DiaryofaBookLover

Happy New Year one and all!!! Here’s hoping 2021 will be kinder to us. I’m not a big fan of the early days of the new year; there’s such a sense of anti climax after Christmas and panic about New Year Resolutions. For the first time this year, I won’t be making my usual overwhelming list of resolutions. Instead, I’ve decided to focus on three: make a decent living from my art; get fitter and healthier; speak kindly to myself. I’ve also chosen a word of the year: Trust. Trust myself, trust the journey, trust others. And listen to my intuition. The older I get, the more I realise the importance of living from my heart more than my head, which brings me to “The Power of Now”, by Eckhart Tolle. Oprah recommended the book a few months ago on her Instagram page. It’s been on my radar for a while, but during a bit of a down period, I decided to give it a go. Oprah said it’s the book she always returns to whenever she’s going through a difficult time. 2020 anyone?! I am enjoying the book. It’s comforting and enlightening. The basic premise is that we need to get out of our heads and focus on being still, because it is in the stillness that we discover who we truly are. Our minds are incessantly busy and are ego based. But the mind’s only reference is agonising over the past and worrying about the future. True peace and real joy reside in the precise moment we are in right here, right now. We can centre ourselves in the now by focusing on our breath and becoming the observer of our thoughts. This takes practice. I am about half way through the book. I only read a few pages at most per day because there is a lot to take in, but I’m finding that it really helps with racing thoughts and the nagging anxiety many of us feel during our lives, especially at this moment in time. So, I shall be easing my way gently into this New Year. It’s a beautiful frosty morning here in central France. A cold mist hangs heavy over the trees. Today will be spent reading a few pages from Nigel Slater’s “The Christmas Chronicles”. It is such a lovely, comforting book, which is divided into daily diaries beginning on November 1st and ending on Candlemas Day, February 2nd, so I still have a few weeks left of the Christmas season. I contemplated putting away the Christmas decorations today, but after some Google searching, I have convinced myself that Twelfth Night, January 5th, is the official day to put them away. After some reading, I shall go for a walk in the frosty forest, and perhaps later do a little painting by the fire. Bliss.