Screw resolutions that I'll forget after about a month; this year I'm setting intentions. For me, that means focussing on the process of achieving my goals rather than just the goals themselves. Goals can't be reached overnight, and it can sometimes feel like you'll never reach them at all, so I think it's really important to focus on enjoying the process and keeping perspective. As long as I am actively working within my intentions, I am creeping closer towards my dreams and, more importantly, I am enjoying the journey.

actively seek opportunities and make time to feel alive through creative self-expression

When I am creating, I am whole. The world makes sense to me and my anxiety abates. I have no excuses for my lack of creative output in recent years, I've simply let it slide and I think that perhaps I have suffered for it. This year I want to be deliberate and mindful about undertaking artistic endeavours.

cultivate simple rituals and traditions 

This year I want to take care to be mindful as I go about my days. I want to create rituals in place of mindless routines and be more present as I consciously go about the new little rituals I will fit into my day-to-day. I also want to focus on creating meaningful traditions with Tom that we can keep for years to come.

write consistently and openly

This intention is for both my own personal journalling and also for writing here on the blog, both of which have declined significantly in recent months to the extent that I feel like something of a stranger to the mediums. I want to write consistently, yes, but more importantly I want to write without bridle. As long as I continue to write regularly, I don't necessarily mind about a blogging schedule (this may change, but for now it is what works for me) or a daily word count.

take care of myself

My health, both physical and mental, can be precarious at times. If I am not careful to look after myself and listen to the needs of my body preemptively, I'll have a lot more trouble and work getting myself back to health once my body folds to the pressure. Likewise, my anxiety is something I have learned to live with - and at most times it is something of which I feel I am in control - but a little slip and it quickly takes control of me, or so it feels, which may be the same thing anyway.

Do you make resolutions or intentions for the new year? I sometimes feel like such a nerd for my great love for goal-setting and list-making, but I do find that it works well for me. Even though it's really just an arbitrary date, starting each new year with a clean slate and a brand new set of intentions feels like a good way to mark moving forward.

What are you hoping to achieve/change/do/learn/be in 2014?

our perfect little road trip

Our little trip to Melbourne and back was a very last minute decision, but so timely. We had planned a longer road trip for this time, but Tom's new retail job put a spanner in those works and it looked like that plan was off entirely. It was so exciting when we realised that we could fit in an abbreviated version of that break. 

This trip proved to be a break that we needed more than we even knew. The distance we travelled distanced us also from the burdens and stresses of the day-to-day and brought us some perspective that we could bring back home. We were able to live fully and completely in the moment and it was a glorious reminder of the importance of time spent together, of time out, of time to just be. 

We sang to bad nineties songs and classic hip hop and bickered over lyrics (I still maintain that the words to TLC's Unpretty sound more like "but at the end of the day I have no self esteem 'cos I'm so stupid"). We stopped to look at silly things on the side of the road and I took a thousand unnecessary photos of Tom's hands as he drove. 

 

We managed to stop in a lot of different little towns along the way. On Christmas day we had a little picnic lunch in Tailem Bend and then continued through to Naracoorte where we spent the night in Tom's sister's house. We drank beers outside and watched the sun set and dreamed together about the house we will one day have and the black subway tiles I am desperate to install in the imaginary kitchen. 

We managed to stop in a lot of different little towns along the way. On Christmas day we had a little picnic lunch in Tailem Bend and then continued through to Naracoorte where we spent the night in Tom's sister's house. We drank beers outside and watched the sun set and dreamed together about the house we will one day have and the black subway tiles I am desperate to install in the imaginary kitchen. 

 

The sun was setting as we left for the last leg to Melbourne. It was something of a miracle that we made it to South Yarra, what with my poor navigational instructions, Tom's entire lack of an internal sense of direction and the fact that the gps and both of our phones were flat as we made it into the city.

We walked through Gosch's Paddock (which is not a paddock, so you shouldn't mislead me to believe there might be sheep grazing outside Olympic Stadium, Melbourne!) to Swan Street and had a beer at the Corner Hotel. 

I rose early the next morning, made myself a coffee and brought it along for a long meandering stroll through the Botanic Gardens. A lot of people were running around the Tan, but I was quite happy to take my time, sip my coffee, and stop to read about interesting plants I came across. Under those beautiful tall trees I felt so small and at the same time so connected with the world around me. I took a lot longer than I had anticipated; it was blissfully quiet and peaceful and I took some time to reflect on the year I'd had and the one to come as I explored. 

Upon my return, Tom and I walked to Swan again to have a coffee (dad has a great machine but we like to sit and watch people sometimes) and pick up a couple of ingredients for breakfast. Tom made the most delectable scrambled eggs with baby spinach, bacon, and slow-cooked tomato. I felt torn momentarily between a desire to fit as much as possible into our only full day in the city and a wish to maintain the relaxed feel of the previous two days of the trip. We opted to take our time and just bask in the lack of responsibility and the change of scenery. It was the best thing we could have done.

We walked to Chapel Street, cursed the after-Christmas sales for filling the street with teenage girls with a thousand colourful shopping bags hanging off their arms and settled into a nice pub for lunch and wine. We met a couple of nice guys who told us brilliant stories about partying in London and Berlin in the eighties and how the clubbing scene changed in the aftermath of the Wall coming down. After a few beers we were lazy and just took the tram to meet Tom's old school friend, Cushing, at Richmond Station. They saw De La Soul that night in St Kilda and I wandered back into the Gardens to see Gravity at the Moonlight Cinema. 

