Aaaand breathe....

Life can be so fast paced can't it? As we struggle to balance work life, home life, relationships, time with friends and family etc it can sometimes be difficult to feel like we are living at all amidst the differents facets of our lives. Days, weeks and months whizz by and I often wonder what on earth I actually did with my time. Did I savour that time and fully enjoy it or did I not really pay any attention and let it pass by. Too often its the latter.

Now I am in no way saying we should stop to savour every single moment of our lives or we'd never get anything done but I do feel I want to challenge you (and me) to think about the quality of our lives. Are we making the most of it? Are we fully investing in and enjoying our relationships and the experiences we have?

Something I often long for is a slower pace of life. A pace of life in which I fully enjoy the relationships I have, the places I visit, the things I experience and the food that I eat. Too often these things are overlooked because I am thinking about what I have to do, what I think I should be doing and sometimes what I'd rather be doing. I rarely stop to just be and enjoy.

This weekend presented an opportunity to really put these thoughts into practice. As I've previously written, my mum is a keen gardener so for Chrismas J and I bought her a day out at a garden she'd spent years watching and being inspired by on Gardener's World. It was a great opportunity for my mum and I to spend some time together so we booked out a whole day to wander and sit. Stunning weather was perfectly timed as we looked around the gardens, stopping of course for lunch and cake breaks. It was like time slowed down and not only did we have time to walk around the gardens but time to sit in them. I noticed that at first I found this a little hard as I felt I should be on the move, looking around. Then however I realised that I could appreciate the gardens and the time with my mum more by stopping to enjoy it.

So I challenge you readers to stop and enjoy life for a bit. Everything else can be done later.