COVID, Fatigue, Pain, Piercings, Another Christmas That Didn't Quite Go To Plan And Looking Forward To 2023*

Hey, I promised I'd be back this week and here I am, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas if you were celebrating. I did but like so many things this year it didn't quite go to plan. 

My usual Christmas dinner buddies, are my mam and my Godmother, and after last year when my mam was poorly, I wanted this year to be even more special, so we really had gone all out, but our plans were slightly thrown into disarray when a related called early on Christmas morning to say that my Godmother had been taken into A&E after a fall - I admit it a few tears were shed but me and my mam finished opening presents and decided to proceed with our plans anyway and it was just as well we did. After the 9 hour wait in A&E didn't quite come to fruition (probably because of my Godmothers age and history - she's 92 and a multiple cancer survivor), she was home by 10.30, all be it battered and bruised with a broken arm. Whilst she needed a lot of assistance and was still pretty shook up she made it down for dinner, and with me and my mam on cooking, cutting up food, and present unwrapping duty, a nice if slightly truncated Christmas day was had by all. She's quite shook up still, and a little battered and bruised but she's been well looked after by an army of relatives popping in and she has an outpatients appointment sometime this week to check her over again, but I must stress she was very lucky not to do any more damage!

I suppose that one incident kind of summed up how 2022 has gone for me, we started the year with the aftermath of my mam's Christmas hospital dash, before moving on to my 2 month long flu virus, and another diagnosis or two in my never ending list of ailments. By September though things were starting to sort themselves out a bit, apart from the usual stuff I started feeling a bit more normal, I got a few posts and eventually I felt as though I was turning and then wham! 2 steps forward and a zillion back over! 

I was posting well into October and then boom nothing until Christmas Eve, so I guess you deserve an explanation as to where I went. Well I was right it started off with an iffy reaction to my flu jab, before moving on to another iffy nauseous reaction to my COVID vaccine. Despite that though I'm still a huge advocate of vaccinations especially considering what happened next!

About 3 weeks after my vaccine I started to feel a bit unwell, a bit chesty, a bit coughy, a bit snotty and my ears were really hurting, I suffered in silence for about week before I decided to do a COVID test and low and behold it was positive! After getting COVID really early into the pandemic, I'd then managed to avoid for over two years and then bam! I'm not going to lie even fully vaccinated and boosted, it knocked me for six, it was nowhere near as bad as it was first time round but as well as the flu like symptoms, it was the sweats, and the all over body pain and fatigue that finished me off. It took 13 days before I eventually tested negative (unlike Mummy Lou who tested positive and then negative within 4 days and had barely any symptoms!) and even then with December approaching at the rate of knots I still felt like death, so much so in fact the one of my besties even helped me with a little bit of my early Christmas shopping. 

By the time I had pulled myself together Christmas was rapidly approaching and nothing had been done, there was a house to clean, cards to write, presents to buy and wrap, and friends and family to see. My energy was sapped even more quickly than usual, and everything was all a bit of struggle. I only made it to the Metro Centre twice before Christmas and even then for no more than a couple of hours at a time. On the first trip I treat myself to same Bath and Body Works goodies, and on the second I treat myself to another 2 helix piercings at the fabulous Doc Black Ink (the same place where I got my daith done), a sort of Christmas present to myself and a congratulations you survived the last few months gift! By Christmas Eve I was ready to flop and with the added stress and effort of Christmas Day, I've spent the last few days catching up on my sleep, dosing up on painkillers, eating and watching a bit of football.

So where does that leave the blog, well it's fair to say that 2022 has been a bit of a fail! I've achieved nothing that I intended to and I'm so far behind on every regular post that I write so what do I do? Well I have one very belated Glossybox unboxing post that was in the final stage of prep, so that one will go live, and the rest will alas never see the light of day. I have a basket full of Glossybox products that I've received over the last year which I'll hopefully get round to either reviewing at some point or that you might see in future empties posts, so hopefully all my photos won't go to waste. I've actually got so much unused Glossybox stuff floating around that I'm seriously considering whether or not to cancel my subscription - we'll see and I'll keep you posted either way x 

I'm also way behind Trimming My Stash wise but I can assure you that those posts and the accompanying mini reviews will still be going live - I aim to be all up to date with those by the end of January, and it goes without saying that empties posts are going to be continuing in 2023.

So what else have I got to come, well I've got an overview coming up of the products in the 2022 Glossybox advent calendar, no full reviews or anything like that, so if you want to see a product in more depth don't forget to comment on the relevant post and let me know x I've also got a whole load of products to review for you, as well as maybe a few more fashion posts (I enjoy posting outfits on Instagram so maybe I should do more of that on here - let me know your thoughts x) and maybe some more home and lifestyle stuff, as well as a little giveaway just to say thank you for being there.

My aim in 2023 is get back out there and produce the content that I know I can - I hit 1,885,000 all time page views whilst I was AWOL, and I'd love to hit the old 2 million by the end of 2023 but I can only do that by posting regularly again and posting content that I'm happy with and content that you want to read - so I'd love your input on what you would like to see on my blog going forward. My family and my own health will always come first but I've had lots of time to think about what I want my blog to look like, and the content that I want to create so hopefully 2023 can be a more successful year blogging wise x 

So I just want to say a huge thank you for sticking with me in what's been another flaky year. I really appreciate your support, every like, every comment and every follow, be it on here or on my other social media channels (get following me elsewhere if you haven't done so already x - links in the sidebar →). Regular posting will resume asap with a little paid collaborative post this weekend (sorry if they aren't your thing but Christmas is expensive especially at the moment), and then a very late unboxing of the March 2022 edition of Glossybox before moving forward with some reviews and empties catch up x Thanks again for being there and I'll see you soon x

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