December is flying! How is it less than a week away from Christmas already?! Honestly, I feel like I barely get time to stop and think these days before each week clicks over into the next; and now it’s less than a couple of weeks until we see in the New Year! Is it just me?!
I think I’ve mentioned this before in a previous blog, but I remember learning years ago that the feeling that time speeds up as we get older is a well-documented psychological phenomenon. It’s apparently due to the fact that when we’re young, we are processing so much new information, that our brains are working a mile a minute to sort through it all, and to store it away so we can find it again when we need it. But as we age, our days are full of much less new; we aren’t learning at the rate we once were, we don’t need to, and so the amount of processing is reduced. This, in essence, means our sense of lived time speeds up.
The Psychology Slowing Down Time
The antidote? Those who continue to fill their lives with heaps of new experiences, who continue to learn new skills, or who are able to truly live in the moment and focus on the now as they get older, feel like the days are longer than those who find themselves in a regular day to day routine. Switching things up regularly, taking the time to play, being spontaneous, and practicing mindfulness, all slow down the clock. And that’s what I want!
I do okay with some of those things. I try to carve out time for plenty of adventures and trying new things. That’s the whole premise of my bucket list – a concerted effort to keep new in my life. And I try to make sure I keep learning, and that I am fully in the moment when I’m enjoying fun experiences. I also think very deeply about things, and try to use that as my way of imprinting clear memories and to really understand life.
Sadly, time is still tearing through the years like a freight train. I guess spending ten minutes a day attempting to learn Spanish on Duolingo isn’t quite doing the trick! But there are only so many hours in the day. And days in the week. I’ll keep at it – filling my weekends with little adventures brings such joy to my life, and that isn’t going to change.
Anyway, that was an immediate diversion from what I was planning to talk about in this weekly blog episode. Although I guess it’s related… Let me take you through some of the ways I’ve been getting in the festive spirit over the last couple of weeks.
Christmas Markets and Light Displays
I mentioned at the end of my One Hour Outside November challenge roundup post that I’d started December off strong with visits to some lights and markets. While the Spectacle of Light at Sudeley Castle weren’t particularly Christmassy (it was Wizard of Ox themed), I can’t deny that the Bath Christmas Market did fill me with a festive feeling.
The Spectacle of Light was so pretty, with brightly coloured nods to the famous story including the yellow brick road, Emerald City, and even the poppies and winged monkeys. The live actors playing the story’s main characters added something extra, too.
We only spent around an hour following the light-filled trail (these trails are an expensive way to spend One Hour Outside), but it was lovely. A nice way to make the most of a dark and wintery evening, even if it was incredibly cold. And I had fried doughnuts, which is always a good thing.
Bath Christmas Market
Our visit to the famous Bath Christmas Market, said to be one of the best in the UK, was not my first time Bath (you know that if you’ve been reading about my Cotswold Way hike earlier this year), but we’ve not experienced the market before. We spent the day wandering around the stalls, eating food, buying gifts, and enjoying the (very cold) Christmassy backdrop.
Admittedly, we shared our wandering with a ridiculous number of other people (I don’t really like crowds), but it wasn’t too bad apart from in one or two areas – we arrived as the stalls were opening up and left just before it got darkm, so definitely avoided the busiest times.
Unlike some markets where you enter a fenced-off market zone, or where it’s down the centre of one wide street, the market at Bath is spread all over the city centre, which I liked. It was predominantly small independent traders selling one or two things, rather than loads of stalls selling versions of the same souvenir, and I definitely came away with a little wish list of things to look up online. I mean, just look at this print by Jeff Murray, my kitchen would look loads better with this on the wall!
We made use of the park and ride which was very handy, not overpriced, and if you take away how long we had to wait for our return bus (the bus was there, but the driver wasn’t – he got caught in the market day traffic), it was incredibly convenient.
Christmas Decorations
I’ve not put a Christmas tree up at home for a few years now. I wrote in my annual Christmas Message a couple of years ago how I just didn’t feel like it that year, and I haven’t done so since. That wasn’t the first time we’d gone sans tree, but it was the first time I’d acknowledged that the tradition was just not one I was bothered enough about. Sometimes you have to choose what you want to spend time and energy on, and I know I don’t need a tree in my lounge to feel Christmas-ready.
It helps that we don’t have a box full of sentimental ornaments to put on ours; my husband and I have never collected such things, and so we don’t have the annual need to get them out of the loft for their display time quota.
That’s not to say there are no decorations. Or that I dislike trees. Over the years my parents have bought us various small Christmassy things to have around the house such as biscuit plates and tea towels, which do get brought out each year. I’ve also got a set of flashing string lights over the front door, and our Philips Hue outside light is currently cycling through random colours which is a lovely welcome when we return home in the dark.
We did pop into the garden centre to see about buying a potted fir tree we could keep outside – with the intention of putting lights on it (I previously had a fir but it didn’t make it through the very hot summer a couple of years ago). They wanted nearly £50 for something that looked decent, so we’ve decided to wait and buy one sometime next year instead.
