We’re 12 days in and already it feels like longer than that.  New Year’s Day began with the youngest waking at 12.10am with tummy pains. Around 4am we finally got to sleep after hours of to-ing and fro-ing to the bathroom. Here’s hoping that that wasn’t him setting the tone for the year.

January is usually one of my favourite months. My sister, my dad, my brother and I all have January birthdays. Snow drops appear. People are more relaxed than in December. The days feel a little brighter with the promise of spring in the air. I try to make a fresh start on some things – keeping the house clean, making time for writing, getting up early – and keep it up for a while.

This year though January has been hectic. Everywhere I turn there are things to be done and by the time evening arrives I haven’t the energy to do much except hit the sofa or go to bed. All of that has kept me from doing a few things I really wanted to do. I had planned to join in my friend Sadhbh’s linky 17 from ’17. It is her annual link up for bloggers to review their year and I find it a great way to look back on my blog’s progress and see how far I have come in the last three years. (You can read my 2015 and 2016 posts here and here). I simply hadn’t the time or the headspace to write it though and it is getting a bit late at this stage.

Another annual post I wanted to do was One Year One Word which Kate from the brilliant blog Kate Takes 5 got me into last year. Last year’s word for me was focus, this year’s is well. I really hope to get a post done on that still, but don’t hold your breath. Even if I don’t get the post done, I have at least chosen my word and will be coming back to it, mentally if not on here, again and again throughout the year as I did last year with focus.

Lately I have come to the realisation that in a lot of matters I am my own worst enemy, standing in my own way. Back in December I began a blog post on that but it needs reworking. It is still in my drafts folder. Instead of putting it across that I have had a eureka moment, the post reads moany and depressing. That’s not how I feel. But I do need to step aside and let myself get on with what I want from life instead of getting sidetracked by day-to-day crap that doesn’t really matter. Yesterday on the way to work the U2 song “Get Out Of Your Own Way” came on the radio. I hadn’t heard the song before. We’re very much behind in terms of pop music in Germany. Listening to it, I nearly started to cry, as if Bono and the lads were sending me a personal message.

So if you happen to notice me blocking my own path, standing in my own way or closing myself into a cage, let me know. Give me a shove. Yell “let her pass”.  Or at least ask me to justify why I am doing it.