Twixtmas

So what day is it again? It’s Friday. . . I think.
It’s not Christmas Day – we’ve done that.
It’s not New Year’s Day – not yet.

It’s somewhere betwixt and between.

And betwixt is sort of how I feel as well. After getting the Greek Pineapple book finished and tweaked and accepted (still no title yet) and then going straight into Christmas preparations, I had a sort of conveyor belt type of feeling – one thing about Christmas – and a almost missed deadline – is that they focus the mind wonderfully. No chance of thinking of anything else. They both demand total attention and you don’t have a chance to think of anything else much. You have long lists of things that must be done and that’s what you reach for when you wake up in the morning. What you do all day long and what you think of last thing at night as you mentally add more things to the list as you fall asleep.

I’m good on the ‘must –dos’. Must dos get done. It’s the things that I know should/could be done. The things that would make my life a little easier, a lot more enjoyable, more organised, that I don’t quite get a grip on. I usually muddle through quite well – I wrote my contracted 3 books this year plus the teaching etc that I was committed to do - and I had a life as well but there were things I didn’t do as much as I wanted to. Or as easily and calmly as I could.

So along comes the New Year in a few days time and everyone is talking about resolutions. But the trouble with resolutions is that everyone tends to grab at the obvious – must lose weight (yes) be more organised (yes) Exercise more (yes) . . . One thing I’m SO glad I don’t have to do is resolve to give up smoking. I did that 17 years ago and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. One of the toughest too, but I knew I had to do it. Now if I had still to give up smoking, then the idea of resolutions wouldn’t be quite such a problem – the smoking would have to go and that’s all that needed to be said. But I don’t have anything that stands out so strongly these days - just what seems like hordes of things that I ‘could do better’ or ‘would like to do more ‘ - and I don’t want to just jump in and say I’ll do this this and this . . . because then my brain starts whirling. Too much choice. Too many options. And my thoughts overload as I try to think which ones matter most. I need to prioritise.

Some years ago I bought a book called Your Best Year Yet by Jenny Ditzler. This book is based around questions. Questions that make you look at your life and see not just what needs doing, but what areas are working really well. It makes you look at achievements as well as problems. Answering the questions shows you where your life is in balance and where it’s not. It’s the perfect book for Twixtmas week – the week betwixt Christmas and New Year. It makes you look at what has happened in the past and decide how you would like the future to be – and what you should do about it.

So today I’m going to pull that book off my shelf and spend some quiet time answering the questions.
Well, I will just as soon as I can find it. You see when I reorganised my office a couple of months ago, I had new bookshelves built. That meant I had to pull all the books off the shelves and pile them up - then put them all back again. And I had a deadline so I just piled them back again on the shelves in no particular order . . .

Resolution one – be more organised!

But then, it was a pretty old and well used edition of the book – I’ve had it for five years or more and used it a lot . . . Amazon has a nice new clean edition . . .

No – Resolution two – not to impulse buy from Amazon until I’ve read some of the books in my TBR Mount Everest (and the ones I was given for Christmas)

I really need that book
Resolution for today – find the damn book! (Which probably means sorting out the bookshelves)

What about you?