It's Friday night and I am home writing as I sit in my favorite chair, "Mama's chair" as it's called 'round our house. Everyone respects this, well, everyone except for the dog that is, but she readily moves when I want my spot back so I forgive her transgression. This is where I do most of my creative work, that being mainly knitting with a little writing thrown in too. Blogging though has been far from my thoughts for some time now. I tried a quick stint at video podcasting this past summer to perk my creative juices, and while fun it was quite a lot more work than I can regularly fit into my days. It was an attempt to give myself some joy and something to look forward too. You see, like many others I had a pretty stressful, awful 2016 where I just didn't have the wherewithal to share my joy of knitting with all that was going on in our lives and world. Now that the new year is just around the bend I find myself wanting to put my intentions for 2017 into the world. Figuring, probably naively, that if I set my intentions for the new year in print, give it my focus, they might actually come to fruition. So hear goes.
I intend to make more family together time. We have a very small house so we are usually all together within sight and talking range, but most often we are parallel playing as in we are each doing our own thing. I'm wanting to add simple activities like read aloud story time, a movie night, a game night, family walk and park times where all three of us, four is you count our dog Easy, are focusing on the same thing. Where I put down my knitting and my son and husband walk away for their individual games or books and we enjoy each other.
I intend to be successful in my endeavors. By this I mean slowing down enough to create items of quality in my knitting, house upkeep and homeschooling. I often find myself rushing to finish, usually short-cutting some element or someone along the way. 2016 was a year of frogging most of my knitting, partially finished home projects and a lot of homeschool angst between me and my son. So, I will slow down this year, take each thing as it comes and try my best.
I intend to take care of myself mind and body. I do well about caring for my mental health and have a good support network set up. But my body I abuse. I simply don't move enough as my favorite activities of reading and knitting are sedentary. This Christmas my back had had enough and my muscles seized up on one side landing me in bed on ice for much of the Holiday. It was a bit of a wake up call. I won't make any lofty goals, but will simply break up my day with stretches and try to get myself out walking more.
I intend to keep up with my friendships. In general I have a tendency towards holing up at home as often going out seems too difficult. This is an aspect of my depression where I need to push myself to go see people. I will then have a lovely time with them, but the getting there can be hard. So, my friends, bless them, might not see me for long spurts of time. This year I will make a better effort of seeing them all regularly and not let excuses get in the way.
Really the underlying theme in all of these intentions is slowing down. Which part of me finds funny as we're not exactly living in the fast lane, and yet we haven't learned to make time for stillness. That resting and reflecting are just as important as action. I use the word intention as I find setting a definite goal is an easy road to failure for me which leads to depression, which leads to everything going off the rails. My husband taught me years ago that instead of saying "Today I will paint the bathroom." say "Today I will work on painting the bathroom." Small difference, but in the first if I don't finish painting I have failed. Whereas in the second if I do any little thing towards the painting of the bathroom I am a success. So, I encourage you, if you're so inclined, to make "intentions" for the new year instead of "resolutions" or "goals". Then, now this is the important part, pat yourself on the back every time you make some effort towards those intentions. After all, we all need to be kinder and gentler with ourselves.
Happy New Year everyone!
Happy New Year everyone!
