Belated New Year New Intentions: Focus

That's it - the festivities are finally over in the Bookaholic house! Yesterday we celebrated S's fourth birthday with a full-on joint party with her NCT 'twin' (a little boy from our NCT group who was born on the same day!), which followed a smaller family party on her actual birthday along with all the other Christmas/New Year celebrations and a much welcome visit from my parents from Northern Ireland. Phew! Today I have taken down the Christmas decorations and am getting ready to start 2013 afresh with tomorrow's return to work/pre-school/childminder.

So this is a somewhat belated new year's resolutions kind-of post. I've enjoyed reading similar posts from some of my favourite blogs (Child Led Chaos and Storyseekers to name a couple) and they have made me reflect on what I want from 2013. I've never really been one for new year resolutions but there are some things I want to achieve and I think writing them down in a public forum will help me focus on them! Focus is a key word for me: a good idea I picked up from One Word 365 via Helen at CApptTivated Kids) -

"One word that sums up who you want to be or how you want to live.
One word that you can focus on every day, all year long."

I do tend to flit about from one thing to another, very enthusiastic at first, often putting in a lot of thought/planning but then inevitably running out of steam - I am definitely not a 'completer-finisher' in Belbin terms! So if my word is Focus, what is it that I want to focus on? Well, there are a few things (which may negate the whole concept but we'll see how the year pans out!):

This Blog

• I started this blog last year when I realised that my passion centres around books, particularly reading with my girls, but also reading books myself. Through the blog and Twitter I have discovered/'met' other like-minded people, picked up great book recommendations, been lucky enough to receive free books to review and been inspired to do more book-related activities. Other than continuing writing, continuing to enjoy blogging and continuing to 'meet' fellow book-lovers through the blog, I would like to expand the type of content I have: I definitely want to write from a more personal perspective as well as doing reviews because I've realised that those are the types of blogs I enjoy the most; and I also want to involve other people in it - interviews, guest posts etc. On that note,  I'm delighted to be able to feature an interview with Caroline from the wonderful online children's bookstore Green Door Bookshop later this week!

Writing a Book: 

• This is something that I have always dreamed of doing. Many times I've progressed further than dreaming and have many notebooks filled with ideas, plotlines and character profiles, and have also started several books - getting as far as 20,000 words in one case! However, so far I've not been able to complete a first draft, let alone a final draft (see earlier note re: completer-finisher!). But this year I'm determined to do it. I have a story outline - including the all important ending (again - with a lot of my story ideas I often don't know quite how it would end), know my characters and have made a start. The working title is Guilt and this is the summary: Twelve years ago Julia Miles killed her sister. When the body is discovered does she have the courage to face justice or will she let an innocent man take the blame?  I'm going to set a weely word count goal and will update my progress here! 

Running

• I have wanted to sign up for a 10k race for some time, but for various reasons have never gotten around to it. This year I want to commit to my running - to keep me fit and healthy and to give me some time for myself - and have found the perfect inspiration - a 10k 'fun' run in aid of the National Literacy Trust. I'm not sure quite how much 'fun' it will be - I have never ran more than 5k in my life (!) but this is in aid of a terrific cause very much at my heart - raising literacy levels. So I have signed up (the run is on Sunday 24 March) and my fundraising page is now open - all donations very welcome!  Hopefully I can make it through the race and then perhaps think about doing another one later in the year!

So that's my stall all laid out for the year. If you have any words of encouragement for me I'd love to hear them to help keep me motivated!!