New Year Resolutions: How I Did With My List For 2015

Instead of making just one new year resolution each year, I like to write a list of at least 10 things I want to do over the following 12 months. The idea is that with a lot of goals you have a good chance of getting at least some of them done. How many of my resolutions did I achieve in 2015? Well, here’s what I hoped to do, what I succeeded at, what I attempted and what I failed to do completely.

1. Explore Tower Hamlets Cemetery as it is the only one of London’s Magnificent Seven cemeteries that I haven’t already visited.
   I went for a walk in Tower Hamlets Cemetery in east London on December 13 and you can see a picture of it to the right. It also helped me towards the second of my resolutions.
2. Inspired by Mindful London and Untamed London: Where Nature Still Runs Wild in the Big City (which I had recently read), visit three peaceful wildlife havens that can be found within London.
   Tower Hamlets Cemetery was one of them – the old Victorian burial ground is now a nature reserve. Just before Yule I visited Crofton Woods, which is a peaceful stretch of ancient woodland in south east London. The third wildlife haven was Sydenham Hill Woods, where on 25 January 2015 I went on a tree identification walk run by conservation officer Daniel Greenwood with Nature Conservation Lewisham. I failed to mention this on my blog at the time – what an oversight. I have blogged about the woods before though and I still count this as a resolution completed.
3. Learn to use the The Cup of Destiny tea-leaf reading cup I was given for Yule 2014.
   I really enjoyed learning to use this cup, which I discovered was very similar to a cup and saucer I inherited from my grandmother, but hadn’t known how to use. You can see pictures of both cups at the top and read my review of the Cup of Destiny here.
4. Build a wicker man.
   No, for the second year running I didn’t manage to do this. Maybe next year.
5. Take up yoga again – it has been quite a few years since I last did yoga.
   I had several opportunities to do yoga, including going to a yoga show, but I didn’t. Maybe next year for this one too.
6. Visit an ancient site in or near London that I haven’t yet blogged about.
   St Albans is quite near London and is also the site of the historic Roman town of Verulamium. I walked around the site, visited the museum there and blogged about a surviving pagan god mosaic.
7. Visit at least one ancient pagan site that isn’t in or near London.
   In August I visited the Uffington White Horse. It was really impressive, even though the weather was so foggy I could hardly make it out. You can see a picture I took at the bottom of the page.
8. Make my own candles.I not only made my own candles at Imbolc and reviewed a soy candle workshop, I also wrote a book about candle magic, which is due out very soon. It is called Pagan Portals – Candle Magic: A witch’s guide to spells and rituals.
9. Have a go at learning the basics of blacksmithing in order to make my own athame (the traditional witch’s knife)
   I didn’t get a chance to do this, but I will put it on my list of resolutions for 2016.
10. After giving a talk on psychogeography at last year’s PF London conference, I would like to give another talk, workshop or training session.
    I ran two workshops on candle magic this year, but because they were both at private events I didn’t blog about them. Nevertheless, I am going to count them towards my successes in 2015. I will be running a candle magic workshop at Treadwell’s in London on 2 Feb 2016. You can find out more about it here. 

I make that 7 out of 10, which is just above the 6.5 I achieved in 2014. I’ll be writing my New Year Resolutions for 2016 over the next few days and I’ll post my list on my blog.

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