So, the festive season officially ends today and the new year gets properly underway (I am a huge believer in treating Christmas, Yule, Midwinter, or however you choose to name it, as a season, not as a single day that we all struggle to get perfect and give ourselves various levels of breakdown in the process!) For me, the season draws out a little longer as its my birthday on the 8th. Today, however, the decorations (mostly consisting of a few bunches of mistletoe – its been particularly busy this year) will be coming down and will be going to a new yoga class with all fresh hopes of actually getting my work/life balance into some sort of order this year. We do have one Christmas tree…in a bedroom that is currently uninhabitable, but as ever I start the year optimistic that this is the year we will get it sorted. Its an odd tree, to be honest, containing some decorations that I have made over the last two years including needlecelted baubles and polymer clay and textile Maris. It also has decorations from Sicily, where we finally managed to get away together this year, and San Diego where I presented at the AAR conference in November. Both very much high points of the year…it is building into a real tree of memories.New Year is always a time of optimism and hope for the future…although that is particularly difficult this year as we look around us at the world seemingly descending into chaos. Still, its important not to loose hope…there is, there must be hope always. If nothing else that, to me, is the ‘true meaning’ of this time of year. In the darkest time of the day, the year, the era, there is light and there is hope. There is little we can do for Australia as individuals beyond prayers and donations if we are able; there is even less we can do about the madness evolving in Iran, what we can do is to spread hope around us however and whenever we can. Small acts of kindness, and even joy will keep the tiny light burning.

I don’t really have much to say, but I am posting anyway, because I need to get back into the habit of regular writing. As always it is my intention to post here more often, perhaps with shorter posts and perhaps with nothing hugely significant to say…but its a start. I am hoping, in the New Year, as I always do, to get more organised, to take more time for myself for craft, exercise and reading, and I really hope that those things happen, but what absolutely must happen this year is writing for my PhD. Time is running out. I have had an amazing time over the last few years, and I can hardly believe that I have been blessed enough to receive funding to fulfil my dream and explore a number of topics that I find fascinating. I have also presented papers in the Czech Republic, Germany, Canada (accidentally) and San Diego as well as in various places in the UK. Its been wonderful, I have met amazing people and developed beyond belief, academically, personally and spiritually, but now its payback time…I need to actually produce something that will, hopefully, contribute something new and useful to the study of Druidry, Death and Landscape. I have come to the conclusion that the only way I can reasonably do this is by going away from distractions to write so I will be spending some time locked in a friend’s tower (yes really!) both physically and metaphorically and hopefully this year will see me submitting my thesis. That is my hope and dream for the New Year…as well as hoping that the world becomes a kinder, more joyful and more magical place where people remember their connections to each other and to the world at large.

Speaking of which, if you have not yet done so, I urge you to watch the BBC’s new adaptation of Wurzel Gummidge available now on iPlayer. It is a small piece of joyfulness and magic in the world and it made my Christmas!

I wish you joy, magic and kindness in the New Year, may you dare to hope for better things.