Hello 2018!

Hope you all had a Happy New Year! We tried to snooze through it but the neighbours had other ideas which included a lot of noisy fireworks. Some of them couldn’t tell the time correctly either, judging by their half-hour late start. Just as we were getting back to sleep again too. Oh well. Hard to fault someone for having fun!

Anyway, instead of an inspirational word or anything like that I have decided that I’m going to declare 2018 the Year of the Slug!

Before you say “EWWWW!!” just bear with me for a minute. Slugs are actually auspicious creatures that the Chinese Zodiak managed to leave out. Yeah, they have their negative side but who doesn’t? However there are some very positive aspects to slugs too. Here is what I’ve learned from my old buddy Billy up there:

• Don’t rush.
  
• Go at your own pace.
  
• Smooth your own path.
  
• Wear comfy shoe(s).
  
• Take nature walks.
  
• Play in the garden.
  
• Avoid the hot sun.
  
• Stay moisturised.
  
• Enjoy the rain.
  
• Eat your greens.
  
• Chew your food well.
  
• Reduce the garbage, make compost and recycle.
  

See what I mean? Good advice, no? OK, I’m not going to advocate decimating the lettuce seedlings in somebody else’s garden and we won’t even talk about the slug’s weird mating habits. Nope. Not going there. But for me anyhow it’s going to be the Year of the Slug. Just watch me!

In other news, I’ve officially retired my first Bullet Journal and thank it for its yeoman service. I used all but about 10 pages so I don’t feel too bad about leaving it behind. Now it’s onward to my new green Leuchtturm1917 pocket-sized notebook. Or as they say in BuJo-speak: migrating.

This little beast is even small enough to fit inside my pencil case if necessary for travel. Yes, it’s a lot smaller than the more common A5 size that many people use but my life is not that exciting and my to-do lists are much shorter than, say, someone with an actual day job. I can fit whatever I need to keep track of in it - even if sometimes I’m turning it sideways in order to have enough width for the columns. I really like the dotted format better than blank pages to keep things spaced better. It’s working well so far. I’m still in the process of setting some things up but once I do, it will be fairly easy to maintain for as long as the 185 pages hold out. Theoretically I should be able to fit in a whole year. Unless I write more than I have been so far.

I’m really glad I had the original notebook to get started with. It’s given me over 4 months to make sure I was going to keep it up and to add and subtract features and logs until I think I’ve got a pretty good handle now on what I need to record and track. Of course this system is really flexible so I can continue to play with it and change things if I want as time goes on.

I’ve found a Bullet Journal excells at assisting my not-always-reliable memory. I’ve added little weather icons, when I blog or Instagram, when and how far I walk, my energy levels, shopping lists, what to expect in the post, when a project was started and when it was finished, where I put that pattern file and a whole lot of other snippets of information. All in one place and in a simple easy-to-update format. Gotta love it. I even get to use all my pretty PITT pens!

Moving right along. What’s next? I still have some healing to do and some energy to regain but progress is happening. (Even if it feels too slow some days.) Then I’m going into production mode bigtime! First the blanket needs to get woven because it’s been hovering on the UFO list far too long. Then I assess the sewing pile and make some kind of sensible order of what needs doing first. I want to get a whole wack of things accomplished before it’s time to start gardening again. And we just might go on a wee camping trip, weather permitting. But that has to happen before it’s time to plant my seedlings because once that happens, I’m chained to my wee veggie babies! Don’t trust anybody else with that job but me. However that’s a few months off yet. Meanwhile the studio is calling. Soon.