Hello friends!

Last week I wrote a blog post about taking a step back from social media (my total addiction), and giving myself time to do the things that make me happy. This is what happened during the first week:

1. I organised my house. I mean, I started organising in that earth-moving, changing up all the furniture, going through cupboards with years of mugs and throwing the crummy ones out, discarding a HUGE load of stuff that had just accumulated. I've been reading Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Art of Tidying Up, and while I love her system, health reasons prevent me from doing it that way. Still, I follow the system in my own way, and it has been AMAZING (highly recommend this).

2. I have been making my study (which was also the guest room and sort of makeup room) into my office. Moving furniture into place, removing the guest bed (this is my office, not a bedroom!), and making the whole room feel warm and cosy; a place that I want to write in. I have finally managed, after almost 5 years of living here (3 of which I was sort of functional), to create a haven to work in. (Hubby had a LOT to do with it; he's a muscular guy and did all of the heavy lifting and hanging of my world map, etc, etc). This is still an ongoing project, but the results have been incredible.

3. I wrote. Not a mind-blowing amount, but I actually wrote for good amounts of time, and I was proud of the words I was putting down. They were the right words.

4. I got on top of my last module at University. I was severely falling behind before (a lot of this had to do with things happening, rather than social media), but I had more time to deal with essays, research, prototyping etc (My last module is totally badass!).

5. I looked into joining a boot camp at my gym. I START NEXT WEEK! AAAHHHHH!!! (I might even be brave and take photos of my progress...!)

6. I got outside and enjoyed Spring.

7. I went to see Friend Request in the cinema, and feel even better about this decision.

Did I slip up? Yes. I did. (YouTube, my old nemesis.) But, that's OK. I quickly got myself back on track and ended up being even more productive. The thing that is still slow is the reading. I am critiquing 3 manuscripts, reading for University, reading my own manuscript, doing edits on something very cool, helping a friend with some video stuff—and a lot more. So, reading is the thing to improve upon next week.

In the meantime, I have a blogger event to look forward to next week, a writing retreat in May, ALA in June, my book launch in July, and then YALC! Loads of happy things going on, and I couldn't be more excited.

Chat to you guys next week!

xxxxx

Journal

Finding Happiness, Week 1