•   Setting a fixed time each morning for 10-15 minutes of meditation and stretching.
•   Taking 30 minutes out of my lunch break to get out of the office building, go for a walk and catch a bit of fresh air. I’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks now and it’s starting to make a huge difference to my well-being.
•   Limiting my online time to certain time frames (instead of it being the easy solution when I come home tired). So far I’m planning for this to be one hour in the morning (30 minutes if I sleep in) and one afternoon a week.
•   Looking for a yoga class to join nearby in addition to horseriding twice a week.
•   Blocking time slots in the evening for creative time. It doesn’t matter what I do in that time as long as I do it with my hands. This can be photography, sewing, knitting, crafting, whatever.
•   Blocking time slots to spend time with the kitties. I’ve wanted to take up clicker training with them again forever and it does us all a world of good to spend time with each other. Without a fixed time however this often gets overlooked.

Additionally my boyfriend and I are talking about setting up a fixed friday night movie night. We always talk about watching movies together and then we never get around to renting a film or setting up the TV for that matter.
We’ll see. We’re taking it a day at a time right now. It does feel like 2012 is very old already, instead of just 15 days in.

*Photos taken at random during my lunch break walk.

Looking back on 2011 now, it was a year of little outward changes for the first part of it- until we moved that is. Instead it was a year of taking a step back, trying to define for myself where I fit into this picture of having achieved my diploma, having settled down in an office job and accepting that this place (geographically even) is where I’ll be for as long as I can think ahead right now.
I was very reluctant to move apartments, which seems silly now that we love our new place so much. The reason was probably that I wasn’t “done” thinking all this through yet.

My New Year’s resolutions last year were:
1. Eat healthier and more local, which will include growing as much stuff as possible ourselves
2. Educate myself further in photography, gardening and sustainable living
3. Simplify and declutter.
Funnily enough, although a big part of the year felt like I was losing focus and looking to find it again, I achieved my resolutions. We now shop at the farmer’s market every Saturday and eat better at least at the weekends.
I did some nice photo shoots throughout the year (although still nowhere near where I’d like to be yet) and did the big balcony garden experiment, which was very successful in parts and will definitely continue in 2012. I realized “going green” is not one big overhaul but a step-by-step process that we are well on (now’s the point where I guiltily realize that I’ve been planning a post on that for months).
We threw or gave away approximately a third of our belongings and it was a long and painful process. Having worked hard at this for many months it feels so good now to be starting into a new phase in life with a clean slate.

So what’s in store for 2012? A lot I hope :)
:: More steps towards a simpler and greener life, more growing food and learning.
:: Hopefully a big step in photography.
:: But also, and very importantly, becoming better at keeping a balance between time and projects and resources, living more in the moment.
I have always been high-strung and this year I realized I am a highly sensitive person (here’s a great personal article about it), a term I wasn’t familiar with before but which makes so much sense now that I can’t believe how I lived without the knowledge. It means, in a nutshell, that I can get more absorbed in ideas, projects, creative endeavours, even my office work than most people. I burn for my ideas and experience and perceive things very intensely. The price for that is crashing harder at the end of the day than most people, both physically and emotionally.
My body lets me know fairly reliably when I run out of strength. The hard part is learning to stop to listen to it, dealing with the frustration of wanting to do so much and accepting that I can’t, that I must take it more slowly.

I realize I have blogged less in the past year and have sometimes failed to answer a comment and email and that is a trend that, quite frankly, will probably continue as 2012 gets busy. I love this blog and the friends I have made here but I find that too much online time makes me nervous. As one step towards more balance I’ve decided that in 2012 I will limit my online time to a reasonable amount.
Another step (and another resolution) will be learning how to meditate and incorporating that into my daily routine.

If you’ve actually read to the end of this, thank you! I am so grateful to have this blog as much as a personal outlet and as a place to interact and meet people from all over the world. Thank you for being here and I’m looking forward to sharing another year here with you :)

*As you’ve probably realized the photos in this post had nothing to do with the text, they’re just random horse shots from my now finished Project 52

And as I can’t have a post without pictures, here’s a couple film shots I took with the OM-2N of Dana last weekend (because a week from moving I had nothing better to do than dust off the film equipment and scanner, obviously):

Why do I write this? Partly because I can’t get it out of my head and partly because I think stories like this remind us, with our often petty little problems, how damn lucky we are to live in the times we live in, free and fed and warm. And that there are people out there who aren’t so lucky today.