A New Year's resolution - of sorts

In ten days it will be two years since Evie died. It’s a cruddy way to start 2020 but we can’t avoid it or hide from it as much as we might like to. Christmas is behind us thankfully. Now on 1st January it is time to look into 2020 and what it might bring. Our second year without Evie was horrible. Our second Christmas without her was far worse than the first. What will the third year be like, how ill it unfold and how can we influence it? A lot of what we have to deal with will be out of our control, and we will be purely reactive; the unexpected events or triggers that are always there. We can plot out many of the bad days as those dates or events are fixed. We can prepare in some small way.

But we can also influence a lot of things and setting some goals for the year, resolutions if you like, that may just take the sting out a bit. Setting those goals also gives you a bit of a target to aim at. Having a direction to head off in is critical for me, otherwise I’ll just drift. First and foremost I’m going to rest. A strange resolution, but a vital one. Despite having recognised early on that taking on more and more work was counter-productive, and putting measures in place to deal with it, over the course of 2019 I gradually drifted back into the same old routine. The consequence is that I’m knackered. The break over the Christmas period came just in time, giving me the opportunity to catch my breath at least in part. Both work and Evie’s Gift have eased off a little since mid-December, giving me time to catch my breath. For 2020, I’m going to tackle some of the jobs that I’ve been putting off, which will in turn give me some capacity back, and more importantly, might just give me my weekends and evenings back too.

I’m also going to book a holiday, maybe even two. A week away fairly swiftly, then a fortnight in the late spring or early summer. Time away from home is important because you don’t get tempted to do the hoovering or sweep the floor, you just rest. It also feels like a proper rest.

My third target is to step up the writing again. When I finished Eggshells, and then started on the second book all was okay, but then I lost momentum and it has been stagnant for weeks. That’s partly because I didn’t have the time or energy, and partly because my heart wasn’t in it. The knock-on effect of that was that I lost the cathartic nature of writing too, which when added to the fact that I have hardly done any walking either, meant that I had lost the two main avenues of healing; the last couple of months of 2019 were pretty miserable. So …. more writing and lots more walking. We are here in Pembrokeshire for a few days and have done some coastal path hikes already, but now I need to step it up and do a few 20-milers on my own.

My final target is to find hope if it exists. It is the central pillar of the second book and without it we are lost, because I can’t get the other crud back into Pandora’s box. What all of the above adds up to is that, collectively, my New Year’s Resolution is to look after myself properly; right back to the topic of my first Wednesday Wisdom a year ago. I don’t pretend for a moment that it will be easy, but it has to be done. Some of the things that I need to do will take careful handling, never my strong point, but I won’t be able to break out of this vicious spiral of fatigue and depression if I don’t. Evie’s memory deserves my best efforts and my fullest attention, because if I don’t do it, who will?

So I know what I’m going to do. What about you?