Friday 1^st January 2016

Hello New Year! 

Any New Year resolutions this year? Erhmm!…forget it! In the past I have taken time to write down a rather long list of (mainly unachievable) resolutions but today on our walk in the Black Forest I felt no need! I know what I have to do…whether I will succeed is well…...down to me.  My thoughts revolve around the dreaded ‘P’ word!

I am going to strive hard and clean up my act with regard to PROCRASTINATION.

I waste too much time doing things in order to avoid doing what I really should be doing. I can get totally involved & very busy for several hours doing things that really don’t need to be done, and alas as the day slips away, I don’t get to what I had planned to do and the end result is that I feel frustrated, which leads into a downward spiral of dissatisfaction about how I am leading my life.

I had to chuckle when reading a new years resolution, ‘my goal for 2016 is to accomplish the goals of 2015, which should have been done in 2014, because I made a promise in 2013 and planned in 2012’.

There are all sorts of speculation as to why people procrastinate and I probably fall into the category of worry of failure. I put off doing what I love doing because I fear failure. It is so crazy & absurd because I love being in the studio and I love writing and I am failing anyway by all this procrastinating.  For example with writing, I easily become blocked about where to start, what will I write about, will it be good enough, will I write my ‘ramblings’ or should I write my life story, do I write another blog, should I share what I write with others? 

So my mind is made up from this day forth…. on 1^st January 2016, instead of finding immeasurable amounts of distracting jobs, I am going to ‘seize the day!’ and do what I have got to do. Easy as that!  Well lets hope so?!  ( I will write about it).  ‘I am going to be a little scared, but that is okay! (this is my inner therapist speaking). I am going to the studio as often as I can, instead of surfing FB or looking for flats to purchase which we cannot afford and don’t even know if we want to purchase accommodation in Germany I am going to write and make it a weekly habit.

Im going to take inspiration from the filmmaker Woody Allen, who put his success down to showing up 80% of the time. I am going to top Woody …..& show up 100% for ‘me’.  ‘Ohhh!’…….. that sounds SO good to make a promise to myself to show up 100% for ME!  I am going to do the things I feel passionate about.

And before I get all kind of worryingly guru…ish on you I thought I would share another New Years quote ”here is to another year of regret, procrastination, heart ache and insanity!!”   (Katherine Owen)

Along with the quote is an accompanying cartoon of a young attractive woman holding a champagne glass, a lot younger than me and probably taken up with partying and relationships (God! if only life was that simple again!). (Note to self for 2016 I must be careful not to sum people up in a few seconds, you don’t know their story!). It was the cynical words of that quote that made me laugh! And reminded me before I was getting ahead of myself to show up 100% for ME! (I do intend to do it) that life can sometimes just be truly shitty!  Even when we are armed with exciting intentions and optimism for change, we really do not have a clue what is coming our way and can get completely derailed by life’s ups and downs.

I welcome 2016 and look forward to what the year brings. I hope you do too. However I am completely aware that there will be good and bad times to come. And it has taken me a really long time to learn that the bad times will pass and the good times will pass and that is okay and the way it should be.

‘And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us,

new, untouched, full of things that have never been’.      Rainer Maria Rilke

And well if the following is true I will have better digestion, be brave like a bobcat! Gerhard, Bibi, my family, friends & foes will be happy that I talk & hate less and LOVE more!  

‘Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours’.
Swedish proverb

Happy New Year to you my friends.