It’s the time for making New Year resolutions and becoming ‘the new you’ if you read newspaper and magazine articles. I’ve never really been a fan of this time of year because it always seems to be a time of negatives, whether that’s giving up smoking, going on a diet or starting some punishing exercise programme.
The problem of negatives and giving something up is that it has a hard line between success and failure. One slice of cake and the diet has gone out of the window – or so people would have you believe.
This got me thinking. Instead of focusing on the negatives, I’m going to start with a positive of being kinder to myself and look for ways to give myself a break.
So, as you’ll guess from the headline, my resolution is: stop rushing!
Because I live in London, during the week I’m in an almost constant state of forward movement. Navigating your way through crowded pavements, past crazy cyclists and motorists while trying to get a train to get home for dinner, means you live life at breakneck pace and in a state of hypervigilance. In fact, I felt stressed just writing that sentence! And when it comes to writing time, it’s either a few half hours sneaked in here and there or forcing a week’s work into three hours on a Saturday and Sunday morning.
This isn’t a good way to work. It’s exhausting and means that my writing isn’t the best quality. I’ve been frustrated recently that my editing isn’t going as fast as I’d like, and therein lies the problem. Trying to race forward means not taking time to get it right.
There’s so much that I want to do with writing that I’m rushing to get one project done so I can start something else. And as you might imagine, this isn’t good for my state of mind or my work.
So at the start of this year, I’m writing down all the projects I want to do – and I mean all of them – and then I’ll decide what I can actually achieve in the next 12 months. This will mean dropping some of the things that I want to do but if I don’t give enough time to each individual project I’ll be doing a disservice to my readers by producing substandard work.
Hopefully by this time next year I’ll have met all the goals I’ll be setting myself and will still have my sanity!
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