The first weeks of a new year are not, generally, the most joyful. It's the let-down after the festivities. The still-grey weather, often damp. The return to work and "reality". The removal of all the cheery decorations. It is not my favourite time of year.
But I shall try to find the joy.
This week has not been a week of Big Joys. Not that I wanted to start with Big Joys: it's easier to build momentum if you don't also have to maintain a high level as a baseline.
With colouring, and learning to blend and shade properly. And beginning the next round of birthday cards. And sending them in time.
Little wins. Little patches of joy.
Admittedly, the colouring is being helped enormously by a set of Spectrum Noir Tri-Blends I was given for Christmas, but I like to think I'd been doing all right - better, certainly, than previously - with my unbranded watercolour markers. But I generally stamp with Memento, so decent alcohol markers are necessary. So far, I've been quite impressed by the Tri-Blends.
I've been practising with a couple of Hobbycraft's colour-in canvases: this unicorn which I've had for several years, and a Christmas map of Santa's Workshop. I'm enjoying myself, so I'll probably have a look for some more. They make a change from a colouring book, which I used when revising for my A levels, oh-so-many years ago. And they give some sort of purpose to the colouring. I never know what to do with a completed colouring book.
It's quite nice to have moments where the only thing to worry about is which colour to use next.
Especially as the studies are about to start up again. The pleasure-reading may have to be put to one side - so it's just as well my other joy for this week was in finishing my Christmas Eve book: The Christmas Pig, by JK Rowling. I'd spent the weeks of Advent watching Christmas films and wanted a Christmas story to read. To be fair, we also got Tom Fletcher's A Christmasaurus Carol to read too, which we haven't yet. Tiny preferred Harry and the Dinosaurs Make a Christmas Wish.
Now, though, I must concentrate on Paradise Lost, and literary revolutions.
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