2012, the year that works

Well, due to having a birthday last week, I failed to acknowledge the need for resolutions aside from the perpetual need to shift the belly. So now it is time to contemplate what it is I want to have achieved by the end of 2012.

Having been dieting for precisely 48 hours, it is galling not to be slim yet, but I shall persist. I know how good it feels to succeed and FINALLY my head seems to be in the right place, which isn't the fridge.

I'm going to embrace FLYlady and get the clutter out, the sink shining and the house generally ready to sell, for we need at least 2 more rooms and despite hoping and hoping, no extra rooms have sprung up here. A house move is an essential for this year.

By completing one 15,000 word dissertation that I've basically written, I can claim my MSc and use that as a fresh start to my unimpressive CV.
"and I didn't know what it was I wanted to do until I realised I was destined to be a *insert job applied for*" Hopefully this year a perfect, well paid, satisfying job with a full time crèche will fall into my lap. As they don't.

I speak of how brilliantly Dickens wrote, how much I enjoy his books and so on. It is true, except I have only read in full "A Christmas Carol" and didn't even read the other Christmas Books in the volume. I am aware of the stories involved in his other works but haven't actually read them, although I have read many bits of them. As mentioned before, I'm starting with Great Expectations, which I have had emailed to me in daily instalments and still failed to read. To read the entire works this year would seem entirely unlikely but I am pledging to read a few. Well, at least one.

There's some vague things to do which seem idiotic to have to make a note to do: watch the DVDs I've bought, play the games etc.

This I shall write each day, or try to.

And I shall endeavour to go to bed a little earlier, as well as being a better mother/wife/daughter/friend. Y'know, the stuff I should do anyway.

Oh, and for the record, it's 2013 that's the year for doing interesting things. Ha.

Christmas

What Christmas Is As We Grow Older

By Charles Dickens

Time was, with most of us, when Christmas Day, encircling all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and every one around the Christmas fire; and made the little picture shining in our bright young eyes complete.

And is our life here, at the best, so constituted that, pausing as we advance at such a noticeable milestone in the track as this great birthday, we look back on the things that never were, as naturally and full as gravely as on the things that have been and are gone, or have been and still are? If it be so, and so it seems to be, must we come to the conclusion that life is little better than a dream, and little worth the loves and strivings that we crowd into it?

No! Far be such miscalled philosophy from us, dear reader, on Christmas Day! Nearer and closer in our hearts be the Christmas spirit, which is the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness, and forbearance! It is in the last virtues especially that we are, or should be, strengthened by the unaccomplished visions of our youth; for, who shall say that they are not our teachers, to deal gently even with the impalpable nothings of the earth!

Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath the holly! We know you, and have not outlived you yet. Welcome, old projects and old loves, however fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us. Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you real, thanks to heaven!

Welcome everything! Welcome alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be, in your shelter underneath the holly, to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is, sits openhearted!

Of all days in the year, we will turn our faces toward that City upon Christmas Day, and from its silent hosts bring those we loved among us. In the Blessed Name wherein we are gathered together at this time, and in the Presence that is here among us according to the promise, we will receive, and not dismiss, the people who were dear to us!

The winter sun goes down over town and village; on the sea it makes a rosy path, as if the Sacred Tread were fresh upon the water. A few more moments, and it sinks, and night comes on, and lights begin to sparkle in the prospect. In town and village, there are doors and windows closed against the weather; there are flaming logs heaped high; there are joyful faces; there is healthy music of voices. Be all ungentleness and harm excluded from the temples of the household gods, but be those memories admitted with tender encouragement! They are of Time and all the comforting and peaceful reassurances; and of the broad beneficence and goodness that too many men have tried to tear to narrow shreds.