Fifteen years ago I wrote a book about having the best year of your life. I wanted to share with readers ideas and practices that had helped me get more out of every day.
I grouped them under seven headings – grow, explore, expand, receive, give, connect and commit – to give people the chance to do something on every day of the week.
And I hoped the combination of activities, exercises, challenges, insights, ideas and fun, would also help readers transform their lives.
Best year rebooted
As I write this, the world is still grappling with a pandemic that has changed the landscape of so many lives – mine included. Especially as it followed so closely on from my mother’s death, ending a tough decade as her carer.
This idea of rebooting is not a novel one, but it’s certainly gained a lot of impetus in the last year. Everywhere I look people are reassessing their lives, choices and priorities, asking themselves if they really are making the most of this one ‘wild and precious life’ that Mary Oliver spoke of.
One year away from collecting my state pension, I thought it was time for me to do the same. Only differently from the way I did it when I wrote ‘Best Year’.
So what’s the plan?
In the book I wrote about ‘living the width of my life as well as its length’. At the time that was about expanding everyday life, shifting myself out of my comfort zone so I was doing different things, having different thoughts, living differently.
I think I’ve done pretty well at all of that. My life in 2021 is a world away from my life 15 years ago, before I wrote this book.
But my responsibilities as a carer have mostly kept me rooted in the everyday, living in the family home (now emptied of family), in the same city I’ve lived in for the last 35 years. (Typing that out, after calculating precisely how long it has been, was a real shock to my system.)
I’m GOOD at being at home, living my best life in familiar surroundings.
What I have missed, during the pandemic – indeed during the years of child-rearing and caring for elderly relatives – is living my best life AWAY.
Which is why I’m planning a year or two of adventures, walking, cycling, driving, exploring our amazing planet.
I’ll be making some of my journeys alone – because I’ve learned that being in my own company is where my life is at its most expansive, forcing me into new experiences, new encounters and new discoveries.
But I’ll also be choosing to do some journeys in the company of those I love most in this world.
Because that’s been the other lesson of the pandemic: that loving and being loved on my journey through life is as important to me as the air I breathe.
I hope you may want to join me, not only by following my adventures, but by planning some of your own ‘best life’ journeys too…
Have the best year of your life 