10 questions for 3 happy months
Somehow, 2025 is a quarter of the way through already so I thought this might be the perfect time for us to take a little pause and take stock (think of this post as a fun and creative quarterly performance review for YOU).
At the start of this year I bought a journal called GOODBYE 2024 HELLO 2025.
The journal was billed as ‘a life coach in your pocket’ and, as I was having a bit of a crap time at the end of 2024, I thought it might be a worthwhile investment.
Just a little recap in case you’re new here (and if you are new here, welcome!) – at the end of last year my dad, who is 85, was taken seriously ill. I’d given up my home in the UK back in 2023 and had been living as a digital nomad ever since, travelling the world while I wrote my books. When my dad became ill it soon became clear that I’d have to put my travels on hold for the foreseeable future to help my siblings support him.
I’d booked to spend all of January with friends and family in my favourite part of America, before finally realising a very long held dream of mine to live half the year in Paris. The day I realised I’d have to cancel my plans I felt a crushing mixture of fear and anxiety over my dad, and bitter disappointment. So I got back into bed at lunchtime, pulled the duvet over my head and cried for several hours.
This is a tip a lovely friend taught me for those days when life feels too much. Basically, you get into bed, pull the duvet over your head and cry / sob / wail until you’ve got whatever it is off your chest.
So I cry-sob-wailed for about three hours and then, when I’d reached a point close to acceptance, I asked myself the following question…
What kind of person do you want to be in this situation?
The first answer that came to me was actually the kind of person I definitely did not want to be.
I definitely did not want to be a moany little bitch.
I wanted to be the kind of person who makes the best of a bad situation.
And I wanted more than anything to be there for my dad, the same way he’s always been there for me.
And so it was that I ordered the GOODBYE 2024 HELLO 2025 journal, in the hope that it would help me start the year on a positive and focused note.
It was a great investment.
First, the journal helped me get clear on all the things I was grateful for in 2024, which instantly made me feel better as 2024 was officially the best year of my life.
Then there was a whole section I had to fill in about my dream life and what it would look like.
Next I had to think about how I wanted my 2025 to look.
And then the journal got me to focus in on what I wanted the first three months of the new year to be about.
I wrote that I wanted to work really hard on the final draft of my next novel. And that I wanted to create a ‘financial fundation’ – a phrase I’d coined meaning a source of financial stability that is fun as well as work!
When I’d left the UK to go nomad-ing I’d boiled my work life down to writing books, which meant that my books had become my sole source of income. Now I had to return to the UK I was faced with the much higher cost of Airbnbs here – not to mention the UK’s cost of living crisis making everything a lot more expensive – so just having one source of self employed income suddenly felt like a precarious existence.
I also wrote in the journal that I’d like to have fun times with loved ones, make new and inspiring friends, and be there for my son and daughter-in-law as they build a new life together in the UK, as well as obviously being there for my dad.
I then tucked the journal away and forgot all about it, until this week, when I realised that the first three months of the year were almost over.
It was really interesting to re-read what I wrote back at the start of the year and to remember how sad and anxious I’d been feeling back then.
It was also wonderful to see how far I’ve come as I completed the section in the journal reflecting on my goals for the first quarter.
My new novel is finished and coming out soon.
I had loads of fun planning my ‘fundation’, under the umbrella name DREAM DARE DO, which my lovely graphic designer daughter-in-law designed the logo for.
I re-branded this Substack accordingly, brainstormed workshop and course ideas, and relaunched my writing mentoring, working with six lovely new clients.
I’ve also had some amazing times with family and friends, and every week I’ve spent a day with my dad, which I’ve come to think of as ‘Fridays with Mikey’ – a slightly grittier, Irish version of ‘Tuesdays with Morrie.’
I turned a crushing setback into three really happy months, and it all began with me asking myself the question: what kind of person do I want to be in this situation?
So now, as we move into the next quarter of the year, I’m asking myself that question again, along with a few others I came up with, which I thought you might find helpful and /or fun too.
So, without further ado, here are my 10 questions to help you have a happy April, May and June…
What are you proud of doing or achieving in the past three months?
Why are you proud of these things?
What disappointments have you experienced?
What can you learn from them?
What have you been grateful for?
Why are you grateful for them?
What kind of person do you want to be in the next quarter of the year?
If you viewed the next three months as a chapter in your life’s story, what would you like the theme of that chapter to be?
If you had to pick a song or two to form the inspiring soundtrack for this next chapter what would they be? Perhaps you could create a Spotify playlist…?
And what would you like to do or achieve in the next three months?
Take some time to free-write the answers to these questions when you know you won’t be interrupted and really have fun with them. Dream your way into designing the next three months of your life in a way that really lights you up.
To further inspire you, I highly recommend reading the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. It always fills me with joy and makes me sigh with relief. Here are the opening lines to whet your appetite…
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Until next week, when I will be back in Ukraine. Thankfully, my dad’s health issues have now stabilised so I’m able to take a two week writing and research trip there and spend some time with my lovely Ukrainian friends and family.
Siobhan
One of the ideas I had for my financial fun-dation was to set up a page on Buy Me a Coffee – a website that allows people to support creatives in a fun and affordable way, by simply buying them a coffee. As someone who needs coffee in order to write (and I’m not kidding!) this seemed like a great idea, and it gives me such a lift every time I get notified that someone has bought me a coffee. So, if you have found my posts helpful or uplifting and you’d like to keep me fuelled in caffeine, you can visit my page / virtual coffee shop via the link below. Huge thanks in advance if you do!