Happy New Year and Five Non-Resolutions

So, everyone knows how hard it can be to keep New Year's resolutions. You wake up on the first of Jan, full of good intentions and determined to do things differently, but more often than not the most ambitious of those resolutions have well and truly slipped by the wayside by the end of the first week.

So, this year, I thought I'd try something different.

Five Things I Resolve NOT To Do In 2014:

1) I will not take on more work than I know I can handle - no matter how interesting it sounds - and no matter how much I convince myself I can squeeze it in. Too much work means not enough play time and we all know that makes Jack a dull boy.

2) I will not feel guilty about my pyjama days. Days when I am not really sick, just pretending, so that I can spend a day in bed napping, drinking tea and mindlessly scrolling through Facebook. After all I've found that one fake sick day can often ward off a real one.

3) I will not skip my yoga class, book group, singing class or piano lesson because I have too much work to do. (See no.1) I will also not feel guilty about a long lunch date with a friend. I work enough Sundays to justify the odd weekday tryst.

4) I will do my very best to be at all my kids school performances, parent-teacher interviews and fundraisers, but will not beat myself up if I miss one for whatever reason. There are plenty of other parents at the school who are better bakers than me. I am much better on the book stall anyway.

5) I will not forget to stop whatever it is I am doing and just enjoy those brief moments when my rapidly-growing sons want to share something funny with me they have seen on the internet, talk to me about their day at school or just sit with me in the kitchen when I'm cooking. The older they get the more it becomes clear to me that these days are numbered and I don't ever want to regret spending more time checking emails on my iPhone than being present with my kids. If I can only manage to keep one non-resolution this year, I think this might be the most important one for me for 2014.

Hope you are having some success in sticking to yours!