It’s 2024!  A new slate.  A fresh start…many of you will be thinking:  New year, new me!

Good.

But I’m sorry, it’s not for me. Unless somebody wants to give me a three book deal, a few thousand and a trip to one of those colonic shite farms in Thailand, I can’t see The New Me happening anytime soon.  But that’s not what we mean is it?  What we really mean is that we are to list all our guilty pleasures and vow to stop them for the foreseeable.  The pressure!  

It’s not that I’m anti-change, it’s just I’m not all about making millions of promises to jump through hoops I don’t fit.  In fact, I’m not really a hoop jumper; more of a hoop swirler, thrower and general circus freak.

It’s not like I haven’t made a list.  I always do.  I used to call them resolutions.  The 2024 me calls them intentions.  Nestled next to my monthly gratitude journal, they focus on all the things that make me feel better about myself.  Positive paths I like to lead, rather than saying ‘I’m going to abstain from ANYTHING EVER AGAIN’ and that ‘I’m going to GIVE UP THE WHOLE LOT OF ANYTHING’

Not happening.

Life is too short not to have a glass of wine with dinner (it’s one glass).  I enjoy exercising but I’m never going to say ‘I’m going to work out one hour every day seven days a week’ – I mean, let’s be realistic, I’m a busy woman.  Instead, I promise myself to alter my routines for more variety.  And as for making myself miserable by owning eating a restricted diet.  Well, like I said: life is too short.

However, it’s difficult not to contemplate changing when we are currently surrounded by a media’s desire to feed us a stream of ways to refrain our thinking.  Take ‘You Are What You Earn.  The Twin Experiment’. Netflix’s latest ‘factual’ show which leads us through a thinly disguised narrative of why meat and dairy is evil and toxic, whereas, veganism is the epitome of guilt free healthy living.  A show, which was both fascinating and horrifying in equal measures. Like a film from the Saw franchise, you felt yourself uncomfortable  watching, yet compelled to watch the gruesome footage of animals living in their own shite and evidence of badly treated chickens.  

It was awful.  So awful I had to step away and think about the actual message they were trying to give:  Go vegan, lose weight, live longer and save the world!

Fabulous.  Only…

It’s never that simple is it?  Try as we might, our social consciences lead us to eat better and to consider our carbon footprint.  We think about prevention rather than cure and spend money and time trying to adopt a more holistic approach to living a better life.  But life, is that, it is to be led.  Sometimes, try as I might, I can’t live guilt free: a bit of chocolate because I need something sweet (it’s a square); a cheese sandwich because that’s all I have in (starve myself, you say?); an overflowing bin because what I’ve had to buy has ridiculous packaging (I’m thinking Christmas here!); a glass of wine on a weekend (and?); roast beef on a Sunday (organic and fresh from the farm); to name a few…

It’s all about the guilt.  It’s all why I sit here feeling terrible because I ate more cheese than was good for me yesterday and can physically feel my thighs stretching from its after effects.  

 But…eating cheese was not in my rider anyway.  

My list of intentions?  They were purposeful and positive.  Aspirational, setting my Sankalpa for how I want to think and feel.  Less of the loss of the guilty pleasures, the sackcloth and ashes routine, and more of the grounded me who takes pleasure from living a life that makes me feel happy and fulfilled (yes, I know I sound quite sickening anx Paltrow like).  I want to enjoy my life.  To wring the hell out of it: inhale every scent, see the wonderful, and absorb the beauty of what is around me.  I am desperate to experience as much as Ii can, for as long as I can.  

I didn’t always feel this way.  

I’ve decided that as my vision gets smaller, my world is getting bigger.  I spent too long feeling unworthy and sacrificial and I knew that needed to change.  I realised that it’s all about the way I frame my thinking.  I can’t change my sight-loss and I can’t change its repercussions, but I can decide how I face it.  

It’s not about what we give up, it’s about how we think about it.  

So, although I ate that cheese (my doctor will be cross), I’m not going to focus on that.  Instead, I’m going to focus on the 15000 steps I walked yesterday; the healthy dinner I cooked; the time I enjoyed with the ones o love (RosieDog featured heavily here) and most of all I’m going to keep being grateful for tbd imperfect life I lead.