reading/computer glasses are set to.
Floaters are the real bugger.
😞
My brother stingingly told me so.
So I resolve to enjoy myself more.
'Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think / Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink.'
I do find it hard. I've had a lot of upheaval and bereavement on recent years and now the elder Gamaliette wants nothing to do with me. 😞
She's said that before but generally soon comes round. It's worse this time though ...
I dunno.
I've sort of retired but still do bits and bobs. I suppose my resolutions, as well as what one could call spiritual 'rule of life' ones would include:
- Walking, hiking and cycling more.
- Catching up with old friends.
- Perhaps going on some organised solo holidays rather than short breaks where I either knacker my knees or end up in a French A&E. Where do I find out about those?
And start writing the novel I've been thinking about for years and years.
Hate to say it, @KarlLB , but have you been checked for cataracts? Floaters seem to be a feature of my ‘baby’ ones. 🙁
I have eye tests annually.
Floaters get worse as you age as do cataracts They're not as far as I can see related however; cataracts are opacity in the lens, while floaters are bits shed from the retina floating in the vitreous humour within the eyeball.
If anyone wants to approximate what it's like seeing through my eyes, put on a pair of sunglasses a little bit darker with grease marks, dirty specks and a grey smudge in the centre of one lens with distortion around it. For the full untreated effect, stare at an Impressionist painting.
That cheered me up, in a weird, Impressionist kind of way. Sounds similar to my experience. Bar that apparently, my baby cataracts are unusual in that they are scattered round my eyes, rather than being concentrated in the centre of the lens. The optician got quite excited at the sight!
Years ago, I saw a poster on sale at what was then the Henry Doubleday Organic Gardens (they've since changed their name and I can never remember what it is). It was of a tree with 12 branches, one for each month, and the idea was that you coloured a leaf in each day to show what the weather was doing, and at the end of the year you had a colourful poster which was also a record of the weather.
Last year I was given a large hardback book with pale green pages, for art projects, so I've just started using it as my Weather Tree book, with a tree for each month on a separate page.
Also I'm trying to reblog more fan artists on Tumblr, so that more people can see their work.
I’ve bought a second hand treadmill, it’s in the shed which I’ve set up with light, heat and electricity. I do walk the dogs a lot, but not fast enough so I want do do some fast walking for half an hour a day to improve my fitness. Wish me luck 😂
A good friend of mine goes on lots, she loves them. I’ll find out for you what the firm is.
Bright lights always have haloes which isn't actually unattractive, especially on Christmas trees. I'm told that when you have cataracts treated and can see clearly again you suddenly realize how dirty your house is!
My resolution for the coming year is to start travelling abroad by myself. The prices for solo travel and hotel rooms really are pause for thought, but I don't want to give up and spend the rest of my life confined to this island.
I can back up the dirty house statement, patients would often mention it.