Many moons ago on a different blog, every weekend I would publish a blog post called “The Weekend Blog” where I just wrote about what I’d been doing that week.
Now, I’m not committing to a full-blown comeback, but I do want to test the waters with writing a weekly blog post about what I’ve been up to. This might be a standalone post, or I might end up posting every single week (more likely the first option), but let’s give this a go and see how it goes.
Back to work
I went back to work on Monday after taking two weeks off over Christmas. Well, I say “I went back” but as I’m self-employed and work from home, so it’s not like I had to head back to an office (thank god 😮💨).
I was actually feeling ready to go back to work because, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in recent years, it’s that I thrive off having a routine, and my routine had gone completely out of the window thanks to the Christmas break and my trip to Japan at the start of December. I hate to admit that I need my routines, because I’d like to think of myself as being a free spirit, but the normal and the mundane really calms and regulates my nervous system.
I could not have asked for a better first week back at work. I booked in three new projects for quarter 1, had a past client ask for a retainer for two of their websites, and had discovery calls with two new potential clients. 🤯
I cannot believe the difference between January this year and January last year. I came into 2025 with zero projects booked and my inbox was dead for the majority of quarter 1. It was the slowest start to the year I have ever experienced in my business, and while I’m not going to get political here, I now realise it was heavily influenced by things going on in the world that were completely out of my control. But even though I can recognise this now, I took it as a personal failure at the time and I felt absolutely awful about the whole situation. I blamed myself, asked myself what I’d done wrong, and just generally felt like I’d failed.
I kind of expected more of the same in 2026, so to have four big projects booked in by the end of the first working week of the year feels insane, and I’m finally starting to feel hopeful about my business again.
My 32nd birthday
Aside from work, it was my birthday on Tuesday. I turned 32 and I had a lovely, laid back day. It started with opening my gifts and card in bed, followed by a slice of chocolate cake (homemade by my partner), and a wintery walk along the beach with my dog. In the evening we went out for a meal to my favourite restaurant in Liverpool, Mowgli, but first we made a pitstop at the Lego shop where my partner told me to pick out any set I wanted as he was going to buy it for me. I picked the new Japanese Cherry Blossom Landscape set. Honestly, I felt like the luckiest woman in the world in that moment. You can keep your jewellery and your designer handbags; Lego is the way to my heart. 💕
Also, funny story – I nearly ended up booking a holiday to Florida while eating our dinner! We were discussing where to go on holiday this year and my partner just started looking at cheap holidays on the TUI website. For some reason the cheapest holiday on there was a week in Florida staying in one of the value Disney resorts. Including flights for two people, it was coming out at…£350…in total.
We quickly realised the website was broken because this holiday should be double that number with an extra zero on the end, but nonetheless we tried to book it! Sadly, by the time we made it to the booking page, the price had corrected itself and had shot up to around £17k (which actually seemed too expensive). Needless to say, we didn’t end up booking it. 😅
The short-lived snow
It snowed on Thursday evening. At around 10pm when it started to stick, me, my partner and our dog went out into the garden to play in the dark. Because we’re child free adults and we can do what we want! By the morning, the snow had completely cleared and the only reminder of the snowy evening was the snowman we had built on our patio. I imagine our neighbours waking up, seeing a snowman in our garden and wondering where the fuck it had come from given that there was no other signs it had snowed.
Pilates and kittens
I was glad the snow had cleared though as I had a Pilates class that morning. And even though I only have to walk like 20 steps to get to my Pilates class because it’s held at my neighbour’s house, I was still worried about slipping over on my arse. It was my first Pilates class in over a month but luckily my instructor was gentle with us. And after the class, I got to meet my neighbour’s new kittens. I’m not a cat person, but even I thought they were cute and I was happy for them to use me as a climbing frame.
Forced to relax this weekend
This weekend has been a chilled one. I’ve been forced to take things slow because it’s my time of the month and it’s really been brutal this time around. So I’ve spent most of the weekend in the bath with my book (I’m currently reading The Housemaid by Freida McFadden) or working on my photo album and junk journal documenting my trip to Japan in December.
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