Hello!

Apologies, I’ve been away from the blog for far too long and I have to admit I’ve missed it.  This may end up being a little self-indulgent or meandering but I need to write it for me.  I know I’ve not been the only person to have had a strange 2018, so, if it makes anyone feel less alone then great. 

I don’t believe in over sharing every personal detail though I want good relationship with my clients and for them to know and trust me.  I don’t buy into the polished veneer of a perfect “Insta” life that many purport to live. Honesty and keeping it real is my way of doing things. So, that said, here goes…  

I’m writing this post as 2018 is drawing to a close, it’s that weird time of year when we often stop (amidst the Christmas chaos) and look back and assess the highs and lows of the past year.

What has passed?

Where am I now?

Where I go from here?

What are my future plans, dreams and New Year’s resolutions? 

Its “weird” because in reality time is continuous, year ends are just calendar dates but we are often conditioned to attach far more significance to them than can be healthy for us.  For me, it’s a bit like the old broken diet chestnut.  We start on Monday then by Thursday we’ve slipped up and consumed a box of Maltesers and other assorted forbidden delights, thus, we decide to wait until Monday to restart our healthy eating.  This invariably never happens, unless you are blessed with great self-discipline, but if you were, you probably wouldn’t need that diet to start with! 

We often allow the structure of time to dictate to us, or to be an excuse for bad habits.  I certainly fell into that trap this year.

Looking back at 2018

Winter and early spring were pretty much a write off.  I fell ill with pneumonia just before New Year 2018 and it took me months to pull round. I didn’t work for the first three months of the year and I couldn’t get back in the groove. 

Late spring and summer ticked happily, orders and customers still arrived but I was subconsciously self-sabotaging my business head because I’d missed the start of the year, it’s nonsense, I know!  I just lost confidence in my business ability, my creativity and myself in general.

Autumn arrived and so did my creative spark. I plunged head long into creating new designs for my forthcoming hat hire business that will launch in 2019.  It should have happened this year but just wasn’t meant to be. I also unexpectedly created three new capsule bridal collections (each very different from the other), shoots are pending. I’m not really sure why inspiration suddenly arrives out of the blue, I’m not a reader of self-help guru type books but I suspect it has something with giving the mind time to make space for the creativity to bloom, or some such cliché.

Now winter is here and the last two weeks have been an absolute revelation.  My business head has kicked in and fired up all sorts of ideas and plans.  They still need more structuring and are scrawled across pages of notebooks but I’ve not had this sort of focus or commercial inspiration all year.  Not the greatest timing with a week off with family at Christmas looming but thank goodness it did. 

I’m currently making changes and improvements to my website, trawling through SEO activities, planning social media activities, forthcoming blog posts and have ideas a plenty to work on.  The long and short of it is, I now feel ready to tackle 2019 positively and I’m working on it now, I’m not doing the old diet trick of waiting for Monday!

Family life has been busy, it never stops. April saw us all escape for a long weekend in Nuremberg. May took my husband and I to a London party with You and Your Wedding Magazine, celebrating the Royal Wedding, we also managed to see the tiara I made for Smeg in their Regent St window. We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary and slipped off for a night away, the weather wasn’t kind to us but the break was great. June also saw us celebrate my husbands 50th with a big party at home, it was a great chance to catch up with lots of friends old and new. July saw friends 40th and 60th celebrations. December saw my son turn eighteen and another family celebration so it definitely hasn’t all been bad. We’ve walked, thrown stones in to the river, played on empty beaches, enjoyed great cultural events in Hull and watched the kids grow up before our eyes.

My biggest personal success of the year has been conquering my overwhelming fear and loathing of being on camera, don’t get me wrong I still don’t like photographs of myself but I’ve come to terms with me and my voice on Instagram stories. Unless you are like me you probably won’t appreciate that this has been no small feat, but the feedback has been brilliant. I started with the bar reasonably low, I’m in my working scruffs most of the time, make up free and as you’d find me day to day. If I had to be made up and dressed up to post it wouldn’t be a regular event! I don’t heavily edit, life’s too short to take yourself too seriously! If you want to see one of my dafter moments click below…

https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17929486702224286/?hl=en

So what now for 2019 ?

I’m not a great resolution maker but based on what I’ve learned this year, I plan to…

- try and take a little more time for me

- try to look after myself more and get my health back on track

- try and spend more time with friends rather than isolating myself

- accept sometimes failing to meet my own unrealistic expectations as long as I get straight back up to keep trying.

Arguably “trying” isn’t a positive resolution but to my mind it is something to keep heading towards, a good mindset, not a point in time that can be passed and failed.  Business plans are separate to resolutions.

Constant small move’s in the right direction rather than grand gestures make for progress.  If we stumble then that’s fine, we don’t need to wait for the next calendar marker to restart.

Okay, time to stop, I’ve bored you enough but at least I’ve purged 2018 and I’m ready to move forward with a clearer, more ordered and more positive head on.

What about you?

Harriet x

20th Dec 2018