Crafting an Incredible 2013

We spent New Year's Eve with friends this year: in a little village just outside Shaftesbury. It was lovely to catch up with everybody and even lovelier to wake up to sunshine on New Year's Day.

Anyone living in the UK this year will recognise the significance of these photos! This small miracle grew into one whole sunny day without rain! A much needed lift to the spirits after a very wet Christmas and months of grey, rain and flood warnings.

In fact, this sunshine on New Year's Day inspired me to re-write completely the post I'd planned. Suddenly what I'd intended to write seemed too bleak, too retrospective. 

New Year is about looking forward, not back.

It is about hope. 

So here's the new improved version of the blog post. A post about my word for the year (in place of resolutions).

For 2013 my word is HAPPINESS.

This may sound a little odd, so let me explain a little. Recently, I stumbled across Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project. Sometimes these things appear in our lives, as if by magic, when we need them most.

Or as the Buddhist saying goes "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."

And, as I devoured Gretchen's book, I realised that I was also "not as happy as I should be" with the life that I have. So it's time for a change.

In 2013, I intend to spend time focusing on the following (amongst other things):

•  getting to know myself as I am now, in 2013
• discovering what makes me happy 
• working on improving areas that cause me stress or unhappiness
•  finding ways to lift my mood 

I will be finding ways to be grateful for the life I have and ways to appreciate things around me. I intend to notice more and I will have more fun.

While I was planning my own Happiness Project (and thinking "how will I find time for all this?"), another 'teacher' appeared in my life. Another chance web link led me to Leonie Dawson. Her enthusiasm and joyous approach to life have been a huge inspiration in the few short weeks since I found her site! I will be using her 2013 Create Your Incredible Year Calendar & Workbook to help me fit these resolutions into my year and to start moving towards some of my other goals: personal, spiritual, business and financial.

 So with a little bit of creative time management there will be time for all the things I want to do. Time to grow my business, update my websites and get to grips with Twitter. Time to spend with my long-suffering OH, with family and with friends. Time for organisation and de-cluttering. Time to make things for me and my home as well as things for sale. Time for fun and time for relaxation.

Well that's the theory anyway!

I have so many things I'd like to achieve this year that if I only complete a quarter of them I'll be a very happy girl! I'll keep you posted with my progress...

I'd love to hear what you have planned for 2013 and any resolutions you have made.

Reflections on 2012

If you were following this blog at the start of 2012, you will know that, rather than set resolutions for the new year, I decided to give myself a word. 

The word was organised.

(If you'd like to read more about my decision, you can read the original post here)

You may be wondering how I got on with the word: whether the change of focus meant that I managed to keep to my resolution this year. 

I have had a look back over the year and with the magic of hindsight I have to say that it was reasonably successful. After a highly motivated start (Oh, for the love of... boxes and January round-up), the momentum definitely slowed. Sometimes I felt very discouraged at my lack of progress (and occasional down-right failures) but looking back I can feel that something in my attitude has shifted. 

So what areas of my life have become more organised?

My craft supplies, organised way back in January, have stayed reasonably well organised (with a bit of tweaking for new purchases) for the rest of the year. 

My second year's tax return was completed online a full two months before the paper form deadline (and five months before the deadline for the online form). This was a huge contrast to my experiences in January and, although I still had to fight myself to get started, it was much easier to complete this time. I also had the added pleasure of seeing tax deadline adverts/reminders and being able to congratulate myself! I have also set up better systems for organising receipts/invoices and another for recording income/expenditure. I hope that this will save me even more time when it comes to filling in next year's tax return!

I have made a start on decluttering and, although there is still a lot of work to do, I am beginning to find it easier to let things go. I have managed to get rid of lots of stuff but still haven't even started on the spare room!

And what has been less successful?

I haven't found a routine for cleaning and tidying that works for me. I go through phases when I'll stick religiously to a routine and then something will come up. Missing one day discourages me so completely that I tend to give up entirely and then I still have to clean or tidy frantically when visitors are due!

 Schedules also need more work. I have tried several different ways to manage my time this year and none of them have been 100% successful. I have tried Sunday Summits (planning every hour of the week ahead), the Pomodoro technique (writing a to-do list and then working through in priority order in 25min intensive sessions) and writing a schedule each evening/morning for the coming day. Although it is evident that I achieve far more when I allocate my time efficiently, I generally slip back towards days when I don't. Budgets and expenditure records seem to be just as hard to maintain as cleaning rotas and schedules!

