New Years resolutions

New years resolutions All my friends and family know how important new years resolutions are to me, they are such life changing promises for me that - I have even written a yet to be published book about the affect these pledges make on my life, that book was written five years ago in a year that the pledges were numerous, the changes those challenging pledges had on my life were so vast! I hardly recognise the person I was previously, I feel like an entirely different and better human being for it. In previous years; I would always have made at least one pledge that was dietary based, this has led me to be now three years of a dairy free, two years dairy and beef eating free, along with now one year dairy and no animals diet, meat and dairy free lifestyle is now easy for me, I still eat fish occasionally and eggs but sustainably sourced only, I made these changes for environmental reasons, before new year I was considering a year with no fish or eggs either, or ethical only foods/shopping along with no meat or dairy, in the end I decided that in order to do that properly I would need to dedicate a lot of time to it, its perhaps one for next year! I took much longer than normal deciding what pledges to make for 2022 (if any?) As my life in general was not requiring much tweaking, I live a reasonably healthy life BUT; the whole pandemic thing along with a running injury last new year, had cost me a fair chunk of my fitness I had fallen from a man who was easily completing fifty-kilometre events at the start of 2020 and looking forward to taking part in the cape wrath ultra that year, to a man that could probably only run a half a marathon and even that would be slow, I wanted to priorities getting my fitness back! SO; this is what I went with - 1. Go for a run of at least one mile every single day of 2022, I am also keeping a log to track these runs and my journey back to fitness- at time of writing this i am fiftysix days in a row, averaging sixty km every week 2. Read a poem each day then write my thoughts on this poem in the book that I bought for this pledge called - a poem for everyday of the year, i am enjoying this new habit soo much ive already bought a book for next year to continue this as a new habbit

3. Also, for yet Another year I will pledge to be flight free, this will be much easier to achieve than last year was! Due to having left work now, although in saying that; I am really glad I done this pledge last year as it led to my doing - the fantastic Shetland trig point adventure (which has also inspired another wee adventure hopefully for the end of the year)

I’ve taken it easy on myself with this years pledges in order to focus on prioritising my time management and habits, my priority for 2022 is to get my fitness level back up to 2019 level, finish my NCN1 cycle trip, get all my adventures organised and writing projects up to date/completed, starting up new projects before old ones are completed is a bad habit of mine, I had to keep this years pledges to a minimum, as the daily run and return to fitness will take up a huge portion of my time, I’ve got masses of writing to catch up on, I am also learning how to be a narrator for the writing of S.R Crocket, I’m gathering together my photos and videos of various adventures to turn into you tube videos, I need to get my blogs up to date, I’ve also became involved with an environmental group, and so on and so forth its going to be a very busy year, being a full time writer and adventurer is more time consuming than being a worker I would also like to pledge to get that book into print, BUT: I never break a promise to myself, I am unsure of the possibility of that being a realistic pledge time scale wise? I hope so – watch this space? then I could properly get on with finishing the others that I’ve started, I have been putting a lot of work into short stories, it would be fun to do a book of short stories, New year is a very Scottish thing now that I no longer have young children around the house I am fully intending on dropping Christmas altogether next year and my mid-winter festival will be Hogmanay and new year’s only, Christmas is a worldwide consumerist capitalist cocacolonization of over indulgence, nothing to do with Christianity, everything to do with consumerism causing nothing but stress and waste, the auld Scots were right to ban it, My journey to becoming a full-blown environmental hippy is approaching the final stages, last year was my last at being a mass consumerist, this means that there will be no mid-winter festival of consumerism next year for me, the commercialization of the long dead Palestinian`s birthday is finished for me now, I’ve had lots of fun over the years with the giving and receiving of gifts, to all my nephews and nieces but! sadly; now they are getting too old for toys, not that them being younger would have changed my ideals, they have their own babies now, it’s my opinion society needs to stop wasting the resources that next generation will need, The way forward for future mid-winter festivals will be a non-monetary form of gift exchange, on New Year’s Day due to my belief; that money is the problem and not the solution of society and the planets present difficulties, more on this next year