The best thing about resolutions is making them

Summer! I am filled with a quiet joy at the prospect of being warm and staying outside for long periods of time, so when summer rolls around I feel a new lease on life. The long daylight hours allow so much more time to think and _ chill the fuck out_. The evening sun also mean that when I get home from work I'm less inclined to spend the evening hibernating on the couch and more inclined to do things in the evening.

This summer, filled with excitement, anticiPAtion, and enthusiasm for the months to come - not just Christmas but the warm weeks after it - I have given myself two very pleasant tasks. Tasks that I would like to spend all summer doing, but that I'm not pressuring myself to complete. Tasks for fun and not for making myself feel guilty.

My first is to write at least 500 words each day - or if I don't feel like computers and typing, write five pages in my diary. I'd like to be a bit more disciplined with my writing practice and, more to the point, I really enjoy writing... There's something infinitely enjoyable about the act of sitting down and thinking and blatting it all out in beautiful words. I carried a notebook while I was travelling and wrote daily - mostly because I was alone, and had to write things down instead of blathering them to whoever was closest. It was such a good feeling to just sit and write, and think and sit and write, and I want to continue to do that.

As I've already stated, not all of this writing will be blogging. But, you know, if I'm feeling like bestowing my (always enlightening) thoughts upon the unsuspecting internet, I shall follow that bliss. I'd also like to put a beautiful notebook in my Filofax for emergency diary urges.

My second summer task is to read my set of Anais Nin's diaries which I have owned for years and years now and have not yet completed. I am starting from the beginning of the first volume of the original published set - 1931 - and fully intend to read right through to volume VI where my set ends. I do not own volume VII which is annoying, but perhaps something I can look at remedying in the future.

Best of all, the two tasks tie neatly in with one another - reading diaries or journals inevitably spurs me to write something down myself, even if it's just my thoughts about the diary that I've just read.

Any other summery intentions are confined to the week of glorious holiday I get between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, and are concerned with a few little making projects for which I need to get materials. New dresses would be good.

In conclusion: best summer ever? Let me make it so.