On our way home I insisted on spending some time in nature, so we went through Creswick again and found a forest to explore. An inexplicable wave of something rather like sadness overcame me in this beautiful place, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. What was that feeling? It was terrible and it was blissful all at once and I felt as though I might be rooted to that spot, lost in that moment, for all the remaining days of my life. And then, in a flash, it was gone and I was with my love and we were ready, so ready, for whatever the coming year might throw at us. This trip had cleansed us and readied us and we are so excited and determined and the rest of our trip home is punctuated with discussions and plans for the future, for this year and the many years to come. 

 

 

christmas celebrations

I had a whole post written about our first Christmas celebration of the year because it actually occurred almost an entire fortnight before the day itself. In the craziness of the lead-up to Christmas, though, it never got finished or posted. One of my resolutions for this year is to be a better blogger, but more on that in a post later this week.

We celebrated early with Tom's family because his sister, Millie, & brother-in-law, Ben, would be (should I now say were?) holidaying in Vietnam with Ben's family for Christmas.

I love Tom's family. I love how his Grandma can't hear anything, but barely wears her hearing aids (despite her son-in-law being an audiologist). I love how she makes fun of herself and I love the stories his Mama (other grandmother) tells about being brought up by Catholic nuns and going to dances hoping to meet a soldier and the long line of girls kissing their suitors goodbye outside the hostel just before curfew on a Friday night. I love how well everyone gets along and how Tom's parents welcomed my mum to the festivities and how openly they welcomed me to their Christmas festivities two Christmases ago.

We started with an array of dips and fresh bread form the markets and then moved onto fresh oysters and prawns. There was an outrageous amount of food for dinner even though there were only ten of us. Turkey, lamb, pork, steak, roast vegetables, potato bake, three or four salads ... it went on forever. The lemon tart I made for dessert was a hit, too.

My favourite part of the evening came after dinner, though. Armed with wine and santa hats we toured the neighbourhood Christmas light displays. Ben and I developed a rating system with bonus 'trick points' for installations that made good use of flashing light patterns.

On the 22nd, Tom and I hosted Orphan's Christmas for my two best friends and their partners. The night involved a failed attempt at a light walk like the one we enjoyed with Tom's family. Unfortunately no one in our area seems to care much for Christmas so it ended up being a wine-time walk with no lights to speak of. Nevertheless, the night was perfect. Tom made a roast lamb and I made another lemon tart (because if it ain't broke, don't fix it). Good company and good conversation is the best kind of christmas.

On Christmas Day itself, we went to my mum's for brunch. I love Christmas brunch with my family. Always featured are my two favourite dips, warm croissants and seemingly endless amounts of smoked salmon. It was the perfect way to spend Christmas day. My dad was over from Melbourne so he even came too which made it even better. It's the first Christmas with both of my parents for about six or seven years I think. We drank mimosas in the sunshine and ate fruit and I taught my Popple to use his new ereader and my Nana rolled her eyes at his acquisition of yet another gadget that she cannot understand.

We spent the remainder of Christmas day driving to Naracoorte and then drinking beers in the garden as the sun set. Along the way we just had to stop and take a picture of this sign:

Hope you all had wonderful Christmases and spent time with those you love.

Back in a day or two with some words about and pictures of our little road trip. xx

little achievable resolutions for the new year

I hate New Year's Resolutions because they are always so grand and idealistic but lack measurability and accountability. How can you achieve your goal of "losing weight" if you don't have a) an end goal in sight - technically you could lose a kilo and count that as a success  b) measurable means of attaining said goal - how can you know on a day-to-day basis that you are putting in the work to achieve what you want? It's too easy to fall off the wagon, to forget your resolutions after a month, to lose focus on your goals when life gets in the way.

Most years, I simply don't make resolutions. But most years I also get to December and wonder where the year has gone and what I did with it.

So for 2014, I'm taking a different tact and setting myself some small, measurable resolutions that are achievable on a daily basis but make an overall difference to my life.

1. Wash my face every night. I never remove my make up before bed. I wake up in the morning with panda eyes and pillow face and wonder why it is that I never feel fresh and lovely come sunrise. Not any more. This is part of my perpetual goal of one day becoming a 'real adult'. Presently I am an overexcited toddler stuck in the body of a 23-year-old.

2. Save at least 10% of each week's pay. I know most people just do this automatically, but I am not most people. I am a silly person who lives week-to-week and never has money left over for fun things. Part of this is that we don't earn a great deal, but most of it is simply that neither Tom nor myself have any self-control and don't know how to save money. I'm going to make a spreadsheet and keep a damn budget. But in the likely event that I get bored of that, I'm making my resolution the simple act of putting money aside and not using it on beers when we suddenly decide we feel like going to the Exeter.


There are other things I wish to do in the year, but I don't want to treat them like resolutions. My mind changes too often. Life changes too often. We might have to pack up and move in the middle of the year or we might be in this same house twelve months from now. In a couple of days I'm going to blog about some of my plans for the year to come, but while those are dreams and hopes and