That List

 

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?

The Temporal Length of the Universe

Hello.

Today the sun is out. We were promised an Arctic Blast this week. The wind as it blows is icy, but my legs were warm as I pumped them in the sunshine this morning on my way to the Glass Library. I needed to get there quick, to make the most of the shorter opening hours for New Year’s Eve.

I forgot it was New Year’s Eve. It’s just like any other day to me. Nothing remarkably special. We are celebrating another revolution of our planet around the sun. The moon will carry on controlling the tides, the winds will carry on blowing across the marshes, cows will continue to graze, blinking their eyes lazily, unknowing.

The world doesn’t know that it is entering a ‘new year’. It just hurtles towards it, carrying on as it always does.

The only reason we celebrate it is because we have a meticulous time-keeping system. But I like to think that time doesn’t particularly care for our recording of it. It plunges ever on, nonchalant. It glances it through the window at the party, gives a little smirk, and on it rushes.

We, of course, in our own little planets of life, are oblivious. Putting our make-up on, combing our hair, showering, writing lists of resolutions because 2016 is IT. It is the year we take charge of our lives and lose weight (or gain it) and become successful entrepreneurs and become the perfect versions of ourselves because 2016 is a new ‘beginning’.

But it isn’t really. Time is older than any of us. Time is older than the universe. To Time, 2016 is another year to add on to the billions. Another weary revolution, another flash through someone’s life.

Time will continue to hurtle and plunge and soar and sail, growing ever faster as the years are packed on to our ages.

Those are my thoughts for today. I hope your day today is time-worthy. I hope mine is too!