Someone asked me the other day if I could click my fingers and instantly be living my best life where would I be? And I was, momentarily, stumped.

No desert island filled my head or a house with umpteen rooms and a sustainable wardrobe, it just stayed blank and I stared gormlessly whilst I tried to think. My brain has been so chaotic with moving my warehouse to a new premises (think of 15 van fulls of vintage furniture and ornaments), keeping said business making money and dealing with an up and down home life where I’ve been living, working and playing with my boyfriend through a global pandemic and lockdown, that it has become full of fog and I really had no idea where I wanted to be.

And then when my brain did finally kick in with a place I’d want to go to, it went with a gut feeling, more than any thought and told me where I wanted to be was a quiet space, alone, preferable a on mountain somewhere or in a forest, but most definitely alone. My brain had arrived at the point that happiness to me would essentially be living as a hermit.

But, really?

My best life would be that…plain?

The longer I stayed with that idea, the more it bothered me. Is that what I wanted, what I deep down craved as my sanctuary or is it more likely that with all this stress is filling my life, I just can’t clearly see the wood for the trees and my mind is craving peace and quiet to collect itself? It didn’t necessarily want a life like that forever, just long enough to sort it self out. And if that is the case, and a life of hermitage isn’t what I want, what is my utopia?

All this thinking brought me back to this blog, a place where I wanted to answer that initial question in a roundabout way. If I can make my life the greeniest, healthiest and happiest using the home front ideals I love so much when I research World War 2, I should in theory then be living my best life, shouldn’t I?

But I still can’t see it, I still can’t picture where I want to click my fingers to. It all just feels like words and ideas that don’t feel real and baseless when I try to make them into a concrete form.

So thought I’d go back to basics and write a list of what I really mean by using this home front nostalgia . I’m not allowing any airy fairy “living well” or “keeping calm”, it has to be the practical bits of what I want to bring into my life. And then I’m going to use it as a blue print to try go forward and see whether it does lead to the life I can call my happy place.

I’m also going to concentrate on taking the next few weeks to de-stress, giving my brain the space it needs to unfog itself so I can start to form my plans. I’m guilty of filling my life with other people’s dreams and problems and I need to spend a little time thinking about me and what I want my life to be, though I’d like to add I’m not ruling out that secluded cave.

Once my list is taking shape, I’ll share it on here but in the mean time, I’d love to hear of your de-stressing techniques, what’s your tried and tested?

Here and Now Goals progress report update