Wuthering Heights!

I didn’t have any resolutions for this year – I didn’t have any last year either. Not because I thought I would fail them, but really because I couldn’t think of any. Everything I am doing in life right now is a continuation of a goal I had set myself or a responsibility I had out on myself prior to the year’s beginning.

Like homeschooling, like being consistent with lifting weights, like losing weight, like reading more, like practising art skills or walking out in nature more often with my kids or adding colour in my life. All ongoing.

I suppose one thing I like to think about 2024 is that it will be ‘the year of the core’. Exploring core strength, rehabilitating my damaged core (child-carrying does things to core muscles). Not getting ‘abs’ but experiencing the deep strength that comes with a built core. Doing certain exercises, like pull-ups, chin-ups, leg raises while hanging, heck maybe even a cartwheel.

I would like to pen down this story that is scribbled all around the walls of my brain, and which seeps out from between my fingers sometimes and darts through the pages of this blog like an uncontrollable menace. It sizzles and hisses and won’t be silenced, so I expect if I immortalise it on ‘paper’ it might finally find rest, and give my brain some respite from its incessant chatter.

I finished a re-read of Jane Eyre last month and yesterday I turned the last page on that chaotic nightmare that is Wuthering Heights. It’s my fourth time reading it and I tell you, it’s emotionally unhinged. It tells me a different story each time I read it. This time, it spoke of futile hope when love and kindness are not given freely. Also that people ought to socialise with people other than their own families sometimes lest they all marry each other for want of better things to do.

Have you any resolutions for this year?

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It has to be coherent.

It has to be relevant.

It has to all tie in together.

It has to convince her that what I have written is an accepted, intellectual and innovative truth.

This essay has to be everything, else I shall be completely miserable all summer, and shan’t enjoy the long heady days in the grass, nor any anticipated travels around this supposedly beautiful country.

And two days later, I have to submit 4000 words of pure literary genius. I have to tame my tutor’s senses and whisk her emotions away in a hurricane of action, my words ceasing to be groups of letters and becoming images floating through her mind. I want her to finish reading, and suddenly slam back down into her chair as reality hits her once more.

But how to do this, while simultaneously analysing James Joyce?

Do tell me, for I am quite lost and bogged down both intellectually and creatively.

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January

Was an interesting month.

I didn’t do much to be proud of, really. I complained a lot about things and people. I was ‘busy’, rather than ‘productive’.

I did a lot of driving, a lot of writing. I spent money I didn’t really have. On things I didn’t really need.

January passed me in a bit of a blur. What did I achieve in the first month of the year?

Nothing, really. I submitted two assignments. I went to the gym three-four times a week, I got up at six o’clock every morning, witnessed some frost, witnessed no frost..

Sometimes it was sunny, sometimes a drizzle hung over the city, making everything wet and shiny, creeping up on us before we noticed it and drenching us slowly, menacingly.

I had some marriage hiccups. Some familial hiccups. But they all sorted themselves out in the end. As they do.

Did I achieve all my goals? I don’t know. I didn’t really have goals.

But I think in writing about each month of 2016, I might have a good picture of what my goals are, and how my year will turn out.

My husband said to me today, “I don’t want to chug away t work everyday. I don’t want to be like all the millions out there. I want to innovate and create and make this world a better place. I won’t do that designing lights for luxury cars while my fellow colleagues around me hobble past with mugs of tea.”

He has a point, you know.

My goals for February are to be more outgoing. Go to new places, do more things, be more creative, read more books, connect with my soul. Also get 85% in my next two essays. Also get my paints out of the attic.

That was my January. How was your January?

Why Do You Think You’ve Got What it Takes?

Well, first, what it takes to do what?

In my case, it’s to do life.

To be kind and and good, to handle adult situations in a mature way, to pass all my modules.. and with high grades, to secure a  prosperous future for myself, to follow my dreams, to give my parents their due respect and honour, to be a good wife, to help my marriage survive, to take care of my body and my soul, to do well in life, to be happy.

Well, sometimes I don’t think I do have what it takes. But that isn’t what the question is asking. It’s asking why I think I have what it takes. WHY do I think I can do what I set out to do? Assuming I already know I do have what it takes.

Which I do.

I think I do because I am passionate about what I do. I am eager and excited to get up and go. I love my goals and dreams, and I desperately want them to become a reality, so therefore I am willing to put in the extra effort and hard work that I need to put in in for that to happen.

I know the road to ‘there’ will be difficult, and I will experience moments of sadness and frustration and sometimes depression, and might even feel like giving up halfway through.

But it’s like at the gym, when you’re on the step machine, and you’ve set yourself fifteen minutes of random intensity and at the seven minute mark you think, ‘God, I can’t do this anymore, let me just get off and go on to body training’.. but then it’s 7:55 and then 8:21 and you’re like, ‘Well, I can stop at 10’ but then ten comes you’re like, ‘well, what’s five minutes, ey?’ and then fifteen minutes are up and hallelujah you’ve completed your goal and you leave with shaky legs but feeling absolutely fabulous.

That is why I think I have what it takes, because I know when the going gets tough, I can give myself those little nudges that I need to go full speed. I can speed myself up. I am a self-motivator.  I can DO IT.

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Why do YOU think you’ve got what it takes?

 

 

That List

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These are the things I want to achieve in 2016.

 

  1. Expand my painting skills by doing more painting. Especially with oil paints. I really want to be able to paint fascinating pictures full of colour and get the shadows just right, so I can put them on my walls.
  2. Write more. Oh, so much more. Finish my novel finally and try to get it published. Write ten hours a week to start with.
  3. Set up a website for my translating and editing business.
  4. Practise my Arabic reading and writing and grammar.
  5. Get really fit, and increase my daily cycling distance from 10 miles to 30 miles.
  6. Explore more places, now that I have a car.
  7. Walk for an hour everyday, while listening to informative podcasts.
  8. Follow my tastes in fashion, and stop looking like such a frump sometimes.
  9. Wear more colour, own more colour, create more colour.
  10. Be kind. Kinder. Be more open to humans. I am far too closed off and cold. Smile more.

 

That’s mainly it, really! There are probably more things but right now I am geared up to go. Well I was last week but it’s nice to start from day one.

Speaking of which, I saw so many runners when I went on my bike ride this morning. WAY more than usual. Looks like people have begun with their resolutions already!

Have you?