It’s the last day of 2018 and everyone is thinking about what the new year will bring. I’m currently in the Lake District with friends, chilling out in Borrowdale YHA. If all goes to plan, we will be literally chilling out tonight – seeing the new year in from the top of a mountain. You know I like to start as I intend to go on.

You also know that I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions. At least not the “I will go to the gym” type of resolution. But, I do have an idea for what I’m hoping 2019 will bring. I’m certainly not resolving to all of it, but I’d like to give you a feeling for what to look forward to.

Adventures

What would this blog be without adventures? Although everyone keeps asking me what I’ve got planned next, after All the Tors, I still don’t have a big adventure to reveal. Sorry about that.

However, I do have some shorter dashes into the wild lined up. For example, I’m in the Lakes District right now for New Years. I’m going to be heading back to the Lakes again in February – this time for a challenge. I’ll be walking from the bottom to the top of the Lake District in winter conditions, camping along the way. (Any suggestions for a neat little name for this please let me know! Bottom to Top just doesn’t have a good ring to it!)

More details on this one a little nearer the time. Vague plan is to go from somewhere around Coniston to Braithwaite.

There’s also a winter mountaineering in Scotland trip in the pipeline. Scotland is one hell of a way from Devon, but hopefully this one will actually happen. Since passing my Summer Mountain Leader, I’ve been wondering what’s next for me in the MTA world. Do I want to go for more qualifications? If I do, I think it’s probably going to be Winter ML.

Even vaguer adventure ideas

It sounds like I’ve only got mountaineering on the brain at the moment, but there’s maybe an Alps trip on the cards. This would be a new one for me – I’ve done mountaineering in Austria and Italy, but never France or Switzerland.

There might be another Dartmoor adventure too. I was very taken by how All the Tors pulled a big Dartmoor community. I have some ideas about a community-involved adventure but it’s in very, very early stages – if it even happens at all.

Other than that, who knows! There are a few things on the bucket list that are pending. I’d love to go to South Africa some time, but I’m not sure if 2019 is the year.

Fitness

Please don’t laugh too hard at this one! I’m not about to become a gym bunny or start blogging about leggings. But one thing I’ve learnt about myself in 2018 is that I’m not very good at exercising for no reason.

When I was going into the office every day, I had a very good reason to exercise. I had a 20 mile commute in and no car. Taking the bus took the same time as riding a bike. So, I rode.

Now I’m working remotely, I have very little reason to even leave the house. This is not good. Aside from health reasons, I find myself desperately wanting to get outside, but have no idea where to go or what to do. I need a purpose.

So, in an attempt to motivate myself to leave the house – and get a bit of adventure in too – I’m going to be trying Tentacling. Tentacling is a way of exploring your local area, human powered. Starting from your house, you walk/cycle/run/etc the roads and paths, spreading out in tentacles.

We’ll see how far I can get in a year!

Social Media?

The more I put into this blog, the more I realise that I need to get my act together. At the moment, this blog is just for fun, but I’m putting a huge amount of time into it. I’m one of those people who finds it hard not to give everything they’ve got. Looking at my social media makes me cringe.

The thing is, this marketing stuff is my job. I know exactly what I need to do, it’s just a case of actually doing it. This year I’m going to treat Travelling Lines like a client and see what happens. So, here it is for posterity. At the start of 2019 I have 707 followers on Facebook, 1755 on Twitter, 296 on Instagram… and 19 subscribers on YouTube.

Slightly related to this, I’m going to keep up good consistency on blog – posting at least twice a week, every week, Mondays and Thursdays. I’ve also got some plans regarding audio and video…

A Book

This is a pretty long story. It’s not one I’ve shared with you guys yet either, so here it goes!

I wrote my first novel when I was 12 years old. When I was 16 I got my first literary agent. Then 2008 happened and what seemed like a glorious future career in writing crumbled. Off I went to university like everyone else.

Now it’s almost 10 years down the line. What the hell happened? This year is going to be the year that I sort my act out and publish a book. Twelve year old me and sixteen year old me – and to be honest all past mes – are standing in a row glaring at me on the other side of the mirror.

In this decade the entire landscape of publishing has changed completely. Self-publishing has gone from an act of vanity to a completely acceptable way of publishing a book. You don’t need an agent, or a conventional publisher. You don’t need anyone to choose you or pick you up out of the slush pile.

Last year, I had a foray with a conventional publisher. It got to the classic stage where everything’s looking extremely promising… then the editor comes back and says they want a completely different book. One that I couldn’t even write for another 3 years.

Why am I still waiting for permission? Get on and get started Emily.

Happiness

They say that happiness is a journey not a destination. Like I said in my round up post of 2018, this past year has been pretty rough. Without going into any detail, almost everything in my life is currently up in the air. Nothing is certain any more. To give a navigation analogy, I’m standing in a gap in the fog. There are no paths, no features, nothing to navigate off and I can’t see anything good to head for outside of the fog. I can go in any direction.

Maybe I’ll delete this paragraph later, but I’m not happy with where I am. There are some bits that are brilliant. This year I’m going to try to run towards these things and see where it takes me. I know you can’t have everything perfect and I’m very grateful for the good things (or more specifically people) that I have in my life.

But, I’m beginning to realise that actually life is what you make it. You can do whatever you want if you put your back into it. No one is making me put up with the things I hate except for myself. No one is forcing me to do the things that make me unhappy. One of the reasons I focus so much on understanding myself is to help me work out why certain things make me happy or unhappy. Is it the thing itself, or is it just a symptom of something else?

This year I’m going to double down on removing the unhappiness from my life where I can.

What do you hope 2019 will bring you?