Hello 2021

Hello 2021. Hello February. Hello beautiful blog I've long neglected. How are you? Far from your glory days, we've no celebrities and authors sharing the things I've written here. Surely the only people reading now that I don't write my blog or promote it will no doubt be people I went to high school with who are curious about where I am in life.

I'll oblige. 
I'm living in Yorkshire with the love of my life and our five pets. Yes. FIVE. I was content with the first three of that five: a cat and two dogs from the same litter. Then my wife went to Pets at Home to shop for our pets and saw an appeal for a sad, lonely guinea pig they had there who had been very unwell. With all of his brothers and sisters sold on, he was alone and needed a loving home. OF COURSE my wife had to adopt the little guinea pig who needed to learn how to love. Duh. So Seymour the guinea pig joined our family. If you know anything about guinea pigs, you'll know that they have to ideally live in pairs as they can otherwise become very lonely. So we got him a brother named Thistle. My wife and I are blessed to have been working through the pandemic. I know things have been crazy and inconvenient but I can honestly say that I am so blessed for the time we have been able to share together during lockdown after lockdown. As an introvert I've relished the additional time at home. 

Our upcoming plans in our future involve moving house at some point, in over a year, and we are hoping to move to Scotland. We're not yet sure where in Scotland we'll move to but it's something we decided a few years ago and have been thinking about it ever since. We bought our lovely little house a few years ago and, though we love it, we're ready to move somewhere new in the next five years.

As the new year is still pretty fresh I thought I would share my New Year's Resolutions as I so often do on this blog.

What do I want to achieve in 2021? Well, with COVID being an ongoing issue, certain things are out of our control. Travel, for example. We've not been abroad since our honeymoon. The plan last year was to go abroad twice - we had talked about a week in Greece and then a mini break in Dublin. COVID uprooted all these plans. That said, I was wondering if a trip to Gibraltar would be possible. Though it is a small island off the coast of Spain, it is actually UK territory. I fancy some sea, sand and proximity to monkeys. Perhaps this is a loophole to go somewhere nice this year as, with Brexit and COVID travel restrictions, it is still technically the United Kingdom, right? We'll see.... 

This year, my resolutions are:

- Wear make up more. With lockdown, I've hardly been going out so I've not really been making the effort to look presentable because I simply don't have to do so. That said, I so often use make up to express myself and to feel good even if it's not for other people... and who doesn't like to feel good?

- Take a nice selfie once a month. It seems so simple but I struggle to sometimes see beauty in myself but when I'm older, I'll look back and think differently. Life is short and needs to be captured. I take photos of all manner of things in my life but I'd like to have lots of nice photos of me at different stages of my life and with my ever changing hair colours (right now it's dark green)

- Write. I'd fallen out of writing. Even in the first lockdown when I wasn't working I just sort of .... didn't write even though I had all the time to do it, nothing inspired me. That said, I've been writing a lot today. Perhaps the spark is slowly coming back. I shall endeavour to write more as I love being creative and just needed a reminder of how much I love writing 

- Read Lots. I did a lot of reading in 2020 due to the lockdown and simply want to continue that this year. Readers make good writers. Most recently, I finished reading Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay. It is.... very relevant to our current global situation. I am now reading a book about the emotional lives of animals. I like to alternate between reading fiction and non fiction since last year I endeavoured to read more non fiction. 

- Renovate. There are lots of little jobs around the house we want done and, again, COVID has made that hard. I've got a large roll of carpet I needed measured and fitted and we wanted to hire someone to do it but, with lockdown and restrictions, we haven't been able to and thus it has sat there for months and months. So I'm hoping by this time next year: the spare room is painted, the side and glass panels in the upstairs bathrooms have been replaced, the new carpet has been fitted upstairs, the kitchen cupboards have been painted. I'll leave it at just these as they seem achievable with everything going on. I think this is the year we also finally cave and pay a gardener to come once a month just to tidy up the greenery. Not now, though... the whole garden is covered in snow. But come spring, I'll be looking to hire someone to turn our Secret Garden into an oasis... 

Aaaand I think I'll leave it there for resolutions. There are other resolutions I'd love to put on my list but, with the current COVID situation, they're out of my control so I won't put any pressure on achieving them. What this past year has taught me is that I cannot control everything. Sometimes we have to let go and let life lead us. 

Anyways - who knows when I'll next write on this blog, eh?
Maybe next year for more resolutions...