Last year, I had a year of experimentation, to find the things I liked to write about. And the things I don’t like writing about.

And then learning to rebalance life and work after taking up freelance proofing just before Christmas. Hence the rather more sporadic posts over the last month or so. Being ill in one way or another for the last six weeks of 2024 didn’t help much either.

The Ill still lingers. Very draining for any sort of brain-power or thought-process. Very unhelpful when you’re trying to plan the year to come and decide any sort of goals.

The main thing I learned last year was that I like a bit of variety for writing-topics. Writing solely about crafting or solely about books or anything else, really, is a sure-fire way for me to become bored with the whole endeavour in a few months. So I shall be mixing it up again in an effort to stave off any boredom or burning out.

My Heyer Challenge continues, but probably at a slightly slower pace. Reading one a week, and then writing about it, was becoming a bit much, even for books which were largely being reread. Especially as I’m also rereading An Infamous Army and The Spanish Bride as well as all the other essays and books for my dissertation. So I shall aim for reading one other Heyer a fortnight. The light relief. I shall schedule the ones I know to be a bit more work (like The Conqueror (ignore the subtitle suggesting this is a Regency romance. It isn’t; it’s about William the Conqueror)) for after the dissertation is handed in.

Crafting looks like taking a bit of a back-seat, at least for the first half of the year and certainly if it wants any sort of imagination or Real Creativity. So, instead, I shall start my crafting year with lots of kits. Probably plenty of the Stampin’ Up! kits (cards and scrapbook “workshops”), but I’ve also discovered Katy Sue Designs on Amazon with pop-up card kits. I already have my first one to try. I hope there are other such card-kits out there to play with, to try new techniques or ideas. With any luck, they won’t go the way of all my cross-stitch kits, which are currently languishing in a box at the bottom of my craft-shelves.

But my main crafting aim is to get caught up with Tiny’s scrapbook. I’m nearly two years behind with that now. Oops. Have a whole load of photos printed and ready to go, too. Just haven’t yet put them in the scrapbook. That’s the aim of this year.

I’d like to hope I’ll get a bit further with the map, but I can’t at present find it. Who knows where that got to in the move!

The first half of the year, though, will be the dissertation.