….this is the year I turn 29. The last year of my twenties will be full of closure and reawakening. Getting rid of negativity and sorting through the hard stuff and coming out refreshed on the other side. I will take the time to smile more at my children and my husband. I will practice yoga full of intention and focus. I will learn patience, practice it, and, in doing so, teach it. I will laugh not only at the miseries and ironies of life, but also at the pure joy of it. 

….this is the year I take full responsibility of my life. I realise that there is no else to blame for the things I don’t achieve, for the things I grasp at yet don’t reach. I know I hinder myself with all the excuses I make in my life. I will take a deep breath when I wake up and be thankful I am alive to cherish the day. I will take a deep breath at night and be happy with who I am. I will take the time to organize my thoughts, my ‘to-dos’, my life. No more excuses.

….this is the year I take the reins. I will no longer wonder what it’s like to run for 1 kilometre, or two or three. Instead of pushing away activities because I’m tired, I’ll push away laziness instead. I’ll take my children to the ocean even if it’s cold outside. I’ll play outside for hours. I’ll teach my children to respect our earth and relish in the wonders it brings. I’ll photograph the beauty of it all, but sometimes I’ll be having too much fun to take my camera out. That’s okay. Memories are in my heart and my mind, not just in a photograph.

….this year I will live in the life I want to live. No more excuses. The grass is only greener where I water it. 

xo

Fab Brunette

ps. What does this year bring for you?

This post is part of a series entitled “Things I Would Tell My Younger Self…”

I have a bit of a confession to make. When I was young, my mom did everything for me. Everything. And by “young” I mean until I moved out at 20 years old. She would make my lunch, clean my room, do my laundry – literally everything she would ask me to do but upon showing no initiative to do it (and leaving my room a mess for weeks on end) she would end up doing it herself – and then I would scream at her for cleaning up. She messed up my perfect disorder.

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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about life plans. These thoughts always enter my head rather spontaneously, like the other night at dinner when Mister stepped out to use the bathroom and I was eavesdropping on the table of girls next to me. The girl was describing her coming year like this, “…this fall is going to be crazy for me, I have course A and course B, in August I have this internship finishing up, and then starting February I’ll be working for this and next March we have that week in Australia…”

And I sat there in disbelief wondering how someone could have their whole coming year planned out… I realise it’s quite a bit easier when you do go to school and you have a guideline to where your life is headed, but I’m still in awe of it. Do I have a life plan? Yes, so to speak, but nothing is set in stone, nothing is defined to the point where I can say with all self-assurance that “Yes, this is going to happen in my life in the following year.”

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I think I’ve spent a third of my life dreaming. Another third is wasted on sleep and the rest, that small-ish in comparison 30% that’s left over, that’s life being lived. I constantly ask myself if I’m living my life to the fullest. Do you ever think about that? Do you ever wonder where the past few days, weeks or months have gone with little or no progress on goals you once set for yourself?

Every New Years Eve we give ourselves resolutions. I used to have a major Type-A list, numbered in the margins, that announced to myself what I was going to do this year – usually it fell along the lines of losing weight, exercising, learning to dress, fitting in skinny jeans, doing well in school or finding a boyfriend. Silly, childish thoughts. Without any actual plans to proceed these goals, they usually fell flat a few days after writing them down.

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This week my boyfriend and I started a diet. That’s right, a diet. 3 meals a day. Healthy food. Water. Bleh. It’s so boring to talk about dieting isn’t it? But it’s what’s happening in the house of Fab right now, because the two of us are not looking too fab. Seriously. We’re turning into lazy fatsos.

Along with the dieting goes the drinking. That’s no beer, no wine, no cocktails, no shooters. No nada. Not even margaritas. No, no, no. So basically we can’t go out for dinner and we can’t go out drinking. What the hell are we gonna do?

We’re going to be boring.

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I have never really thought of a well-functioning life to have any thing to do with Time Management, but lately it the word has been popping up everywhere. A number of blogs have taken to writing about it, there are whole books on time management for stay at home moms even, and I, as a Working-at-Home-Mom (or WAHM for short), realised that the key to success might actually be through time management.

Well, at least of some sort or another.

I dislike structure. I’m not a huge fan of rules (they’re meant to be broken) or schedules (I’m a control freak by my own means, but I will still break my own schedule, go figure!). Something always pops up unexpectedly, or I get distracted by something else. Okay, I usually get distracted.

But I realised time management does exist in my life, and once I started thinking more about how to manage my time, my life has become a lot less chaotic.

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