Happy New Year, my dear dear readers!

I had hoped to post before the end of 2016, but with an unusually and unexpectedly busy lead up to the Christmas holidays with work, preparing to move and other things that scuppered that plan somewhat. Oh, that and a huge tree falling on part of my house and car last week! Fortunately no one was hurt (and all guitars were safe too!), but might not have been the case if said tree had come crashing down half an hour or so before. Eeek!

Anyway, wreckage and so on has been cleared at the house, so we can commence 2017 with somewhat of a literal clean slate!

Holidays are a time of reflection generally for me usually anyway, and fun little incidents like the one above also tend to focus the mind to reflect on what is important!

And so here are my New Year’s resolutions for 2017, that I thought I’d share with you folks:

• Stop over-committing myself to everything and putting myself under frankly unnecessary pressure.  I have a tendency to get very excited about lots of different things (life is for living after all!), but that over-excitement leads me to forget that there are only 24 hours in a day! Or the resolution put in more positive terms – think about priorities, consider carefully before committing, so that when I do commit I am able to give it my full attention, energy and time.
• Refocussing my mindset from just the day job and allowing other priorities some more breathing space (I’ve actually reconfigured my working hours slightly to help with this), namely:
  • Guitar repertoire building, playing and recording
  • Writing – blog and book
  • Health and fitness
• Following on from the above, continue to develop my first book (see one of my most recent posts about this one….), but instead of unrealistically committing to first quarter of 2017 to have it completed, focus on working on the book a minimum 20 minutes per day for 5 days out of 7 (with a rough aim of having the book completed by the end of 2017).
• A minimum of 30 minutes of guitar practice per day for 5 days out of 7 (yes, even I can get into bad habits from time to time), with the aim of:
  • Learning all of J.S. Bach’s Lute Suite in A Minor BWV 997 (in the spirit of the first dot point I’m not committing to other pieces at this stage!)
  • Getting some recordings (audio and visual) under the belt, up on SoundCloud and YouTube
• Moving more! Those pains and aches I used to experience had started to creep back in in 2016 (those who are long time readers of the blog may recall some of my blog posts on this from a few years ago). This is a result of my butt being parked at a desk/ car/ desk/ practice chair for most of the day. Not good! I’m committing to walking a minimum of 10,000 steps per day and 10 push-ups per day 6 days out of 7.
• Continuing to bring you my thoughts, ideas, experiences, reviews and interviews on all things classical guitar throughout 2017! I love it, and I love the comments, emails and contributions that you folks send me from all around the world. It’s wonderful! But in the spirit of the first dot point (and given recent events and what that will mean for the next few months), I’ll not commit to a regular schedule of posts at this point.

Dear readers, Happy New Year to you! I hope 2017 brings you all the joys, health and happiness and excellent guitar playing!

Nicole