2018 The Year of Being Unlimited
I have had this blog sitting here for….well nearly four months now!
When I say ‘sitting’ I mean the title written, a few sentences roughly jotted down on a word document and the rest sitting in my head.
I guess I originally wanted this blog to be quite inspirational. Like bring on 2018.
But I have not found it easy to get my head space right for the year and felt like you do when you first start heading off for a run when you have not been for a while. Like my arms and legs are going but just not very smoothly at all and everything has felt out of rhythm.
This year I am taking a lot on - I am finishing my next book due out in August, have established Dr Julie’s Kitchen which is still in it’s initial launch phase, preparing for a new tour season while also continuing with lecturing and researching.
The big unknown however is planning for baby number three. We would like to try for a third baby and are starting the process of looking at different fertility options and the hard conversations around time, money, when, how, what it all looks like…and simultaneously freaking out at the same time.
As I write this it is no wonder I have struggled to get my stride on….I am at the start of some pretty big and new challenges and some of these are often at conflict with one another – fighting for my already pretty pressed time.
It could be very easy to say – just do less.
But that is not want I want. I don’t want to simply do less.
Sure less housework, less working with businesses that are not aligned with our vision, less dealing with online bullies and people trying to attack our business. There are a lot of things that I should be doing less but this is beyond just ‘take on less’.
See what I really want to do is find a way to do all of the above.
No different to figuring out how to finish my thesis the same year as giving birth to our second son.
No different to writing The Nourished Baby on a tight deadline with no book advance.
So I guess stumbling around for a bit, taking steps forward and backwards is going to be where I am at….while also trying to keep my fears at bay. Those fears which are there lurking in the corners – fear of failure, fear of my body not being able to do this, fear of losing what I have created, financial fears, fears that the work will never end, fears about the impact on the boys…the fears never go away.
Every year I pick a word for the year. A word that will shape my focus, hold me steady when I am not sure I am going in the right direction. Just one word can do this. My word for this year is unlimited – seems appropriate right – last year it was ‘Power’.
True to form, at the end of the year I really felt I had unlocked an inner power in myself that I didn’t have before – not power as in money and connections power but true self power that came from taking on the seemingly impossible, writing, publishing The Nourished Baby and touring with the boys.
So this year it is about being unlimited – unlimited in my thoughts, in problem solving, in belief in what is possible. I want to look back on this entry in a years time and see just what actually was possible with an ‘unlimited’ view. None of this is easy by the way. I have not felt very ‘unlimited’ so far this year. In fact I have felt quite limited. Even writing this all down was hard enough (and has taken me four months!). It is time though to just embrace this year for all it is and all it is not. I know what I am taking on is going to take some serious back breaking work, some challenges I cannot foresee right now to be worked through but is this not what I would want for my own children? That they tackle their challenges and fears head on? I can practically hear my eldest saying “brave like a Lion mummy?”
So while I hopped this to be a big ra-ra blog (and one ideally published at the start of the year) maybe you can draw inspiration from the fact that actually unlike what it seems on social media that I am still figuring things out but just ploughing ahead anyway in the face of a lot of unknowns, in the face of a lot of my fears but with a ton of passion.
As I head into the crunch time with my next book and the start of what could be a long fertility journey to our (last) little miracle I will keep you posted along the way because a journey shared is a problem halved right!
Xxx Dr Julie Bhosale