Skip to main content

New and Old Pages

I was gifted a lovely new notebook for Christmas. It is beautiful and pristine and so exquisite I'm quite petrified of using it.


But on the plus side, the new notebook has made me feel that it's ok to finally start using another beautiful notebook - the larger one with the carnelian stone was also a Christmas gift from a mere four years ago!


Actually, four years ago, I received both of these lovely notebooks.

And I'm proud to say I did use the littler one on the left straight away. It took me two years to fill up, but I used it with words I'm proud of.

(One of the things that always happens with me and lovely new notebooks is that, despite my best intentions, the notebook invariably degenerates into a half-hearted and splotchy repository of half-baked ideas that are usually, earnestly over-plotted. The idea usually never goes anywhere, and I kill the notebook's mojo.)

But that didn't happen with this notebook. I filled it with, of all things, my tweets. Some of my tweets that I'm proudest of are in here. It sounds odd - to be writing tweets into a notebook. But there you have it. My favourite tweety compositions are in there: micro-fictions, mood pieces, snippets of magical unrealities. These are pieces I would have to travel a long way down my Twitter timeline to ever find again, assuming I could remember they existed. But in this notebook, I have them at my fingertips, and they bring a world of memories, moods and moments with them.

I filled up the littler notebook shortly before my Little One arrived and it's been sitting on top of its companion notebook ever since, waiting to hand over the baton. And now, with the arrival of the new notebook, I have no more excuses.

So I thought I would start the new notebook with some new year resolutions, seeing as it's 2020 and a new year, new decade, new pages and all that.

Then I realised I'd done the same thing in the littler notebook, four years ago. Here are my resolutions from four years ago:
  • self-publish something
  • write one piece per week on my blog
  • read at least one classic this year
  • do yoga
  • wear less black
  • do something good with my photos
And you know what? These are still all things on my to-do and aspire-to-do list! I laughed when I saw the list sitting there, and yes, the laughter may have had a slightly manic edge to it. 

Ok, I've gotten one thing self-published since I first made that list, but there are more projects I've got lined up in my head. So I'm just going to go ahead and update my resolution list slightly and see how it goes:
  • self-publish the next thing
  • write one piece per fortnight on this blog (or on my self-publishing blog) 
  • read at least one book by an author I admire
  • do yoga/get healthier with eating and exercise
  • wear less black
  • do something good with my photos
They're not new, but they're still lovely and enticing goals for the year and I'm looking forward to going in pursuit of them. 

Wishing you joy and laughter as you head in search of your own goals and dreams in 2020.

I wish you all joy and success in chasing down your goals too.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Sun and the Moon

The following little story came to me while driving home one night on a dark road lit up in silver by a half-moon.  I suddenly had a fanciful little image of a car smilingly gobbling up a crescent-shaped sliver of moon-flake which helped its headlights shine brighter.  Such an image wouldn't normally find a home outside my head, but

Island Moments

I've just returned from a trip to my island home. I'm managing my post-goodbye blues by jotting down odd moments, memories and snapshots before they fade. When you travel to Mauritius from Australia, planes fly across the lower half of the island to the west coast, turn around and then come in for landing to airport. As we descended, we flew over the island, through clouds, grey and moody. As we reached the west coast, the clouds cleared briefly and we were treated to a dazzling setting sun colours warming up the clouds in gold and red. There was also a mountain peak, lit up in gold, that looked slightly (unnervingly) closer than it should have been. Then we turned, headed back into grey and landed in dark grey.  We arrived just before Divali. The airport had a display. I dusted off my rusty Creole and successfully got through Customs with a) the Customs officer understanding my Creole and b) me not having to resort to too much English. I'm calling that a win. I...

I got locked out of Twitter

So. On Sunday morning, I was up at my usual pre-dawn hour. After a Saturday of clouds and rain, when Sunday started with golden pre-dawn light, the birds got very excited and had a glorious symphony of chirruping-chitter-chatter and clear calls to each other. I put down my teacup and slipped into the cold outside to record a soothing 13-odd seconds of it.  Social media might appreciate this lovely clip of peace and zen, I thought, and shared it to Twitter and Instagram.  Well. Within 30 seconds, Twitter got its knickers in a supreme knot about the video, declared I'd violated their rules, and locked me out of my account for 12 hours.  For the record, here's the offending vid: Now, I'm the mildest of the mild social media users, focusing exclusively on things that interest me like writing, creativity, nature and animals. In other words, I don't go near the creepy edges of content that might violate Twitter ToS. Being locked out was absolutely a new experience for me. It...