Christmas Music
One thing I can completely get on board with, though, is Christmas music. Not necessarily the tinny pop songs you hear played in the supermarkets and bars from mid-November (although I do like how Christmas music is generally quite fun), but the great orchestral pieces and film scores. Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, Prokofiev’s Troika, Anderson’s Sleigh Ride, are all absolute belters I love to hear. And John William’s Somewhere in my Memory will never fail to make me feel nostalgic.
And as someone brought up playing in a Salvation Army band, it’s no surprise that Christmas music and carols are a massive part of me preparing for Christmas. I mean, it’s not Christmas until you’ve heard an Army band playing in town, is it?
With that, I was surprised to be introduced to a new-to-me carol at my work carols by candlelight service this year. We sang Kate Rusby’s Sweet Bells, a carol peculiar to Yorkshire, based using the words to While Shepherds Watched but with an alternative tune and an easy to pick up chorus. Clearly, I asked the internet for all the details when I got home, and learnt all about Sheffield pub carols. And as if to make sure this carol permanently takes up real estate in my mind, Mark Radcliffe featured it on The Folk Show (BBC Radio 2) a few days later. A lovely carol, learnt in a really lovely setting, and that I’ve been humming to myself ever since.
Heard any new-to-you Christmas music this year?
An Advent Walk
Markets, decorations and carols aside, the way I have actually chosen to ‘get ready for Christmas’ this year, is to walk. Look, you know I walk every day anyway, and love a long-distance hike, but this is different. This is about taking (making, creating) time to walk a decent number of steps every day, in my normal daily life – without any of the excuses I’m so very good at crafting.
I accidentally made a promise to myself, and am now 19-days into a personal challenge to walk over 10,000 steps every day until Christmas. My Advent walk, if you will.
This isn’t something I set out to do at the start of the month, but rather ended up becoming my goal after I realised a week into December, I was doing pretty well at walking more than normal on my normal days. That is, on my bog standard working days and uneventful weekend days (as opposed to hiking days when I will very happily plan to walk miles and miles on purpose!).
I wondered if setting myself a challenge to ‘walk to Christmas’ might help me inject some purposeful movement into my every day, and might even (one can hope), lead to some positive physical and mental benefits.
10,000 Steps a Day
I know that the idea of walking at least 10,000 steps a day being a good daily goal is actually a made-up target based on absolutely no research, but hey, it is a pretty nice number to aim for.
The magic number “10,000” dates back to a marketing campaign launched in the run up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. A company began selling a pedometer called the Manpo-kei: “man” meaning 10,000, “po” meaning steps and “kei” meaning meter. It was hugely successful, and the number stuck. There’s a really interesting article here on scientific studies conducted since then, if you want to know more.
The key thing for me, and I’m not really sure why, is doing what I can to hit the 10,000 steps mark every day – not relying on averages. I’m already averaging 10,000 steps a day in 2023, but that is primarily down to some big hikes (such as the Cotswold Way) rather than down to a real daily habit. I can be incredibly sedentary when I don’t have an adventure planned.
So far, I have kept my promise to myself. It’s working. It’s not easy, especially when the weather is terrible (like yesterday!) or I have a particularly busy day. But I have proved to myself that it is possible – every day – whatever else is going on. So far, anyway. Oh, and I should note that my legs ache, especially my feet and ankles, but I’m just putting up with that!
Looking at My Day Differently
The main thing I’ve noticed is that this arbitrary goal is forcing me look at my day differently, which is exactly what I hoped. I’m making time to walk to work instead of getting the bus, choosing to have less time at home (less blogging!). On days when I have the car for work, I make sure I walk at lunch time and have a post-office walk around the park before heading home. And some days I’ve been out for a walk around the block in the evening to look at the Christmas lights around the neighbourhood, just to grab the last few thousand steps before dinner.
With only five days left until Christmas (we’re so nearly there!), I’m quietly confident that keeping this up for the whole of Advent isn’t going to be a problem.
It probably sounds a bit pathetic to some people, but after being very up and down in the amount of time and effort I’ve put into moving my body this year – some months going all in with massive hikes and running three times a week, and others hardly moving at all – this is feeling very much like a personal reset. Which is what Advent is about in many ways.
And with all the other benefits of walking, especially the fact that I’m outside in the fresh air and natural light, getting way more than One Hour Outside each day, it’s doing me a great service.
See You Next Time
I think that’s enough for this week’s weekly blog episode. By the time I write my next weekly blog, Christmas itself will have been and gone! As I said at the top of this post, the weeks – this year – is absolutely flying by. I hope things slow down just a little bit in the coming days, and that the gloriously wonderful break between Christmas and New Year provides some much-needed down time. For all of us.
It is my intention (and you know how good I am at setting intentions) to have my traditional Splodz Blogz Christmas message published in the next few days, and I’d love it if you came back to read that when it’s online. In the meantime, do check out my recent Cotswold Way gear post, and if you are still looking for last-minute Christmas gift inspiration, my gift guide from last year is full of some great suggestions for the outdoors lover in your life.
Buy Me a Cuppa?
If you enjoyed this weekly blog episode and fancy supporting me and my mini adventures this year, you can “buy me a coffee” for £3 (well, a cup of tea, if that’s okay?). Head over to Ko-fi to find out more. Thank you.