I’m not sure it was the best way to start my year, saying “b*llocks to resolutions“. I suppose I was trying to give myself a break, not be so hard on myself – I was attempting to put a stop to the continuous “must do better” voice inside my head that manages to infiltrate every part of my life.

My shunning of resolutions was a bit of a middle finger, also, to the plague of positivity posts that appear every New Year – people telling other people how to become positive, how to be more positive, how to avoid other people who aren’t positive, how to stay positive, how to make lists of everything that is positive. Call me a grumpy old cow, but sometimes I quite like to wallow in a bit of self-pity whilst eating all of the orange, strawberry, fudge and purple ones out of a large tin of Quality Street.

However – and I say this with a slightly sheepish look on my face – my “no resolutions, everything is fine the way it is” start to 2017 has backfired somewhat. I’ve never felt so demotivated! Perhaps it’s because I’m 36 weeks pregnant and can barely get out of a chair without a winching system in place, but I seriously cannot be bothered to do anything. My usual pizazz, which is always at a high ebb in January, is nowhere to be seen – my laptop has been stowed away in the tupperware cupboard (don’t ask) for over a week and my office is still strewn with bits of Christmas paper and all of the festive products that I didn’t have time to feature.

Yes it could be the “heavily pregnant” thing, getting in the way of my usual enthusiasm levels, but I also blame the fact that I didn’t do my resolutions. I’ve realised, over the past week, that my customary end-of-year list isn’t just a “what can I do better?” exercise, it’s a round-up of all that I’ve accomplished as well as things I didn’t get round to. And missing this annual appraisal has left me with my head buried in the sand, not knowing where an earth I am with work or family life, just plodding from day to day without any kind of direction or goal.

So I’m not backtracking (honest guv!) so much as adjusting my sentiments from last week’s post: I still don’t want to give myself the pressure of more things to do, I still don’t want to “appraise my strengths and weaknesses” or beat myself up over what I didn’t get done. No resolutions – that still stands. But I will be spending a few hours tomorrow writing out a list of what’s important to me, what makes me happy (apart from the obvious family stuff) and how I can make time to do it. Work-wise, I want the content I put out to be better, always, but to do this what has to go? What do I love writing about, what bores me? How can I streamline things so that I’m only ever writing or filming the most engaging or useful stuff? (You should see how many pointless post drafts I write, editing for hours before coming to the realisation that I’m just not interested in the product enough to feature it. Or videos that end up in trash after a whole day’s work because they’re not up to scratch! What a waste of valuable time.)

I’m hoping that this little think session will rid me of my terrible sense of demotivation. I know I’m feeling particularly angsty because Baby No2 is so close and I’m wondering what an earth it’ll be like trying to balance everything, but I’m sure that my slightly negative and nonchalant “b*llocks to this!” entry into 2017 didn’t help in terms of spurring me into action.

Tell me: do you know what I mean when I say that I need a sort of head-sorting session? Not a list of resolutions, but a clearing out of the needless anxieties and insecurities I carry about with me and the formation of a general kind of plan for the future? It’s bigger than resolutions, actually – it’s a total brain overhaul, and I think that I probably rely on it to be able to fit in everything I do and not have a weekly meltdown.

So tomorrow: brain overhaul. I’ll let you know how I get on.