This week, our Tuesday wakes up with a vibrant smile and starts the brand new, shiny and squeaky-clean calendar year. No sooner have we said Happy New Year than we drag out the tome of resolutions. Quick, be perfect now! Your body is a temple, worship it with purity in all the ways! Your life is a blank canvas, mark it only with considered landscapes, no splatter paintings here! Drink only water from the sacred spring! Eat only food prepared by Tibetan monks! Read a library worth of self-help books before the second day of the year, rearrange the position of the towels and toilet rolls and there we have it, Bob's your uncle, life is balanced, it is whole and your aura dazzles with zen glow. Um. No. Please pass the sunglasses and turn down the lamps.

There can often be such pressure in this end and start of year and I'm coming to you today from Radio Doityourway. If you look through tax man glasses, you have another third of year to go before your turkey dinner. If you are a school then you've already popped one term in the bag. If you sail the good ship NHS then your brand new shiny year is merely a drop in an oceans worth of open days.

The phrase "be kind to yourself" is given to us mental health warriors frequently and is often misused. In the changing of the year, can we be kind to ourselves in the kindest way possible? By allowing ourselves freedom. Freedom to see. Freedom to release from shackles of expectation. Do you need to commit to resolutions that may dance on your head after they've hammered your stake into the ground? Or can you draw some parallel lines and say that within them lies you. You in all your wondrous differences. You in your way. Today you've got you. What can you give yourself freedom from to allow your lungs to breathe more easily? Do glance back and nod at what has served you, do turn your face forward and smile at what might be coming and do free yourself from feeling you must obey a resolution in order to count.

Hare bought the t-shirt and had ferocious drive but burned out trying to be. Tortoise kept taking half steps in the direction of destination. And he made it. You're making it! I salute you fellow tortoise. Creep on.

Love from the room above the garage

A Moodscope member.