Happy New Year's Resolutions!

The first week of January is always a mixed bag of feelings. No matter how involved or indifferent one has felt towards the holiday season, there always seems to be that lingering post-festive introspection that sticks to your shoe like a discarded piece of chewing-gum.

No need to get flustered, it's only the New Year! (picture source)

In the cold and somewhat harsh glare of New Year's Day, the fairy lights round the Christmas tree look like they've lost their twinkle and at the same time you take notice that said tree is shedding and that gets to you. There is that slight awe enveloping the whole ambience of the day over the prospects of that New Year, hopes and fears, even disillusions and regrets about what should be but probably never will...

Then the New Year's resolutions get in the way of any possible reprieve from it all. No matter how light-hearted you may approach this, it seems we can't get away from making some mental note, some vague promise about how to conduct that New Year.

Via Tumblr

Some of us get into impossible pacts with ourselves that are sure ways to fuel pressure and depression once the first pangs of determination start wobbling off. And to this I only have one simple piece of advice to give you: be kind to yourself. Life is harsh enough out there, so who wants to throw a spanner in the works of the natural course of things, when full-blown recession and the extreme fragility of world peace are breathing down our necks like a chill down the battlefield?

As always my resolutions are fuzzy, but this year they flirt with the fun side. They're all about the lighter things in life, like travel, shopping, entertaining and socialising. My resolutions also include less materialistic endeavours: to explore my artistic capabilities further and to stretch my mind down the road less travelled, out of my comfort zone, like I did in the second half of 2011.

Life is a personal journey, a personal discovery of self, if anything. And that is a worthy year-round resolution in itself, that beats them Nicorettes and Weight Watchers resolutions, don't you think?