Thank you, Danny Wallace.

I always seem to get a bit maudlin around New Year. I don't really know why. I think its a combination of the Forced Fun and the inevitability of looking back over your year and ultimately making some sort of conclusion as to how successful it was. I'm already quite a reflective person, I don't need society telling me to do it at a certain point every year. Maybe its just a throwback to my days of being a student and knowing that the start of the year also heralded major deadlines and the impending spring term and all those exams. Now that I'm living in France, and not frolicking on a beach in beautiful Taranaki, I'm quickly remembering how much tougher it is to face the new year in the Northern Hemisphere. The days are short at this time of year making January quite a grim prospect. But, I always say that the best part of this time of year is that the Six Nations is just around the corner. The quality of rugby may be questionable at times, but the drama and unpredictability of it makes it the best rugby competition in the world. Bar none.

So, anyway, I suppose the turn of the year does provide a certain watershed moment upon which we can all try to be a little better at something. I read an article this morning by Danny Wallace about how Instagram-ing our lives is erasing our happiest memories and it really struck a chord. If you want to read the whole piece, you can find it here. The gist is, when we only publish the "best" moments (cropped and filtered, of course) then we're disregarding all the other mundane things that actually happened in our lives at that point. And often, the joy is in the small details (that are never instagrammed), especially when you revisit them years down the line. And the only real way to keep those memories is by writing them down. I was a prolific journal writer as a child/teenager and even as 20-something. When we left Scotland for NZ in '09 this blog was born. I occasionally dip into posts from back in those early Auckland days and find myself crying with laughter at some of the stupid things we were getting up to, and that I had forgotten about. So, Danny Wallace, thank you. You've inspired me to get back into journaling and chronicling my life. It's not a New Year's Resolution, just a decision to return to something I love.

Cheers,
Lorna