What is it about the threat of a Christmas holiday that scares people into sudden action?

For the second half of the year, the thought of the Christmas break (and possible bonus) is just about all we can use to motivate ourselves to push through another week or month. Half a breath later it’s the second week of October; the Christmas decorations are up in all the shops (what’s with that?) and everyone is entering panic mode trying to cram as much Stuff™ as possible into the last moments of workable time.

One month later and the heat is really on. Clients want things delivered, board meetings abound, and (to add insult to injury) the fecking Christmas carols jingle at you from every angle!

Here’s my question: why the panic? What really changes between the 31^st of one month and the 1^st of another, even if that change includes year change? It’s not even the end of the financial year for most people!!

And for non-business issues: surely you set yourself up for failure if you suddenly try achieve all your previous resolutions in the next 4 weeks, because you didn’t do them in the preceding 11 months? Here’s a hint: quitting smoking and losing weight are not happy bedfellows! When I quit, I ate everything that wasn’t stapled to the table (for about a month).

Maybe I’m just being unnecessarily grouchy, another thing that seems to strike at this time of year.

My resolutions for the next 4 weeks:

1. stop putting off my gym training sessions
2. finish content for the BIG project*
3. get through dreaded extended family Christmas gathering
4. remain sane

*more on this when done

I’ve been blogging for about two years, probably longer now, at another address. That blog started as a travel and personal blog, a place that was all mine. It was visited by outsiders sometimes, but mostly by people who knew and cared for me and were prepared to read my rambling posts about the weather in the UK and the latest awful temp job I was working.

After a while, because I was interacting with other bloggers, I got a small but respectable readership. This, of course, happened just in time for me to get settled enough to stop being so angsty, which consequently led to far less posting. Updates there became erratic and scarce when I finally returned to SA in Dec 2007.

That blog has served it’s purpose, but now I want a space to write about other things, without being tied into the legacy that blog represents. This is my new space, one for talk of new things.

I am not pre-defining these things just yet. And I’m not promising to be a good girl and blog regularly; I work far too hard in the real world for that. All I can say is that the blog will be what it will be, which probably isnt much and I wouldnt swop you a Coke Zero for it in a barter economy