Happy Choose-Day... Choose [Insert Your Own Positive Here]

i.e. Let's choose happy stuff this Tuesday BECAUSE 2024 IS OVER, BABY

One week into 2025, fifty-one to go, and I’m still in one piece.

Well, I say in one piece: that’s apart from a very painful shoulder and neck (caused by the coughing from my bronchitis I had the good fortune to enjoy at the end of last year). But the positive to take away was that I got a last-minute appointment with my physio today to ease it, so let’s say I am ON IT when it comes to getting things sorted. There will not be another shitshow like last year, not on my watch…

2024 was brutal

My 2024 summary — a Substack post written as a list of bullet points with all the things that contributed to my annus horribilis — highlighted just how much awful, crappy stuff happened to me, my husband and our family last year.

While I can’t predict what will happen in 2025 (and have little to no control over outside influences!), I’m choosing happiness this Tuesday. Which I have now renamed Choose-Day¹. While I don’t make New Year’s resolutions (it’s a rare thing for people to do nowadays, don’t you think?), I’m choosing to be more mindful of my reaction to things.

There’s the old saying (which probably started out as a meme as so many things do these days):

You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control your reaction to it.

Corny as hell, but hey: after last year I like corny. I’m looking for corny in my life².

However, and here’s the caveat I’m passing onto my willpower, that’s easier said than done. Having spent twelve months feeling that, rather than getting up again after being kicked to the ground, I was kicked to the ground every time I got up again. And when you feel like that, it’s sooooo hard to find the motivation.

I’m not gonna say it’ll be easy. I will have to remind myself that having a CHOICE about my reaction to things is a luxury that I’ll most certainly always have. It’s a privilege to have a roof over my head, access to the internet, food to eat and access to free healthcare. (Told you — corny.) I will have to start appreciating life for the good things I DO have.

Because if I don’t… well, I’ll just have another miserable year, won’t I?

So what am I choosing this Choose-Day? Writing this post and thinking about these things reminded me of a social media post from a few years ago I copied and pasted into a little note on my phone. It says it in a better way than anything I could come up with, so I’ll just paste it here.

How to take care of your body, mind and soul

Give yourself six months to get into the habit of practising radical self-care and self-love:

Delete the apps.

Block the numbers.

Wake up earlier.

Get dressed up even though you're not going anywhere.

Eat healthier.

Journal.

Have spa days.

Exercise.

This is your ONLY life.

Do what you can to love and enjoy every aspect of it.

No more waiting.

Be the person you've always wanted to be.

This will not be like the other times, this time you will change, you will stick to habits, and you will see results.

I believe in you.

~ @joannarahier (I can’t find that Instagram anymore so here’s a link to the Joanna Rahier website so she gets some sort of credit from me.)

So I can choose to delete the apps, wake up earlier (and for me: go to bed earlier too!), get dressed up, exercise, be the person I've always wanted to be.

Because if I don’t — meaning if I have another year like last year — I’ll be in an even worse mess by the time January 2026 rolls around. Not gonna happen.

I choose to finish my first novel and get it published and start my second book.

I choose to celebrate the birth of two great niece(s)/nephew(s) that one of my nieces and one of my nephews are expecting.

I choose to enjoy the wedding of our friends’ daughter in August we have coming up.

I choose to be more proactive about where my career is going and make tough financial decisions.

I choose to look after my body better (in all ways).

I choose to retile the splashback in the kitchen which has been left far too long (2025 is the year it WILL get done).

I think I found the corny in my life I was looking for: it’s right here in this post. That’s a good start.

It’s Choose-Day. What are YOU choosing from Joanna’s list? Or has it inspired you to choose something of your own? Get sharing your thoughts with a comment…

Please click the Like ❤️ button to make it more visible to non-subscribers (even better leave a comment and let’s get chatting!), thank you so much x

P.S. Shout out to the AI image generator for giving my girl a standard number of limbs and a standard number of digits in the lead image, though don’t look too closely at the index finger of the left hand, which looks more like a thumb. Maybe the generator had a crappy 2024 too, you never know.

1. This pun obviously doesn’t work for Americans and Canadians, so apologies. But it’s a good word to ease yourself into doing an English, Australian, Kiwi, etc., non-rhotic accent. Gwyneth said the most difficult (English accent) line she had in Sliding Doors was How did one of my Waterford crystal brandy glasses get into the laundry basket on Tuesday? (I added ‘on Tuesday’.) In an SSB accent (Standard Southern British, though strictly it’s a type of English accent as there’s no such thing as THE British accent) — that would phonetically be said: How did one of my worr-tuh-fuhd criss-tuhl glah-sez get in-teh-thuh lorn-dree barrs-kit on choose-day?

2. Aaaand now I’m quoting Kate Winslet in The Holiday. I inadvertently watched it twice =COUGH= three more times this Christmas so the entire script is in my brain. Sorry not sorry.