(source – and seriously have you seen this?  What a beautiful combination of awesome and terrifying!!)

I haven’t posted much at all over the last week and a half.  I haven’t really been reading many blogs (I’ve shaved my Google Reader list down considerably) and I certainly haven’t been commenting.

I think my reasons for both reading and writing blogs are changing.  When I first started blogging over on LiveJournal back in 2005 it was never really meant for anyone else to read.  Just a few of my close friends in that strange clique-y locked down world that was LiveJournal.  I started a public blog on Blogger in March 2008 to make myself accountable in the whole giving-up-work-to-teach-yoga situation.

And a lot has changed since then.  I’m not convinced anymore about the public platform of blogs and social media.  Sometimes we say too much, give ourselves away a bit more than we should.  Sometimes we don’t say enough, give a false impression that life is all hunky-dory, when the reality is far removed from that.

Then there’s the time thing. I have a business to run.  It’s a realtime, face-to-face business that needs me to be somewhere far away from a computer. It takes up a lot of my time. I genuinely don’t have the time to blog like I used to and when I do I’m trying to create good content for my other website.

It’s always amazed me how much things change over time, our wants and needs, our ambitions.  Right now my day-to-day is so different to how I thought it would turn out, but I’m OK with that.

I’m not going anywhere, I just might not be here so often. I’m just trying to make things simpler for myself, especially in light of that whole Release thing.

February Intentions

1.  Write a gratitude list every day.
2. Find venue and design advertisement for Foundation Course.
3. Read 3 novels (very do-able considering we’re off to the Yorkshire Dales to do nothing for a week!).
4. Finish current knitting project.
5. Massage/Cranio-sacral/Pedicure/Eyebrow wax
6. 4x Pilates classes

January in Review

1. Floss twice a day. (DONE)
2. Up and dressed by 8.30am even on weekends. I am sick and tired of being a sluggabed! (I’m giving myself a one day a week reprieve on this one in the interest of Release!) (DONE! Except on Saturdays when it’s been more like 9.30)
3. Keep within the new household monthly budget for food shopping (which also means stricter meal planning). (DONE – really enjoying getting back into meal planning)
4. Pedicure/eyebrow wax/reflexology appointments. (DONE)
5. Do my physiotherapy exercises every day (having neck problems – nothing to worry about, it’s all par for the course!). (DONE)

People who know me well are always surprised to hear that as a teenager I hated Dickens.  Hated.  I thought his books were overly long, ridiculously rambly and life was, quite frankly, too short.

When I was 17 (the year in which, basically, I became the person I am today – I’ve been lucky like that, got it all over in one fell swoop), I read The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

And it changed my opinion of Dickens forever.

However, the thing about Drood is, as I’m sure you know, that Dickens died while writing it.  Most people think, like Mozart’s Requiem, that it is unfinished.

That’s as maybe, but unfinished does not necessarily mean incomplete.

There have been many attempts at the ‘constructed ending’ (usually by inferior writers) when it comes to Drood - most recently in the BBC’s rather odd adaptation – and, like really bad sewing, you can always see the join.

To me Drood isn’t incomplete.  I never walk away from reading it with a feeling of dissatisfaction.  I’d go so far as to say that it is perfect just the way it is.  So far as to say, in fact, that it is finished.**

We humans have an almost innate need for things to be done, for loose ends to be tied off, for everything to be tidied away.  Maybe it’s because deep down we know life’s not really like that.  There are nothing but loose ends in life, question marks hanging over paths we didn’t follow, people we lost touch with.  We will most likely die unfinished, a work in progress.  And, if you believe in reincarnation, have to come back and do it all over again, still unfinished.

But we are always trying to beat this. Rather than allow ourselves to be unvarnished we continue to search for new shades of polish. Especially at this time of year, when every newspaper or magazine we open, every other blog post we read is telling us we’re too fat, or too thin, or should eat more raw vegetables, or have less clutter.  Whatever it is, We’re Doing It Wrong and Need To Do It Better.

We really don’t.  Change happens over time.  Most of us change for the better without even realising it’s happened.  And sometimes it’s OK to remain unpolished.  No good has ever come from trying to finish Drood, no good came of adding that awful ending to Requiem. Lots of things aren’t broken, they’re just unfinished, so they don’t need fixing.

This year why not let your loose ends hang free?!

~~~~

** Much as I love Dickens now, I still maintiain he’s not very good at endings and often resorts to pantomime and farce to wrap up his loose ends.  Perhaps that in itself is what makes Drood so very very good.

As you read this I will be opening the clinic for the first time in 2012.  I’ve had a great fortnight off but I have to admit I was itching to get back to work.

(source)

These first couple of weeks of the new year are already busy.  I’ve a fully booked appointments book and I have to finish putting the final touches to my Foundation course before handing it in for final approval. How exciting! I’m hoping to have the course up and running by the end of this year, but I’m making no promises, either to myself or anyone else.  2011 threw me a ton of curveballs that I really wasn’t expecting (the invitation to become a Foundation course tutor for starters!), and my biggest mistake of the year was to try and continue with the Big Plan regardless of all the twists and turns on the way.

So this year I’m learning from those lessons and allowing myself to be a lot more flexible.  In the words of my beloved Dupree: “stay loose, stay liquid, laugh a lot.” I have no big plans, no big ambitions, no monumental life changing goals. There are a few vague plans – an Indian Head Massage course, a holiday in Yorkshire in February and an inevitable house move but other than that I’m flowing with the river!

That said, a few posts ago I mentioned The Spending Diet.  I don’t know if you read And Then She Saved, but the blog author Anna put herself on a Spending Fast to clear off all her debt in 15 months.  The Fast is too much for me.  I don’t work like that.  If I set myself up for huge huge life changes or massive restrictions I inevitably fail and then feel even more awful.  But the various ups and downs of 2011 have seen me with quite a bit more on the credit card than I would like and so Spending Diet it is.  I’ll keep you posted!

So 2012, let’s do this.  What have you got in store for me?

Any goals for the new year you’d like to share?