The End of My Year Didn’t Go as Planned
Of course my toddler got ill at the perfect time
Hi there,
I know I don’t normally pop in your inbox at the end of the month but I wanted to sign off for the year and also, you know, check in. Hey, how are you? Last we spoke I was dropping some Big News and all the plans I laid out have now happened so hey? If you celebrate Christmas and/or Chanukah I hope you had a lovely time 🎄🕎 We’re hosting again this year (I’m writing this before Christmas) but a smaller number than previous years and with our new kitchen/living room set up so we’re feeling VERY prepared and confident in our hosting abilities - I hope I’m not jinxing it!
I’m actually writing this on what was meant to be my last week (or Mon-Weds) of work for the year but Rowan has come down with a cough and slight high temperature and we had an AWFUL night last night (I got a broken 3 and a half hours sleep 😫), so my last week of work has instead become my first week of holidays, parenting and unpaid work time. Dan, Rowan and I are currently sat on the sofa watching Teletubbies feeling sorry for ourselves - I’m going to have a nap soon as I finish writing this. Luckily, I’m so organised and like to be ahead of schedule that other than writing this I don’t have much to do these couple days so I can instead look after an ill child and hopefully do the sleep when the baby sleeps thing, although that wasn’t really possible last night.
I maybe would have been able to conjure up some more profound reflections on this year, this month, if I was running on slightly more sleep but you can’t win them all, and actually it feels right that this is the end to my year. Navigating work and parenting, productivity and rest, with all the unpredictability (I originally wrote ‘unpredictableness’ and was confused why the red scribble appeared under the word, which just shows how tired I am) of having a baby/toddler has been a big theme this year (and probably will be a big theme for the next 20 years at least). Of course once again, normal life has thwarted my plans but we adapt and change, look after ourselves and crack on. Which is what this whole career change is about. Adapting, looking after myself and cracking on.
So here’s to that! Happy New Year! See you in Jan!
❄️ January 2024 Plans! - I don’t really know what my day-to-day in January is going to look like and that is both exciting and terrifying to me. I have a list where I’ve been dumping everything I can think of that I need to do but my 2023 brain cannot deal with right now - “that’s a next year thing!” Well, next year is around the corner, so soon I will open the list and see what’s in store for me!
📹 New video schedule! We’ve decided that next year More Hannah channel videos will go out on Wednesdays at 12pm GMT (Tuesdays for Patrons) and we’ll experiment with the premiere feature at the beginning too! Our first video back will be Wednesday 10th January ✨
📺 Better Call Saul - after finishing Breaking Bad at the end of summer we took a break from diving into our next big series (we didn’t have as much time with me recording podcast interviews in the evenings). But now Bake Off, Taskmaster and Strictly are also all over, we were like, “ooh what should we watch next?” and of course we had to pick Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin-off/prequel. We’re only a handful of episodes in but absolutely loving it - Saul (Jimmy!) and Mike! New interesting characters! Incredible writing! Compelling storylines. It’s all just SO GOOD.
We did Vlognukah! The break is time to catch up on any videos you might have missed AND we said goodbye to the “Hannah Witton” YouTube channel with special episodes of Pleasure Trove, Drunk Advice and a BEST BITS montage (there are extended editions of Drunk Advice and best bits over on Patreon!)
Thank you everyone who has joined my Patreon recently since I announced my career change - honestly wasn’t expecting that kind of response at all! We’ll be starting our book club in the new year starting with Emily Nagoski’s new book, Come Together (affiliate link), which comes out end of Jan! More details to come in the new year over on Patreon!
Thanks for reading, hope you're well!
All the best,
Hannah xxx
