A More Exciting Life

Christmas is nearly upon us. How did this happen?!? Just a moment ago it was early November and there weren't very many signs of the festive season out there yet and all of a sudden it's all in full swing. This happens every year, too. I never seem to learn. I'm going away this Christmas, in fact I'm going away in about a week's time so I'll be missing a lot of the lead up to Christmas. Hooray for the holiday but... as much as I'm looking forward to lazing in the sun for two weeks, I'm also a little bit sad for missing out on Christmas at home in London. Christmas under palm trees won't quite be the same as Christmas in ...um... wet and cold London, will it? What I won't miss though is the manic hunt for Christmas presents that seems to have lost all proportion. A few years ago I was dangerously close to stop celebrating Christmas all together because I was finding it very stressful to try to come up with ideas of presents for my love...

I was hoping to go on a hike today as I mentioned in  my last post . Too many things were working against that, though, so I'm spending the day at home, which is of course the far less exciting option. Work, deadlines, that sort of thing. I've also managed to develop an ear infection so best keep myself warm. I have signed up for an event with the hiking club in question in the new year so I'm not completely chickening out of it, really I am not. I really would've wanted to do that walk today, the weather in London was perfect for it (for this time of year anyway). I am, however, happy to report that I'm getting into an exercise routine again and really starting to enjoy it. I quite often start an exercise routine but then something happens like an illness that makes me stop and take a break and after that it can be difficult to get into it again. Once I do, though, it actually becomes addictive and even exciting. Y...

Just about everything in life becomes more meaningful if you can share it with others. The Swedish have a wonderful proverb : shared joy is a double joy, shared sorrow is half a sorrow. But - what if you don't have very many people in your life to share your joys (or sorrows) with? It doesn't make life very exciting. In fact, it can make your life incredibly dull. I'm speaking from experience. I'm very aware that if I had more friends living near me to have fun with, I don't think I would in the predicament I'm in and quite possibly this blog wouldn't even exist. It's not that I don't have people in my life, it's just that my closest friends live hundreds of miles away. No good. Solution? Make new friends. Easier said than done. I've lived in London for a few years now but I've been struggling to meet new people here. I'd had some unpleasant experiences before moving here and had closed myself off from other people in an attemp...

Every year I buy myself a small diary, one of those week-per-view ones, and I write down friends' and family members' birthdays and other important happenings. I also write down if something special or fun happened. Well, I used to. These days the poor diary gets to come out of its drawer very infrequently, certainly not daily. Once per week maybe. Looking back at this year I stare at empty pages because I've written so little in it. Yesterday I had a bit of a eureka moment. I can't neglect my pretty diary anymore. I must put it to good use! No more depressingly empty pages, something must go in there. I took the poor thing out of the drawer where I keep it hidden from the view and wrote down under the appropriate day that I'd had a really nice workout (my 2nd having started again after a break) and that I'd watched an interesting interview on YouTube as part of this project that I'm doing. Not massively important things either one of them but I felt...

I realise that I've failed to tell you about some recent events in my life when I should have been shouting about them from the roof tops in the style of 'finally something exciting is happening in my life!'. I'm going to correct that here and now and tell you about my visit to Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago. Ah, Edinburgh. They call it Auld Reekie (that translates to Old Smoke) but I think it should be called the Jewel of Scotland or something similar. Edinburgh is beautiful. It's one of the most beautiful cities I've been to, and lived in, too. Och aye. Hence this visit up there to say hello to friends and visit my old haunts. In a way Scotland is home to me even though I'm not from there. Just getting there from London is very enjoyable. I love travelling by train - you just sit back and enjoy the scenery, what's not to love? Add a good book to the mix and I'm in heaven. 4.5 hours flew by as did towns and cities along the way, people ...

I'm taking my list of things to do by the end of the summer to a whole new level. I'm going to create a bucket list. You know, things you want to do before you die. In a way not a very cheerful thought but at the same time quite elating, I find. I have a list of goals I want to achieve somewhere and even though I'm sure it's titled 'Things I want to be/do/have before I die', it just doesn't quite have the same ring to it as a bucket list does. There's an urgency attached to 'bucket list' that appeals to me right now. Something that I hope will keep it from getting buried under a pile of invoices, bank statements, to do lists etc. I'm very aware that the reason I'm thinking about writing my bucket list is because of the mid-life crisis I'm going through and the slightly panicked thoughts I'm having at times, such as 'there's not much time left anymore while I'm still more or less able' which is sort of ridiculous ...

It's been a while since my last post (I know, you've heard that before, my apologies). No, I haven't just been hiding from the world, being boring and bored, I have actually done something useful too. And I've been boring. And bored. But not too much. Last summer I set myself some tasks to do before the end of September ( you can read about that here ). They were: a walk in coastal Sussex in late July/early August, g o to a West End show/musical, g o to Notting Hill Carnival and j oin a group (any group). The positive thing is that I went to see Mamma Mia! the musical, on my birthday no less, combined with a nice meal with a friend, and I've joined several groups. Doesn't that sort of make up for the fact that I never went to Sussex or the Notting Hill Carnival? Especially as I've just been to Edinburgh for a long weekend? Beautiful Edinburgh, Scotland The less good news is that I've been in the grips of quite a severe midlife crisis in the past...

