Happy New Year!

I’m assuming that you have made New Year’s resolutions, but have you ever succeeded in keeping one? I have managed to keep one resolution for several years, but that is probably my only real success.

It can be done!

A few years ago I decided to stop buying women’s magazines. Not that I bought lots, but every now and then I’d “treat” myself to one. Nothing wrong with that! But here’s the problem. Magazines aren’t cheap. I don’t mean they’re not good value for money, but they cost enough that I don’t like to throw them away. And most magazines look too good to be thrown away. After several years of buying the odd magazine, I had quite a few. Where do you keep them all? And, to be quite honest, the articles in each issue were similar. I was bored of endless diets and fashion and make-up trends, whereas most of the things that really interested me weren’t covered at all.

So I stopped buying new magazines and it was surprisingly easy! I reread the old ones and wherever I saw images that I liked, I cut them out and kept them in a file. This was many years before I started to design for myself, let alone others. I didn’t realise that many designers did this! My image file has expanded to include postcards, greetings cards and anything other images that I like. Now I look through my image file when I am making a mood board (and yes I do look on Pinterest, but usually I know which image I’m looking for when I go to my file).

Another successful resolution was to stop drinking fruit juice. Clearly, I am successful at stopping rather than starting something!

A better way to think about resolutions

One thing that I have learnt is that resolutions should not be restricted to the New Year. As one year is ending it is quite natural to reflect on the past year and think about how we would like to improve our lives. However, we all know that most resolutions do not last long, but we should not think that we have failed. Rather we should pause for thought, think about how it felt when the resolution was going well and recommit to that resolution. It does not matter if resolutions are broken, the thing to do is to remake them and keep remaking them.

My theme for 2015

This time last year I read a blog post about choosing a word for the year instead of making resolutions, written by Sue Bulmer, a local artist. I thought this was an interesting idea since there would then be a theme to the changes you make. So as I reflect on 2014 and think about what I should like to change, I’m thinking that I shall have a theme of wellbeing for 2015.

Here’s one definition of wellbeing:

“The state of being comfortable, healthy or happy”

I want to improve my personal wellbeing and help improve the wellbeing of others. For me personally, this will mean changes to diet and exercise as well as doing more gardening and drawing. The work with others will involve colour, yarn, knitting, crocheting and other forms of stitching. I’m looking forward to seeing other people benefit from these things.

What do you want to change in 2015?