I’m far less HUMBUG about New years than I am about Christmas. Don’t get me wrong I still won’t be going out or celebrating it in anyway, but I like the idea of a year having a full stop. I couldn’t tell you where 2024 ranks in my personal good or bad list because it’s such a low bar for a good year at the moment. If I am not dead and can still get out of bed in the morning I consider it a win. All I can say is I have definitely had worse years, and recently.

I have zero intention of staying awake for midnight, in fact I will be deliberately avoiding it if the MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS warning on my new medication does it job, so I will get my resolutions out of the way now.

• Make the cabin livable by April
• Be packed and ready to go by March
• Get elder child settled with his mother by February
• Ask for help
• Turn up to invitations
• Get the damn stress back to a point that isn’t going to kill me

All achievable goals, mostly because they don’t require any great effort from other people. I suspect the hardest one will be asking for help as I am awful at it, and I also find it hard to accept offers of help, and I will never be able to bring up the offer again for if it slips someone’s mind. I know people are busy with their own lives so I am reluctant to remind anyone for fear of making them feel obligated.

So all my goals are based on what I can do myself, or afford to pay for. The second category is rapidly dwindling as running two of everything is draining my accounts rapidly, and I don’t have time to bring in enough money to cover the shortfall each month. So that is definitely adding to the stress, which affects my health, which makes it harder to get work done, and so on in ever decreasing spirals. The irony that if I was living at the farm my health would almost certainly improve quickly, my finances would be better, and I would be looking out my window to see wildlife and trees instead of cars and my neighbour wielding a leaf blower.

So I am not promising to wake tomorrow and greet 2025 with a sunny disposition, but I will treat it as a new page in a story that has been a bit grim for the last few chapters. If I can make the heroes journey a bit less perilous for a while maybe the reader will have the desire to finish the book.