April marked twelve years since I first hit the publish button on the blog.
Twelve whole years. It feels surreal even typing that. What started as a quiet little corner of the internet to share thoughts, observations, and the occasional rant has become something far more personal than I ever imagined. Yet, looking at the tumbleweeds rolling through the archives recently, you wouldn’t think it meant much at all.
Over the last few years I have added a ‘Memories & Highlights’ double page into my Bullet Journal. This serves as a reminder at the end of the year of all the positive things that I’ve been lucky enough to experience over the last twelve months, and is extremely helpful during times when things are tough.
Perhaps the most challenging part was at the start of the year when we moved house, and what followed was MONTHS of individual battles with various companies including SCS and So Energy (that went on for nine months until I lost my temper and started leaving negative reviews – amazing how a 1* review on Trust Pilot suddenly makes a company pay attention). We quickly realised that neither the landlord and the property management company weren’t interested in helping too, which hasn’t been great.
However, 2024 (despite all the challenges and annoyances we’ve faced this year), has in fact been pretty great for the most part.
The Bloke and I have again been extremely lucky to watch numerous shows at the theatre. My favourites? Book of Mormon, &Juliet, Hamilton, I Should Be So Lucky, Here & Now and Dear Evan Hansen – many of which were on my bucket list. Additionally, I got the opportunity to meet STEPS at their press launch, and I don’t think I blogged about it at the time, but I met Pete Waterman TWICE. I won’t go into detail now as this post is already going to be a lengthy one, but I was so overwhelmed by meeting him that I cried when I got home.
I think 2024 was the first year since I started blogging over a decade ago that I didn’t post something before Christmas.
Yes, I was busy – December is often one of the busiest points of the year as both my clients and I take some time off over the festive season, so essentially a month’s worth of work needs to be done, approved and scheduled in advance in less than three weeks. Additionally, regardless of how organised I try to be, there are ALWAYS extra things that appear – company Christmas parties and events (the week before Christmas I was in London for two days filming several events with a client), Christmas and New Year video messages from different teams etc. I genuinely enjoy it – this time of year is always perfect for creating lots of fun and joyful content, but it doesn’t necessarily allow for personal Christmas prep time, (despite my declarations in November that this year would be different).
The last week has been BRUTAL.
Not long ago, I was informed of a situation that would require me to be elsewhere for several weeks. This couldn’t have come at a worse time – I’m self-employed with nobody to cover me and it hit right at the start of prepping all the festive season posts for most of my social media clients. I wouldn’t be able to do much during the day and would physically be out of the house, so admin would have to be done extremely early in the morning, and then when I got home in the evening (as well as attempting to monitor a whole bunch of social media accounts if I had a few moments of free time during the day).
Christmas. It may be early November, but the sleigh bells have started on the TV adverts, the stores are already heavily into their festive marketing strategy, and I’m getting messages from family asking what I would like as a gift.
For the last few years, Christmas has followed a similar pattern. I start the month of December with the concept that I want to make this year the best Christmas ever, and then I get slammed with work as everyone starts freaking out and needing ALL THE THINGS NOW NOW NOW as everyone, including myself, is taking a little bit of time off. Inevitably, by the time it gets to a few days before Christmas I’m fed up and exhausted, and I’m not in the mood.
The day after going to a Silent Disco at The Natural History Museum in London for my friend, Helen’s birthday, I found myself with a day off.
This wasn’t the intended plan when I booked tickets in March – I was going to travel down to London on the day of the disco, stay in a hotel overnight and then come home. As it transpired, work commitments that appeared later in the year meant that I would be in London not just on the day of the disco, but on the day before and for five days afterwards. I had to book a separate hotel reservation for the remaining period of time, and ended up with a room near Euston, which made travelling easier.
The Saturday after the disco was the only free day that I had, so The Bloke got on a train and joined me in London. We decided to have a day date and go to Camden – it was one tube stop away, the weather was glorious and neither of us had been there in years.
There are certain things that just seem too cool to be true, and the idea of a silent disco at The Natural History Museum was one of them.
Until earlier this year, when my friend Helen mentioned it as something that she would like to do for her birthday.
Amazing.
A week ago I met up with two friends, Sacha and Helen, in London. Both of them are authors – Sacha is absolutely killing it in the indie author world and Helen’s book has just been released across the UK with One More Chapter, part of Harper Collins publishing – but we actually met through blogging nearly ten years ago.
At the end of July all of the schools had finished for the summer holidays and The Bloke was working out his remaining annual leave for the year before it resets in September. As an IT Tech he doesn’t get the same amount of holidays as the teaching staff and has to be savvy when he takes days off, so it made sense for him to take his two remaining weeks at a point where he would also get an additional few days with the Bank Holiday at the end of August.
We started discussing the potential of going away on holiday – the last proper holiday we had was a week in New York in 2018 and we were both in desperate need of a break. Over the last year or two it has become a regular conversation, but every time we have actively looked for somewhere to go something seemingly happens that then becomes the priority, and after that particular crisis is resolved we then find ourselves back into the daily life and work routine.
The following day, as if the universe was listening, I found a gorgeous (and more importantly, affordable) little cottage in the tiny village of Johnshaven in Scotland that was available when The Bloke was going to be off work.
It has been five months to the day since we got the keys to the new house.
And about three weeks ago, we unpacked the final remaining box.
It has continued to be an interesting experience. Since we moved in:
Suzie Speaks 
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