new year's

People often like to think of the New Year as an opportunity to change, to turn over a new leaf. I have never particularly subscribed to the gym, WeightWatchers and smoking support group subscribing masses come January, but that does not mean that I am not up for a change.

For me, it seems to have been a new year for myself, as my birthday approaches at the end of this month, that heralds change. A couple of these changes are quite big: I am giving up a lazy summer for a new job come Monday, I have sort of maybe decided that I will be starting a new school in September.

Some of these changes are more gradual. Since I have started this blog I have slowly watched myself become less interested in certain things, more interested in others (although my love for bags remains immovable). Shopping has taken a back seat; running, which I started for the first time many months ago, is finally, finally coming to the fore. In the past 6 days I have run on three separate occasions. That is a landmark, a first time. I am proud.

Of course, there are changes which I am less proud of, born, I believe, of these accepted changes I just mentioned. Sewing, style is currently not a top priority and exercise is. This morning, I travelled a bus journey at 8AM in tracksuit bottoms. My mother, when she saw me later, was shocked; 'you would want to kill me when I wore those to pick you up a couple of years ago!'.

After proclaiming only recently that I am uninterested in make-up, I have noticed myself buying an awful lot of it. Today's acquisition: shimmery silver eyeshadow. I won't pretend I don't love it. But I also can't pretend that it's particularly practical, office appropriate, and that I'll be wearing it too often.


Thus, as I have said, not everything changes. Even as a young teen, I have always had an obsession with avoiding pleather (synthetic leather); whilst all my friends paraded their cute H&M bags, I stuck to canvas... and then, blew all my cash on leather. Yesterday, I bought a cute pair of pumps only to realise that they are synthetic. They are going back ASAP. Plus, the fact that shopping even occurred, albeit with purchases which will be returned, shows that shopping is only riding in the back seat very temporarily.

Do you consciously make resolutions to change certain things about your lifestyle, or personal style? Do you do this in January or at other, more personal, times of the year? Or do you just find yourself evolving, and embrace it/devolving, and disguise it? Do you find that certain things will never change?