2020 Goals!

This year I have several goals that I will be completing. The first one is to lose my extra weight gained through all the sad and unhappy times I have been through and I will be slim by the end of the year. I started WW again at the beginning of January and have so far lost 7.5lbs – it will be a long road, but this time I WILL do it – I feel very focused about this for the first time in ages.

My other major goal is to sort all the tons of crap out in my house, including unpacking boxes that have not been unpacked since my marriage break-up in 2000. I have a million things to sort in my house, including my late father's huge slide collection, which really needs digitising – I may well need to take some time out in my life to sort this and many other things, including attempting to get my father's autobiography published, which will be a huge undertaking – it would be wrong and disloyal to let this remain in the big plastic box that father stored it in – he typed up the entire book on his manual typewriter, so I need to type this up on my Mac – this will also take a long time to do – he choose and has a batch of photos to illustrate the book, which will help me somewhat. Since we sold the house, there are still things left to sort through and sell – my living room looks like a huge boot sale!

After clearing and sorting through everything in my house, I will put the house up for sale and I then hope to move this year. Where exactly I'm not sure yet – it will either be here in my birth county of Norfolk or I may well relocate a long way north, which I am seriously considering and have been for a long time now. I have fallen in love with Shetland in a big way and yes I have thought about all the negatives and positives to living there – I constantly think about it. Generally, property is cheaper in Shetland and I quite fancy a loch view! The birding is excellent and the people are wonderful. I certainly wouldn't be able to buy a property in Norfolk with a nice view! Our lives are so incredibly short, why not I ask myself?! Very sadly Norfolk is not what it was once upon a time – it has become over run with second home owners with huge loss of habitat through humongous houses being built – the majority of these houses stand empty in the winter months and many villages have become almost devoid of life, with only a handful of elderly local residents left, as the average wage earner could not possibly afford to buy in any of the villages or inland for that matter – resulting in only being able to purchase houses in estates/towns – very sad indeed. Greedy estate agents are also to blame for the colossal house prices. The traffic on Norfolk roads has increased hugely, even in the last ten years of me being here – its quite shocking to be honest. Even on a Winter's day, the cars queue from the Knights Hill roundabout in King's Lynn, heading back south from day/weekend trips. Scenes of cars queueing like this, only ever used to happen on a Bank Holiday weekend, but it is now a regular occurrence.

In a lot of aspects, Shetland seems to be as Norfolk was. Regular and strong community get togethers, lots of lovely friendly people, working sheep dogs and not anywhere near as many dogs kept as pets like they are here! I will never forgot spending time on the beaches in Shetland and noting that I didn't ever see more than a single dog on each beach at a time – can you imagine that here! I did not see dogs chasing birds or wildlife in Shetland at all, as they do in Norfolk on a regular basis. Everyone who visits Norfolk says how fantastic the beaches are – yes I agree, but not when they are jam packed with people and dogs, unless you like that sort of thing – I don't. I yearn for an empty beach – fat chance of that happening. The beaches on Shetland are on another level – stunning doesn't even come close. Shetland has very short and dark days in Winter and big waves – I love big waves with a passion, one of the reasons I love Cley so much, but Shetland waves in Winter dwarf the breakers at Cley! The short days would not bother me as I would need to work (at least part time anyway) and I have tons of indoor hobbies that I currently don't get time to do, including getting back to my art. I attended Great Yarmouth Art College of Art & Design when I was 16 years old and would dearly love to get back into painting and drawing again and maybe sell some work via the blog! With 4,000 views on average daily, hopefully someone would want to buy my work! This would allow me to work part-time instead of full time. The skies in Shetland are breathtaking, the scenery, the air, the birds, the people, the way of life – I'm in love big time!

On the 27th January I will be 55 years old – I don't like writing that at all, but there's no getting away from it, I'm not 18 anymore (although I still like to think so at every work's Christmas Party!). Life is so incredibly short and you don't think or understand how very short it actually is when you are young. When you are in your twenties, aged 40 seems light years away, 50's is middle aged and 60's and 70's seem such a long way into the future..... but they are not at all, they are only just around the corner and suddenly you find yourself there and asking yourself, where did that last ten years go? What have I achieved? What have I done? What should I do next? We are only all here for a tiny moment in time – time which is so precious – you only start to realise this, when you get that much older and then panic sets in....  what else do I want to do in my life before its too late?

Watch this space!