welcome 2015

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s!

I’ve had a quiet few days, spent mainly resting and reading and knitting and watching Gilmore Girls. The last weeks before Christmas were a rush and I was plain exhausted when the holidays rolled around. Lots of decorating plans didn’t happen due to that but I did manage to bake a late batch of german Christmas ‘Plätzchen’ on the 24th.

We went hiking nearby on the rare dry days, to stretch our legs and try out the hiking guides my mom had given me for Christmas.

I desperately needed those days off. At first I didn’t even think I was going to do a “hello new year, let’s recap and hear the resolutions” post this year, feeling somehow drained and uninspired. After a bit of rest I can manage a little reflection and goal setting though.

2014 wasn’t an easy year, even though there were a number of wonderful experiences (a three week road trip in Canada and a wonderful few days in Scotland to name just a few).  Still, I struggled with my own expectations and limitations. Something I haven’t written about on this blog before is that I’ve been battling a chronic pain issue in my lower back for 1.5 years now. I don’t want to go into this in detail, I’ll just say that anyone who has ever dealt with chronic pain knows that it gets to you in a very nasty sort of way and keeping that at bay is hard and humbling.

That said, I am glad to see 2014 safely behind and I’m much looking forward to 2015. I have some plans for the year, including a bit of travelling that I am very excited about. Looking back at last year’s resolutions I think I didn’t do too badly in 2014. I made progress on the healthy eating front and spent more time outside. I did blog a bit more and grew my business (both the portrait business and the shop). Some things didn’t work out – I definitely need to work on less online time and less comparing myself to others again in 2015 – and there were times when I just had to sit back and accept the fact that I had heaped my plate too high and needed to let go of some things for a while.

In 2015 my main goal will be balance, both physical and mental. I need to listen to my body and accept the limitations it sets me while at the same time pushing myself just hard enough and getting back into exercising regularly, knowing it’s good for me in the longterm although it may be hard and sometimes painful. Not an easy balance to strike.

If you are looking for motivation to exercise, here are three great projects I have come across in the last few days:

• 30 days of Yoga with Adriene (thanks to Sherrie for the tip!), a free Yoga course on Youtube. You can sign up here.
• My Peak Challenge with Sam Heughan (yeah, the hot guy from ‘Outlander’). Set your own challenge and support cancer research at the same time.
• 30 day plank challenge. If you have just a few minutes a day this is a great, fast way to strengthen the body!

I will definitely try to do the 30 days of yoga (but will have to see if it’s possible to stay with it, depending how my back reacts to it) and I am thinking of joining the Peak challenge as well. My Peak this year will be an actual one – I dream of hiking up Ben Nevis on a new visit to Scotland in the summer. In the meantime I will train by going on regular hikes here at home.

As for other goals – healthy eating is a continual one and slowly, one step at a time, I am getting better at it and hope to settle even more into a routine in 2015. I need to be creative to be happy so carving out time for knitting, sewing and other crafts is important to me. Business wise I am looking forward to expanding my knowledge in photography (there is no end to learning, ever!) and focusing more on what I really love doing.

How do you reach goals? I can only speak for myself but I find I need to get very specific about them, setting time apart each week to work on them. I find scheduling this pretty easy, the sticking with it no matter what is the hard part (no surprise there).

What are your goals for 2015?

 

 

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