Happy New Year!

It is just a few days into 2010. What remains of Christmas and the holiday period is quickly waning; the turkey has been eaten (or frozen) and soon even the deccies will be coming down leaving nothing to cheer the cold January nights. Still, at least the nights are getting shorter.

Tomorrow the daily grind will recommence so before I pack away the ghost of Christmas past into its cardboard boxes and plastic crate, in true New Year stylee, I'll take a moment to reflect on 2009 and make promises to myself for 2010.

So, what of 2009? My first intention for 2009 was to blog more. I think it's fair to say, without risk of disagreement, that this is one resolution successfully achieved with 48 posts against 6 from the previous year! However, they say promises are made to be broken, and my intention to lose weight and be more active fell decidedly flat! Sing Live has robbed a little bit of my time and there's the OU degree, which is in its penultimate year, so it can be tough to keep up with all the comings and goings of life and still find time for being active. Losing weight, it appears, is always going to be a battle for me. Maybe 2010 will bring a bit more success in these areas!

And so to the New Year. I'm already trying to avoid thinking about all the things I have on my plate but there a hand full of things I particularly want to achieve. I intend to try and keep up the blogging - lets aim for at least 50 blog posts in 2010! My OU course this year is creative writing, so I should be writing everyday anyway. Most of this will be in my notebook / journal because I love the feeling of writing by hand, but if I can get into a good writing habit offline, it should reinforce my blogging habits! Next on my list of priorities is to get better at looking after my money. Thanks to my marvelous Mum, who has paid for carpets for our house (we have never had carpets since moving into this house three years ago!) the last of the major spending on our home is pretty much done. This should make money a bit easier, but it is time to start paying off the credit card and doing some saving as well. It would be nice to have a little pot of Christmas money for next year so that gifts don't end up coming out of two months salary, which is always a bit crippling! Of course, having not achieved it in 2009, I am also aiming to be more active and to lose some weight in 2010. I'd like to lose a stone (that's only 1lb every four weeks so it's not beyond the realms of possibility!) and I want to use the Wii to be more active. I'll aim to use it once a week to begin with but really I want to be on it everyday that I can find the time. Finally, my softer goals. I want to visit my friends Mel and Sven in Belgium at least once this year. It would also be great to visit Anders and Jennifer in Sweden, and I'd love to see Mieke from the Netherlands this year too. I would also like to get deltafleet.com back up on the net and finish the deltafleet story, so look out for that too.

So there we go... no small feet to achieve all of that, but hopefully some, if not most of my goals can be reached. But as I said before, promises are made to be broken! ;o)