Happy New Year!!!

Hey! I hope you all had an amazing Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year. I was in Birmingham for Christmas with the family and then in Lagos from the 27th for a two week holiday … I’m having an amazing time!

For the first time this year, it actually hit me just how much can happen in a year. I have friends who weren’t even engaged this time last year, and got married at the end of the year. I know other people who were with the person we all thought they would spend their lives with and they’d broken up by the end of the year. And I have a friend whose huge dream I was discussing with her at the beginning of last year and she was well on her way to achieving it mid way through the year and she’s now running her own very successful business. Basically, while a year might fly by, so much can happen and I’m really looking forward to it. For the first time, the significance of a new year hit me and the beginning of this year just feels for me like it is so full of potential and all I have to do is live it, and grab the many opportunities with both hands.

I’m excited about all the unexpected stuff that’ll happen to me this year but there are also some things I want to achieve this year!

• This is the year that I’m getting my dream body. I want to lose about 25 pounds and this is the year I’m going to do it. I’m happy with what I look like at the moment (though I have put on a couple of pounds over Christmas and in Lagos) but it’s about having the best body I possibly can. Something I can look back on when I’m old and wrinkly and say to my grandchildren, ‘granny used to be H.O.T.T. HOT back in the day’. I joined weight watchers just before Christmas and I’ll take running even more seriously. I’m considering maybe giving a briefly weekly report on my blog after weigh-in every Wednesday. Anybody else feel like joining WW so we can do it together?

• Blog a bit more regularly, and by regularly I mean at least once a month. Yeah yeah, I can hear the moans but that’s a start and I said AT LEAST that much so it could be more. Those of you that make it your life’s mission to inform me how long it’s been since I blogged last (ahem Buki, Noni), you officially have a case if I haven’t blogged in a month.

• I want to give more to people less fortunate than I am. I want to give more time, more money, more thought, just more of everything I have to give. Some things really strike a cord with me like the Tsunami a few years ago or the article I wrote about in my last post, and for a few days I’m indignant and determined to do something because it reminds me how fortunate I am in comparison to a lot of others and for me, being so blessed comes with an obligation to help others. Over time though, I forget those feelings and don't do as much as I intended to so basically, I want to do more this year.

• I need to find a way to organise my personal life better. I need time for myself but I know the time I should give to the people I care about suffers. I also have some people in my life who take up more time than they give back to me or anyone else and I feel I need to limit the time and effort I spend on these people – nothing drastic like cutting them out but just treating people according to the level of priority they hold in my life. I find the people that love me the most are often the people I don’t treat as well because I can get away with it because they’ll always love me but that’s just taking advantage of them and it’s stopping now!! They’re the people I should invest my time in because they’re the people I’ll still love a hundred years from now.

• Read my bible more and get to know God better.

• I’m already planning a few trips this year; Dublin, Paris, (Jamaica, Atlanta, Philadelphia, maybe San Fran all in one trip) and probably Lagos again at the end of the year so while I don’t think my holiday allowance and wallet will let me do much more this year, I want to start looking ahead to next years holidays too. I’m back on track with my mission to visit a new country every year!

• Generally, I want to be better with money, specifically, I want to save £500. It’s not a lot but I have no savings at the moment and I think it’ll be a good start.

• I want to be a bit naughtier in 2008 … not go crazy or anything but I’m so damn sensible! Chances are I won’t make any big mistakes – due to aforementioned sensibleness – but I want to be a bit crazier this year, maybe go skinny dipping, get really drunk, go away for a spontaneous weekend … that kind of thing.

• I’d like to be consciously happier this year. When things are going well and I’m happy, I am going to stop and appreciate it and recognise how good it is. And when they’re not so good, I don’t want to just accept it. I will try to figure out what is wrong and what I can do to fix it.

So I think that's it ... I might add to this list throughout the year and maybe I'll do a review at the end of the year to see how much I achieved. Is there anything you want to acheive in 2008?