It's been a Great Year. Really?

I've seen this a lot on dear old Facebook in the last week or so. Obviously an app of some sort that sticks a photo on a jazzy background and declares a "great year" on your behalf. Now I'm just being cynical here, but honestly can you really say it's been a great year? Have you been saying how good it's been all the way through from January to December or have you been moaning about work, money, church, family or football? Do you really need some data mining app to tell you about your year?

Perhaps the real value lies in taking time to look back over the last twelve months and asking some deeper questions about what you've experienced and how you've responded. How are things that within your control going to change next year? Or are you just going to carry on the same way and wait until Facebook or some other social media platform tells you what kind of year you've had?

The New Year is typically the time we look to make resolutions and set out some sort of plan for the coming 12 months. I know there are things I set out to do this year that I simply haven't done. I know I need to change something in order to make those things happen this year, if in fact they are that significant.

If you're planning some resolutions, and you know all about making them "smart", the perhaps you might want to add a few that go beyond the typical lose weight, get fitter, learn to river dance kind of resolutions. Maybe you could add an element of enjoying life a bit more. I don't mean going out and socialising, but taking simple pleasures in life. Taking time to see stuff when you go out for a walk, learning to be thankful for the little things people do for you, asking yourself how you can help those around you be the best that they can be. Maybe these things are a little too subjective for some and a little altruistic for others, but I fear that we are being propelled towards a self-centredness all too often and social media doesn't help.

So if you've truly had a great year, congratulations. Enjoy it, look back and give thanks. As for me, well, it's been an okay year. Not great, not terrible. Bits have been good, some bits really good. Others have have been difficult and hard, days when all I've wanted to do is slip quietly into a corner and sleep through it. Next year could go either way, but it's my intention not to let it drift along.

I'd like to do my Level 2 tennis coaching qualification and get tennis better established in South Ockendon and Chafford. I do plan to get fitter, but that gets harder as I get older! I'd like my therapy business to increase too, but that is also proving tough to do. I have other goals to think about and plans to make. I need to review my journal, a more useful thing to do that look back at my social media postings. What I write in my book is often of the "not for publication" category. One of my goals for 2015 is to recover some discipline about keeping my journal.

As for this years goals, well I didn't make it to an 8.2 but I'm only 3 wins away from that, and I didn't drop under 14st, which was another goal I had in mind. Truthfully I didn't make that much of an effort to reach that one. As for any other goals, I can't remember what they were, I'll have to look them up!

Here comes 2015!