Happy hills

One of my hopes for 2016 is that I can keep myself motivated. Motivate to succeed. Motivated to stay active. Motivated to work harder. Motivated to accomplish many, many goals. And motivated to be happy.

Part of the “be happy” motivation, of course, is motivating myself to do things; motivating myself to get out of the house; motivating myself to mix and mingle with other humans. Which, to be honest, can be a challenge when you’re living a relatively solitary life.

And so yesterday, I took myself into town to visit the National Galleries of Scotland. (I won’t share the embarrassing story about how I thought I was going to see a special exhibition, but that it turned out that I was looking at the National Galleries London went I made plans for the day.) After regaining my bearings at the gallery, I found myself enjoying a wee wander through The Scottish Collection. And that’s something I always enjoy!

I suppose I could have used yesterday’s excursion as an excuse to stay home today, but the weather seemed too nice to not be outside.

And so today, I took myself out for a wee geocache near the Castlelaw Hillfort in the Pentland Hills. The site is not too terribly far from home and is an area I’ve explored in the past. Of course, one of the fun things with this cache was that no one had logged it for 2016 yet. Only it seems that someone else got there a little while before me. (I should have gone right after breakfast. Darn!)

After my successful geocache, I popped into the Flotterstone Inn for a wee half pint of Stewart’s Pentland IPA before heading home and finishing my weekend chores.

If I can just motivate myself to head into the hills for walks a bit more often, I might be able to use the benefits of the fresh air to keep motivated for other things! Although with January nearly over, I am pleased to say that the year really has been a happy one so far. And that’s motivation in itself!