It may be just me, but this time of year creates a roller coaster of emotions that I struggle with.

Hi my name is Andrea and I don't like Christmas.

I am going to state it loud for all to hear, I am not the biggest lover of Christmas (this is the point that any family or friends reading this snort with laughter at this understatement). I find myself fighting against the building tide of Christmas adverts and suffocating commercialism that this time of year seems to represent now. I bah-humbug my way through November and the most of December.  

I do try and relax into it, to stop fighting against it, honestly I do, as it would be more fun to get into the swing of it right? But it is just so hard. 

It feels like the older I get, the more this time of year is thrust upon me and I am forced to comply.  I have not always felt this way about Christmas and actually have lots of happy childhood memories that fill me with a warm nostalgic glow. Maybe this is one of the downsides of getting older?

I finally relax into it, and suddenly it is only a couple of weeks away from Christmas and we are decorating the house and I relent about Christmas music being played, and feel the flickers of Christmas goodwill glowing inside me. I look forward to time off from work and spending it with my gorgeous husband and tucking down in the warm with fun movies and tasty nibbles. I like getting up in the morning when it is still dark and the house is quiet, but the lights from the Christmas tree are on, and the room has a gentle glow, and the decorations are glinting.

I realise I feel excited and childlike and then I feel confused and sad because by this point Christmas is already nearly over and I had not enjoyed the most of it in the lead up to the big day. Oh it is all so complicated!

Then on Christmas morning comes the adverts, just a little while after opening your presents. You see everything that you had bought or been given immediately put in the 50% off sales. Does that not annoy anyone else immensely? How rude! 

I know it is the same every year  but it is not necessary to start advertising the sales on Christmas day! It is like rubbing it in that you spent more money that you needed too, if only you had waited a few more days it whispers.

Time starts to merge and you suddenly enter that strange no-mans land of lost time between Christmas and New Year. You are not quite sure what day it is, whether it is worth getting dressed or not  and the hours all seem to become one, while you pick your way through the leftovers  and idly wander if you should be doing something productive.

What should you do in this time if you don’t have to work? Could put some washes on, but if you have people over that could be considered impolite if there is wet washing hanging all over the house. You could tidy up but you know that more mess will happen and it is not quite time to take the decorations down anyway. The most productive thing to do is to plan for New Year’s eve and what you are going to wear.

Now here I am on New Year’s day tucked up in my big thick sweatshirt, having only crawled into bed at 4.30 this morning and groggily woken up again at 11.40. We both stumbled downstairs to make brunch of sausage and fried egg sandwiches and am now watching Ice Age 2 while munching through home made mini chocolate whirls that Gareth made with the extra pastry left over from the turkey and gammon pie he whipped up for tonight’s dinner.

While I sit here I recognise the familiar stirrings of worry and guilt and expectation that the dawn of a new year always provokes. Does anyone else feel this?  

The weight  of having to think about resolutions for the New Year, a way to plan for what is to come, how this year will be different from the last.

Will I finally find a way to make all the improvements in my life that need doing? This year will I get to the end of the year and feel proud of how well I have done? Will I suddenly find I have a secret stash of will power that I never knew I had after all these years and power through my resolutions!?

Screw that!

I have never been a massive fan of the New Year resolution after seeing so many people making hugely ambitious and intimidating lists of things that they will succeed at through the year, and then only a couple of month down the line, to be lamenting at how they had all fallen by the wayside and they are riddled with guilt at their ‘failures’.  

Who needs that pressure and stress at the start of year?! I don’t! 

I am perfectly capable of guilt tripping myself into worrying about the things I have not managed to succeed at through most of the year anyway!

So here i am on my roller coaster of emotion, trying to navigating my way through this time of year with my emotional sanity intact, and make it out the other side still feeling vaguely like a functioning human with my head clear enough to be of use when I go back to work.

So I think ditch the resolutions! They are bad for your health.

Instead make gentle plans and ideals for the year ahead. 

Plans that will help guide you and give you focus. 

Ideals of how you would like to have your life headed and feeling by the time Christmas comes round again. They don’t have to be earth shattering, body breaking resolutions that are designed to make you feel worse about yourself.

These are gentle self loving goals for steady self improvements. Not everything  has to be a big gesture. 

This year I think that any change is a positive change. If they are broken down into small easy to do steps that don’t feel scary then maybe it will be easier to allow something new to become a habit. 

Did you know it can take as little as 21 days to make a habit?

If there are steps to the final goal, then even if you don’t make it all the way to the finish line in all your goals you can see how many steps you have completed along the way, which can be considered successes in it's own right. 

This then reduces the crushing guilt, which if I may say so is another success in it’s own right, right?

So I will start:

1^st goal: To learn to be less negative, and teach myself to see the positive in situations.

2^nd goal: To start to love myself a bit more and not be so hard on myself all the time.

3^rd goal: To look after my health more and take more responsibility for my future.

1^st plan: Work out what makes me happy and then add more of that into my life

2^nd plan: Take the time to teach myself more skills in the areas that are important to me

I have some more ideas but want to take the time to properly think these through and break them down into steps.

Now your turn. I would love to hear from other people about what they feel that this year has in store for them and what they want to gain from it.

Hope the start of your 2014 has been a good one.