I love reading self help books. I have many and I read them over and over again. I hardly ever buy novels although I'm reading them constantly, I get them from the library and I'm very happy to return them there after I've read them. But self development books - every now and then I buy a new one, usually on Amazon, and look forward to them being delivered more than I look forward to Christmas. Ho ho ho! I also have a habit of dipping into my books whenever I feel I need specific words of wisdom or encouragement so I have this stack of books on my bedside table that just keeps growing because after a while I remember I liked some bit in another book and how good would it be to read that again and so I look it up in yet another book that I place on top of the pile... One of my favourite books at the moment is Hero by Rhonda Byrne (linked to Amazon UK). Rhonda Byrne is also the author of such books as The Secret , The Power and  The Magic . I love The Secret, I must h...

My list of things to do by September is coming along nicely (read the story behind that here) . Soon after starting it I remembered something about setting goals: they need to be SMART. That's Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound. (Can you tell I'm a trained life coach? Not a practising one though, except on myself). 'A walk on the south coast of England' looked very nice on my list but admittedly also a bit vague. I mean the south coast of England is quite a long stretch of land and what I had in mind was a day trip to coastal Sussex or thereabouts. Cornwall, yes, want to go there too but too far to get there and back in a day. So I did some research, found the part of the coast I particularly want to see and wrote down 'A walk is coastal Sussex in late July/early August (pick a date according to weather reports)'. Looks much better, doesn't it? It's a much more detailed and clearer instruction to myself. How likely am I to ba...

Today I caught myself thinking that.  What?!?! Am I not working on that? Yes but apparently not hard enough. It's been a tiring week and this time my bored inner self was clearly thinking about something quite big, massive even, not just some little every day things that I've been trying to make myself believe would make much of a difference. Well they can do but this time I was thinking about a big exciting change in my life. How many times have you caught yourself thinking that? 'I wish something exciting happened in my life!'. I've lost count how many. But this time I was a bit cleverer and asked myself back: well what could this something exciting be? Here's what I answered myself: I was offered a new, exciting job. Like, truly exciting, dream job sort of affair and a better salary would be a nice bonus if not quite necessary. Somehow I got to live in a big posh house. By myself or with a partner. I met a wonderful man and we fell madly in love, li...

It’s been a while – again – but I could say as an excuse that I’ve recently been busy leading an exciting life. Hooray!  I went on a hiking holiday in early June, hiking in several national parks in the US Southwest, places such as Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, Arches National Park, Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon. It was hot, it was beautiful, it was thrilling and most of all it was an amazing experience that most certainly was exciting. And how I pondered about booking it at the time, thinking it was going to be too expensive (read about that here) . Well yes it was expensive but it was worth every penny I paid for it and I don’t think about the money at all anymore. It was an experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life.    Bryce Canyon in Utah, US. Doesn't it look amazing? I loved the colours.  Soon after coming back home I went to watch some grand slam tennis at Wimbledon. Now that was really coo...

It’s May! How wonderful. Now it won’t be long till summer’s here (if you're living in the northern hemisphere that is). I’m still living sugar free (read about me quitting eating sugar here) and feeling all the more wonderful about it. Quite surprisingly, soon after I left sugar out of my diet I had the urge to start spring-cleaning so I've been doing that but it didn’t seem to be enough that I had my living space clean, my mind was pushing me to do more, to dive below the surface and open drawers and cupboards and get rid of unneeded items stored in there. It’s as if my mind wants to get junk completely out of my life. How peculiar I thought but really good, too.  I've mainly been working on three different projects relating to this. One. I’ve had an urge to work on unfinished projects and to finish them. You know how when you have something that you started but for some reason stopped working on it and put it somewhere to wait for the next day and months later it’s st...

Image courtesy of rakratchada torsap / FreeDigitalPhotos.net I’ve always had a terrible sweet tooth and comfort eating is something I’ve done a lot during the years, usually when stressed. And I mean quite serious binge eating here; a pizza washed down with Coke, followed by sweets, ice cream and/or various other things, often for several days in a row. And even when not stressed, I would indulge on Coke and chocolate after lunch at work, thinking that it would alleviate the boredom I felt about having to get through the afternoon. I fooled myself into believing that chocolate could make it better.   Of course it couldn’t. it was a very temporary help and soon after I’d either feel uncomfortably full of sweets or was fighting against the urge to go and buy some more to supposedly get me through a terrible afternoon slump, fooling myself to think that more sugar would give me an energy boost when I knew better. It would only make it worse.   I wasn’t always ...