December

Comfortable and cozy is how I love to be. This month I'm achieving that with plenty of festive joy, dashings of Christmas spirit and lots of chilled, happy times with Jackson. My boy is incredibly excited for Christmas and I can’t wait to make the day as magical as possible for him. This will be the first ever year it’s just us two so it’ll be a completely new take on Christmas Day - but how lucky I am to spend it with my tiny best friend!

My parents are coming to visit for the new year so I’m keeping some of Jackson’s gifts to one side, planning a lovely dinner, and fully intend to treat New Year’s Day like a family Christmas. It’ll almost be like having two Christmases, a real blessing, and the house will be so full of love and happiness even moreso than usual.

The year coming to an end usually makes me look back and reflect on the comings and goings of the twelve months prior. This year I don’t really want to do that (although I inevitably will thanks to being a chronic over thinker) because, for all of the good things that I’m thankful for, 2023 started off shittily and continued that theme for a lot of the time. Of course there have been positives, highs, and plenty of happy times, but as a whole it’s felt like this year has been a struggle. Not just here and there but continuously. For vast and varied reasons it's been hard, it’s been sad and the overall feeling has been a negative one. I will acknowledge those negative aspects but I will not dwell on them, and I plan on venturing into 2024 with a much more hopeful outlook.

To steal some wise words courtesy of Vikings' Ragnar, I am adopting the following mantra:

“Don’t waste your time looking back, you’re not going that way.”