My January

As is often the way in life, January turned out to be a little bit different to what I had planned over the last few weeks of December when I made my resolutions and plans for the year. We got back from our 10 day Christmas holiday in Scotland and Russell was straight back in work and enjoying the new challenges of his job. I on the other hand, decided to take a slightly slower approach to the New Year and spent the first week organising, planning and putting things in place for the next few months.

I have six months left of my course at Oxford and have been lucky enough to be able to be able to use those next months to focus entirely on University and my own writing projects. I began the year by carrying on with a novel I had started a while ago, I got to 25,000 words before I realised why I took a break the first time around. It just wasn't working. It was tough having to put so much work aside but I knew this wasn't the right book and so I started to brainstorm and plan other ideas. I'm really pleased I took the time out to think about it and pray about what I should write, it allowed me to really plan and I now feel I have a much stronger story and have been enjoying working on that for the previous two weeks.

I haven't talked about this on here but over a year ago a developed a knee condition known as runners knee. It was manageable for quite a while but after working for six months in retail I have now aggravated the condition and it has become a lot worse. Much of January has been spent working on physio exercises, beginning a regular practise of yoga and learning to change my lifestyle so that it works around my condition. Unfortunately January has been a difficult month where I have had to come to terms with the reality of living with chronic pain and a condition that reduces my ability to do a lot of very normal every day things. I'm not going to sugar coat it and say everything is fine because it isn't and there are some days where I feel like I can't do anything at all but I keep on pushing. With the continued encouragement and support of my husband I've been congratulating myself on the small achievements, like doing yoga every single day, and pushing myself forward. It will take a while a know and life won't be able to just go back to what it used to be but I'm proud of the progress I've made in January and will continue to work hard in February.

We managed a couple of weekends away in January. One for our anniversary in Gloucestershire where we visited The Forest of Dean and travelled around the Cotswolds, and another trip back home to Herefordshire. Its lovely to get out into the countryside and although it's only a couple of nights I find it really refreshing. We've also planned in quite a few trips for the next six months and I'm really looking forward to a bit of time away.

Its been a mix of good and bad this month but I feel like January has really helped set me up for the year. I've made plans, tried out ideas and worked out what works and what doesn't. Life is always a constant learning curve but I do feel prepared to face some of the challenges of the next few months and I am excited for what we've got planned. I hope you've all had a wonderful first month of the year. Let me know in the comments what you've been up to.