Typically, I woke up this morning in a crappy mood!! Not the way I was hoping to start the new year! I spoke to my mum and best mate Lizzy and all is looking much brighter… Their enthusiasm is really kinda infectious! All that twinned with having a quick listen to the Mumford & Sons channel on YouTube, has changed the start (I really recommend Mumford & Sons… Four Irish Folk Badboys!!)

Last year was my year of change, education and philosophy.. And I will be honest, it has been a real eye opener. I generally am a lot happier within myself, bar this morning ofcourse. So more of that this year!

What this post is really for is to wish you all a very happy, prosperous and productive new year. If you fail at your resolutions don’t wait again til next year, just give it another go! Someone famous once said ‘To change one’s life, do it immediately!’

Good luck and ‘onwards and upwards’

This post is maybe a little off track for what is the norm on here but I have been thinking over the Xmas period.

I am not religious. I have my reasons, which I will not bore you with but this makes it a tricky time to explain the celebrating of Xmas. I call it Xmas as I have learn that I celebrate a commercial festival not a religious one. This year even, apart from my 2 beautiful nieces, no presents were bought.. We donated all ‘purchasing power’ to charity (My family are all lucky enough to have everything we need so why not, instead of buying the usual bollocks, give everything to people who aren’t as lucky as we are?)

There was an advert on the radio over Xmas that said, ‘Christmas begins with Christ… See you in Church’. So, me being me, looked into this. What I found was that nobody knows the actual birthdate of Jesus, but the whole festival was invented by the emperor Constantine. His reasons for this were to mirror the Pagan festival for the birth of Mithras, which runs over our Christmas week, and to hence aid the conversion of the Pagans to Christianity. Unfortunately, for me, that nullifies Christmas in its entirety.

So I began thinking.. For people in my situation, would celebrating New Years Eve with a similar gift giving scenario as Xmas Eve not be a clearer plan. We could give gifts on the premise that they are tools for personal advancement for the next year and celebrate our ‘better selves’ as we so often do with resolutions?

Just a thought