New Year, (another) New Start

In an attempt to kick myself forward into a new phase of life - away from law perhaps, away from Dubai perhaps, into something creative (like writing) perhaps - I've made a number of attempts to revisit, restart, refresh, reboot and rekindle my blog life. Fairly swiftly the spark blew out. So let's see how far the needlessly artificial prompt of a new year might lead me...

New Year's Day is always a 50/50 day I find. It marks the day when you feel you should be doing something new, or something different. An opportunity (as if you need one foisted on you by the calendar) to make precisely what this first post of the year is... a fresh start.

But it's also the day that marks the end of the Christmas period. As a kid, I remember it being the final day for which the Radio Times listed films that might be worth watching. Because tomorrow, things would be back to normal. And within any small number of days thereafter, it's back to school, or back to work.

This year, 2 January is the day we all went back to both. The alarm sounded at 6.25am, in a way that felt like this was how it was going to be for the rest of time. Weeks and weeks ahead, of early starts, and all festive spirit swiftly blown away into the fog of the cold desert morning. Depressing.

So I've made a plan. A gimmick maybe, but in the event that the blogging dries up (again) just as quickly as it started, I'm going to try to do something else productive or new each day. So yesterday, on the first day back, and because I saw it in the paper so soon after learning from a friend about the wonder that apparently is Joe Wicks 'The Body Coach' (perhaps destined to be this year's latest fitness fad-lad), I tried out a 10 minute HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout. 30 seconds on, followed by 30 seconds off, of 5 different exercises (running on the spot, squats, press ups, mountain climbing on the floor, and reverse lunges), all repeated twice. Damn near killed me.

Today's new thing - getting on top of admin. So I chased up the Bank on mortgage rates, chased up our savings plan funds release, finally managed to procure the long-overdue Building Completion Certificate for our house extension (for which I builder had wanted to charge us AED 5,000).

Am feeling pleased with today's accomplishments.

Even if, at work, the work is dead. I need to get moving with an 'exit plan'. Whatever that looks like.

And, as a consequence of the HIIT, I'm stiff as a board. Might wait until tomorrow before I do it again. That's another day.