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It's the time of year for both reflection and looking ahead but there's a danger in only doing so around New Year and somehow expecting everything to come together as the calendar ticks over.

It doesn't feel like the end of a decade to me; not in the same way it did moving into the 80s or the 90s. I think the noughts, or the noughties, whatever you wanted to call them, got subsumed by the new millennium - the new decade aspect of it got overlooked and the years rolled into an extension of this.

Moving into the "twenty tens" was also a bit strange; what do you actually call that decade? There is no snappy name to give it a real identity and, it too, just seemed to flow from the previous one.

Maybe things will be different moving into the 20s. That feels weird in itself as we are used to "the 20s" meaning the 1920s. We'll have to reframe things.

Regardless of the futility of focusing on one change of date, the new year can still act a focus, a jumping off point. It can act as a reminder that you should be doing something, changing something, doing something different or just in a different way.

Finding that something is the tricky bit.

People say it's hard to stick to New Year's resolutions bit that's probably because they were the wrong ones: too ambitious, too complicated, not realistic, or just not what sufficiently interests them. Perhaps they are merely things which they think they should be doing - what society expects - rather than what is truly needed.

Instead of waiting for the New Year I've already made a couple of decisions about I want to approach things in the 20s, things I want to do differently. In a sense, I think much of 2019 has been leading up to this - definitely since June.

While the will and intent have been there, however, the ability to act on them perhaps has not. I don't feel I've done enough to facilitate the changes I wanted to make, the new approach I wanted to cultivate.

Maybe the 20s can be a catalyst for that.

I'm not going to go into any detail here, at least not at present. I've historically made grand pronouncements, statements of intent so that I can be held accountable. Sometimes it's worked, others not. This time I don't want to put undue pressure on myself by giving a sense of expectation that may not be met. Instead, I think it will be evident if I succeed.

I've sown some seeds and now need to nurture them such that they take root and become established. Still, the growth will be slow with possibly a period where I look at the bare soil and wonder if the new shoots are ever going to emerge forgetting that there's plenty going on under the surface.

Still, change is hard. Change is scary. Just as we show the seeds of change so we also get mixed in the seeds of doubt, the resultant weeds threatening to choke our new shoots, stealing their sunlight. Weeds are hardy. Weeds are resilient, growing where we don't want them, resisting our attempts to uproot them.

Weeds can inform us that we are trying to grow in the wrong places, trying to cultivate something that cannot be. Just like making the wrong resolutions. Yet there are times when we need to persist, need to feed and fertilise because we know there's a garden just waiting to bloom if only we can put in the effort.

#bypen

I've let things slide again with meditation and writing by hand.

I make occasional notes but the habit isn't there at present. I also write too quickly, it gets messy fast. My brain hits overdrive and my hand tries to keep up. It fails.

My school physics teacher once said I could have been a scientist if my handwriting was neater - let's just say I don't think I'm heading for a career change any time soon.

I can't remember the last time (before this morning) that I opened Oak. I've meditated without it but nothing consistent or regular. I obviously still need something, a trigger, to get me in the proper mindset.

This seems to go hand in hand with use of my phone creeping back up - not proper use but the aimless flicking between apps I desperately try to avoid even though I'm still using it in greyscale.

Change required.

#bypen

We can quantify the wind, it is a product of heat, pressure and the rotation of the Earth. We can model it, predict it, its speed, direction, its power.

Yet we cannot rationalise the feeling of it, on our skin, in our hair, the sensations we experience as it passes us by, uncaring, almost ignorant of our presence.

There is no formula we can refer to, no calculation we can make, no relationship between the its strength and how alive it makes us feel. The wind is seemingly from nothing, through nothing, into nothing, but strikes us as though a physical object, connects us to the world around us in a way we can never truly explain. Not that we would want to.

It is ephemeral yet we are more real for its passing, fortunate to have been blessed by its kiss.

#bypen

After chastising myself for not writing much by hand I thought I'd better pick up a pen again and try to get back in the habit.

But it wasn't my normal pen and notebook, rather the ones I used to use where the pen is a little too scratchy and the pad too small for comfortable use. They've been sat on my bedside cabinet for months, ignored since I moved to the Lemome.

I normally like having everything in one place but, needs must, and sometimes you just have to write with whatever you have to hand. It throws me out but it's better than missing the thoughts because there was nowhere to put them.

It feels weird writing that: "nowhere to put them" considering I have my phone with or by me almost all the time.

But this was a specific move to write by hand and shifting to the phone, if I hadn't had a pad and pen, would feel like defeating the object.

I get compartmentalised like that sometimes - if the intent is to do something a particular way I can't just switch, it just doesn't feel right and my brain can't process it.

#bypen

Device health is a massive topic.

I use True Tone and night shift on my phone but, even at its most "warm," it doesn't feel like it's enough. Maybe it's that I've gotten used to the changes those technologies make to the display.

That's quite likely as I can't bear it when I turn them both off.

But it's good that I'm concerned and it leads me to trying something.

I'm terrible for going to bed and using my phone. I don't care how warm the display is, it can't be good for me. And we are constantly bombarded with advice about not using our devices for an hour before going to bed.

That isn't always practical as it's often not apparent when bed time is going to be, but I think adhering to the spirit of it, if not the actual timescale, is a good place to start.

So, in light of this, I will try to use my devices less before bed and, when I get there, I'll limit myself to my notebook and pen.

If there's something I want to say, or an idea I want to get down on the page, I can do it by hand and it can wait until the morning to see if I want to type it up or put it on the blog.

#bypen