that time of the year again

I’m not going to bore you with my highs and lows of the year. We all have highs and we all have lows and we’ve all survived another go ’round the sun. Yay Us for staying upright. While I’ve got you, I’m participating in a promo on Bookfunnel for the first time in a while so if you’re keen to read about some badass female characters click here or on the banner below. I hope you find some good reads…

Speaking of Goodreads, I’ve smashed my Reading Challenge for 2023. In 2022 I read a mostly fiction and I started ’23 in the same vein, working my way through about six of Jane Fallon’s books and one by Cecilia Ahern but as I’m researching a book on criticism, I’ve ended the year with a flurry of non-fic.

One of the best titles I’ve read this year was Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks. It’s the slim, blue paperback on the pile above, just under my oo-man from Bali.

I recommend Four Thousand Weeks to everyone, young and old, because more than anything else, it urges us to make the most of this one wild and precious life (To quote Mary Oliver’s The Summer Day once again. Click here to read it on the Library of Congress website.)

The blurb says, ‘The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. If you live to be 80, you’ll have had about 4,000 weeks. But that’s no reason for despair. Confronting our radical finitude – and how little control we really have – is the key to a fulfilling and meaningfully productive life.’ (Find out more about Burkeman here.)

The subtitle is Time Management for Mortals. We need to remember what that word means.

mortal adjective – of a living human being, often in contrast to a divine being, subject to death.

Definitions from Oxford Languages

Burkeman is making his meaning pretty obvious here. We’re all going to die, so what are you waiting for?

One of my yoga teachers said she received Burkeman’s book as a birthday gift and felt it was a bit depressing. I urged her to read it because it’s actually an interesting and surprisingly uplifting read. It’s not necessarily about getting our ducks in a row before we shuffle off this mortal coil nor is it suggesting we sell up and start checking items off the bucket list. The message in its 250 pages is that we have a finite number of days, weeks, years so try to live the way we want.

I know there are probably lots of detractors who say it’s written from a place of extreme privilege. If we’re aware of good ol’ Maslow’s pyramid, we know that it’s hard to think about our bucket list when we don’t know where our next meal is coming from. But for those of us who do have the privilege of time and resources to make choices, we benefit from living wholeheartedly and as a bonus, the world can benefit from the good things we do.

Really knowing we have a time limit here should give us the boot up the bum we need to stop the mindless scrolling and at the very minimum read a book, go outside, call a loved one or plan dinner.

Because why? Because happiness.

Simple enjoyment is a good enough reason to do just about anything as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. There are things we must do. It’s great if we enjoy things like exercising, cooking and cleaning. It makes them far less like chores and transforms them into things we want to do. There are other things we want to do that are kind of innocuous and then there are things we do that are big time wasters. These are the things we need to dump. Obviously.

I’ve been thinking about my social media use. I could put to better use 90% of the time I spend on socials so, once again, less mindless scrolling through Instagram is on my 2024 to-do list. I’m pretty disciplined but Insta is a real time-suck for me. I was half considering and total abstinence from socials for the coming year but I’ve decided to try discipline before I resort to asceticism.

I’ll admit I find social media a bit depressing around Christmas because it’s not a holiday time for us. Everyone else in the world seems to be enjoying themselves but it’s our crazy busy time at work so it’s business as usual times three. I get a bit jealous of all the happy relaxed people travelling and generally making merry, taking time off and spending it with friends and fam. Of course, we take holidays at other times, when everyone else is at work so don’t feel too bad for me.

But then Burkeman does highlight a Norwegian study on happiness and holidays. Researchers found that people reported feeling happier at times when their families and communities were also on vacation. I can’t even imagine how lovely it must be to be in a country where shops close on a Sunday and public holidays. In Australia most of us don’t get those lovely month long summer holidays, especially those of us in the tourism sector. Of course in Norway, workers in health, law enforcement, tourism and hospitality would be in the same position as their counterparts here.

Anyway, enough of that! It is what it is until it’s not. No point sitting around wasting more of my possible 4000 weeks having a pity party for one, it’s time to get started on my 2024 reading challenge. You can follow me on Goodreads by clicking here or on the banner below. Happy Reading Year everyone!