Another thing that fell by the wayside this year was my participation in the Pintangle TAST challenge. Although it seemed like a good idea when I signed up, I had not really appreciated the effort that would be involved in completing the tasks each week. When the pintangle website moved, I rethought my involvement, decided that I wasn't doing the challenge for the right reasons and dropped out. This was a bit of a shame but I will continue to develop my embroidery skills at my own pace.

What have I learnt from my experience?

1. Organisation is a very broad topic - during the year I have thought about most of the following: schedules for my work day, cleaning routines, personal finances, timing, procrastination, decluttering, tidying, business finances and paperwork.
2. I have very high expectations. I am critical of failure in others but even worse when it comes to myself.
3. It isn't possible to change everything overnight - some of my attempts at organising something didn't work the first time, often because I was trying to change too many habits at once.
4. I want to be organised in some ways more than others. For example, I wanted my business finances to be organised more than I wanted to establish a cleaning routine. Hence, I suppose, the success of one project and the failure of the other: the stress of impending tax deadlines far out-weighs my need to have hoovered stairs. Maybe, now the most pressing areas are more organised, I can start work on the next priority.
5. Some people set an impossible standard. My priorities are my own and I don't need to compare my way of being organised with other people.

A huge thank you to Alida at Your Powerful Mind for her help and encouragement in this (and other areas). I'm not sure I'd have kept up the momentum so long without you!  

How will this affect my 2013?

I will continue to experiment with daily schedules, cleaning routines and budget trackers until I find ones that work for me. I will continue to fight the urge to procrastinate. I will continue to work on my consistency.

This alternative to resolutions has been refreshing and I will definitely be repeating the approach in 2013. It has given me the opportunity to slip for a time and then pick up where I left off. I don't feel that I have "failed" to keep my resolution in any way because I have made progress and never expected perfection. Organisation will continue to be important in 2013, as I strive to raise the bar closer to where I'd like to be, and it will be combined with my resolutions for the new year. 

I have so much planned for next year - I'll be back in 2013 to tell you all about it!

Roll on New Year! I'm ready!

Thoughts on New Year

Thomas Mann, in his novel The Magic Mountain, said 

"Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning if a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols."

And after the ringing in of another new year, I suppose there is an element of truth in his words. One year rolls into the next without much variation and, in our modern age of technology, there is barely even a lull in activity over the Christmas period. We can still shop 24:7, we can still communicate at any time and the usual rubbish still fills TV network slots.

But there is something special about New Year. It is something like the feeling of starting a new exercise book at school: the unmarked cover; the crisp, blank pages. It has promise. It offers a fresh start. 

New Year is all about hope.

In the northern hemisphere at New Year, the winter solstice is behind us; we can once again look forward to lengthening days and to the approach of spring. We no longer have to fear the cold seasons (as our ancestors would have done) but we still feel excited by the prospect of returning sunshine and warmth. 

This excitement drives us to make the resolutions that mark this time of year. As with the new exercise book, the promise of the new year compels us to dream. This year we can be anything we want to be; we can start afresh on that first blank page.

I have thought a lot about resolutions this year. I have had little success with them in the past. I fear my approach has been wrong. I have attempted the usual list (lose weight, stop biting my nails, read more poetry, etc.) but have always been defeated within days. I then feel completely discouraged, that I have missed my opportunity to change. But why? It is, after all, slightly absurd to expect to be able to change the habits of a lifetime overnight, with no real incentive to do so! Why now? Why does that kind of change have to be a New Year thing?

So this year I am attempting something new. I am not making a resolution as such, instead I am giving myself a word. It is a word that, at the moment, I cannot attribute to myself (anyone who knows me will agree!) and is certainly an area of my life that needs work! My word for the year is organised. I am not saying that by the end of this year I intend to be the most super-organised person on the planet: more that I intend to focus my thinking on how I organise myself, my time and my things. I would like to form new habits rather than try to break old ones.

I have made a start. 

The crisp, blank pages of diary and calendar have absorbed their first ink. I am organised when it comes to family birthdays at least. If it is part of human nature to mark and compartmentalise time, I'd like to make sure I spend as much of it as possible with the people I love and doing the things I enjoy.

So for 2012, I wish you health, happiness and success - however you choose to fill your blank pages...