1. Eat less.
2. Drink more.
3. Qualify as a sommelier (one year down, one year to go).
4. On New Year’s Eve, I pulled some wrist sweat bands out of my cracker. If that isn’t a sign to finally get back into some kind of exercise routine, then I don’t know what is.
5. Working from home in my keks has been one of the best decisions I ever made. But it’s really easy to just always work, and really easy to take a snooze when I feel like it. It’s time to make a concerted effort to go for a walk or stretch in the garden, and be less of a workaholic.
6. Funseeker. In attempt to make sure every single day has an element of good times to it, I’m going to attempt to do one simple yet fun thing every 24 hours. This could involve trying a new wine, playing with the cats, a midnight swim… then I’ll upload it onto Instagram, tagging the image #funseeker #365. Good, clean, simple fun.
7. Banishing the F word from my vocabulary. I don’t think I’ve EVER failed an exam (although I did bail out of grade 5 cello back in 1990, and still have a fear of face-to-face questioning) so failing Spirits 1 was a nice way of remembering that I’m not invincible, I don’t always get my own way and 60% is not good enough.
8. Back to #1 and “eat less”. It’s hard in my world to eat prudently, but it’s time to start trying. No need to devour everything just because it’s there/is free/I like it/I kind of like it/I don’t like it but it’s free.
9. Staying nicotine-free. Actually, I didn’t smoke any fags in 2013 and I’d like to keep it that way. Although I did have a teeny tiny toke on a spliff and nearly lost a lung in the process. My tip for giving up? Actively seek out a chest infection. It worked for me (bronchitis, twice, didn’t.) And don’t tell anyone. Nothing worse than being continually asked how it’s going, which acts as an unpleasant reminder of how hard it is to give up.
10. Kill the chihuahua next door. Or at least remove its vocal chords.
11. Meet Susana Gimenez. After out brief liaison on Twitter, it’s time we got together face to face.
12. Español. I started 2013 with an article published in Forbes Argentina and ended it with a short piece in La Nación. Let’s cement me and my cunning linguistics on Argentina’s journalistic map.
13. Two’s trouble. I became an auntie to baby twins in August, and although I don’t think Blighty is on the agenda for 2014, I can certainly start planning to meet them in 2015.
14. Make me baldie laugh every day, laugh with me baldie every day, go to a Brazil World Cup game, visit a new country in Latin America (Mexico? Bolivia? Venezuela?), have a reality TV show with Comando Gourmand, get an iPhone that works as a phone, eat drink be merry in any order (balls to #1), be more patient, make my own booze of some description; and simply, be happy.