Greetings fellow sinners and a Happy New Year. The year of 2024 has officially begun and with it comes resolutions and a new found purpose for reaching goals and beginning new hobbies. I wonder who took their Christmas decorations down before or after January 6 because it would be fantastic to hear that I’m not alone in taking them down before then; specifically on December 31.
One simply must learn to understand the drive to start the new year off with a clean house void of any white bearded men and jolly snowmen and a new organisational structure for the home. Yule is officially over, it’s time to put all of that away for another eleven months. It feels satisfying and relieving to be done with everything Christmas related and to be starting off the new year with a great outlook on the things you would like to accomplish for 2024.
However, before 2023 closed its curtains, I was hit with not one, but two deaths. My two babies, my hamsters passed away; Peanut on November 17 and Pipsqueak on December 24. They say you have to take the bad with the good, but no-one deserves to have that grief at Christmas time or any time of the year, but I was beyond grateful that I had the support of my family and that in my babies’ time of passing, I was right there with them.
Being a hamster Mam was the best thing in the entire world and quite frankly, they were my world and it’s the hardest thing to say goodbye to a family member. They aren’t just pets. They are family. As each obstacle rears ahead, all we can do is assess each one as it comes and figure out how to get through it.
The new year brings a contagious motivation to a lot of people with the promise of a new exercise regime, a new menu for one’s stomach, new career opportunities or starting a journal; you know, that one you always said you would start, but it has been three years now of procrastinating it.
I do recommend the journalling because it is highly therapeutic to splay your thoughts on to a piece of paper that need to be written down in order to free some space in your mind. People’s minds need to be minded nowadays.
One’s mental health can benefit greatly from keeping a journal and exercising daily. Why not take a walk around town to some of Galway’s bookshops? In amongst the shelves, you might just find your new paper bound partner that would love nothing more than for you to take a pen to its pages.
However, a new year can also bring a lot of pressures to do such things. Rome wasn’t built in a day and the Garden of Eden probably wasn’t either, things don’t need to be rushed, things don’t need to change straight away.
If you feel the need to exercise, January doesn’t have to be the set month, it could be May by the time you decide you want to accomplish your 2024 goals and that is okay. This pressure that is put on everyone should not be given the attention it does. The whole thing of you have to start now because it’s the first month, it’s pointless to start something after the first month. I’m sorry, but whoever made up that rule will be disappointed for these independent people over here.
2024 is your year, filled with your aspirations, filled with your future accomplishments, filled with your pending plans; the key word in that sentence is ‘your’ because no-one else, not even society gets to dictate your 2024 timeline.
Oh, also, three parting words; mind your mind.
