Busy Doing Nothing

“I really don’t have time to take a holiday.”

If you hear yourself saying that in the new year, it’s a sure sign that you need a break. There’s only one solution: take time out.

I speak from experience as an activity addict. My husband complains that if I spot a blank page on my diary, my instinctive reaction is to fill it, when it would do me far more good to take a day off.

Not only do I cram my days with activity, but I do everything intensively and fast. Only recently on a writing retreat did I realise my default setting is breakneck speed. Volunteering to do the group’s grocery shopping, an author friend and I set off round the local supermarket, me pushing the trolley at my usual purposeful quick march.

“Relax, you’re on holiday!” Alison gently laid a hand on my elbow to slow me to her preferred leisurely stroll. It hadn’t occurred to me there was any other way to shop – or indeed to do anything else.

But even the Duracell bunny must run out of charge eventually, even if the other bunnies aren’t there to see it keel over.

(Image by Duracell licensed for fair use https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48645665)

So in 2024, I’ll be scheduling a weekly slot in my diary to do absolutely nothing. I’ll need to work at it, because it takes 21 days to form a new habit. But on a recent dummy run when, unwell, I managed a whole day of inactivity, I made an important discovery…

Doing nothing: it’s really something.

This little book has been helping me plan better use of my time for the last few years – that’s why it’s a bit dog-eared! It’s not too late to consult it out to help you make your own New Year plans – click the image to order it online. Huge thanks to author Lucienne Boyce for introducing me to this invaluable book back in 2019. i

(This post first appeared in the January 2024 edition of the Hawkesbury Parish News.)

In Other News Out on 26th January – click the image to preorder online

This month sees the launch of the ninth Sophie Sayers cozy mystery novel, Driven to Murder, in which to some extent art imitates life…

This story revolves around the cancellation of the local bus service – something that is happening in real life in my home village of Hawkesbury Upton, to the detriment of anyone who doesn’t have access to their own car.

But there the similarity ends – no murders on our real-life village bus to date!

I just wish I could engineer a happy ending for my village, in the same way that I always do in my novels…

Driven to Murder is available to pre-order now, for the official launch date of Friday 26th January.

Order your copy online here, or ask your local bookshop or library to order it in for you.

PS I love the way the designer’s referenced the book’s place in the Sophie Sayers mystery series on Sophie’s personalised licence plate!