New year, new start

So it's New Years Day and for the first time ever I'm looking towards the next twelve months as a whole package.  This sense of looking towards the future may have come about because, also for the first time ever, I'm not thinking about going back to work.  Please don't misunderstand me, I loved my job.  It wasn't stressful, I worked with wonderful and supportive people and I got to do something different every single day but it was always there.  There were meetings to arrange, people to see, projects to plan for and, even when I was down to 4 hours a week, it hung in the background.  Now I'm at the point where I really have no room in my head for anything other than 'us' and I finally find I have the time to focus, to work things out and to look forward rather than back.  None of this stopped me waking up this morning with the sick feeling in my stomach which dementia brings on a daily basis you understand but I have a feeling that I can cope with whatever 2020 throws at us and I'm already starting to look around me and to plan.  I'm a fair-weather gardener but yesterday I noticed shoots in the bed next to the back door so took a walk around the rest of the garden and noticed shoots everywhere which means that all the bulbs the 6 year old and I put in a few months ago haven't gone to waste and how exciting is that!  I've started looking up new recipes to try; I'm working out what to do when/if Ash gets worse this year and there comes a point when I can't leave him (friends should be warned that a regular Scrabble club springs to mind and possibly a film evening every so often although other suggestions gratefully received); I have a holiday with a friend to look forward to and books to read so am not planning on being bored any time soon.  My best plan to date though is my evening tv watching.  There may be some of you who are lucky enough to escape this difficult time of the day but, if you've been following this blog for any length of time, you'll know that I'm condemned to watching The Chase and Pointless all evening, every evening for eternity.  If I move into my sanctuary to watch something else Ash loses me and has to come and find me so I'd begun to take my laptop through, put my noise cancelling headphones on and watch something else.  The difficulty with that is, by the time I've found something I really want to watch it's almost bed time so I have a new plan.  Yesterday I went through the bumper Christmas edition of the Radio Times and looked at all the programmes I'd highlighted but never managed to watch (unfortunately Celebrity Chase was on all day every day on one channel or another over the whole festive period).  I wrote them all down, am now working my way through them on catch-up and plan to repeat the exercise every single week.  I'm sure there are easier ways of doing this and I understand that if we had Sky there are very technical alternatives but I felt so much satisfaction last night of watching 'The Good Life' and enjoying every minute of it that this is, I feel, the way forward for me.  If you have any ideas to get you through the next twelve months then please let me know and I can share it.  Everyone needs some sort of a plan even if it's so that we can feel in control of our lives rather than handing control over to dementia.

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