Tag: New Year

January 31, 2026

New Year, New Ewe

New Year story and bonus Christmas story

From Substack, January 5, 2026

Happy 2026! I wrote a New Year story to share with you all, set in the world of my cozy fantasy novel (soon to be in the editing stage before submissions).

I also had a holiday story called “Forest Creatures” published online on Christmas Day. It’s not a spicy tale per se, but it shares a venue with several and I read it previously at a Kinky Storytelling event, so take that as you will when it comes to readership. “Join us for a Christmas walk through the forest in this enchanting sapphic winter tale by Melanie Bell.” Here it is!

And here’s my New Year story for you to enjoy.

New Year, New Ewe

It was New Year’s Eve. Tim wandered around Brighton alone. Through the Laines, around back alleys, walking blindly. By the time he realized that nothing around him looked familiar, he felt it was too late to get his bearings. The shops looked interesting. Might as well poke around.

Healthy Habits, read a sign over a bright blue door. A peek through the windows revealed the usual rows of vitamins and supplements, along with an odd mishmash of fitness equipment, food, and who knows what. A stupid, hopeful voice in his head piped up: Maybe something in here will help me be less of a failure. Half listening to it, he stepped inside.

An old-fashioned bell rang at his arrival. A shiny red bicycle greeted him. Maybe he’d get into cycling in the new year. Or maybe not. He eyed the dumbbells – he already had some at home, and used them intermittently. He shook his head at the green smoothies and fruit-and-nut energy balls in the fridge. He knew from experience that they tasted like grass. Kaley had loved those sorts of things. But Kaley had left him.

“New year, new you,” he mumbled under his breath. “As if anyone gets a ‘new you’.”

“What’s that, love?” An elderly woman approached him, wearing a name badge. She moved more spryly than he’d expect of someone her age – in fact, she practically floated. Adults can’t float, Tim reminded himself. Then he realized how stupid that thought was. Children couldn’t float either, even if he’d imagined he could while playing Superman.

“Nothing.” Tim’s cheeks colored. He hadn’t expected anyone to hear him.

“You wait right here,” said the grey-haired, round-cheeked woman, departing soundlessly. How? She must be into all sorts of crazy fitness things, if she ran this shop.

As Tim browsed a shelf of vitamins, undecided on whether he needed any, the woman reappeared, holding a leash attached to a large and fluffy…

Dog? That wasn’t a dog. It was round, wooly, and white mixed with dove grey. Its tail was short, its ears pointed. “Baaa,” it said.

“You have a pet sheep?!” exclaimed Tim in delight. “Or is it a shop sheep? I like the sound of that – shop sheep!”

“You said you wanted a new ewe,” the shopkeeper grinned, “and Eunice here is looking for a home.”

Or maybe it was Ewe-nice? She didn’t spell it out.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” said Tim as a chill crept down his spine. This situation was getting surreal.

“Do you have a garden?” the woman asked.

“Well… yes…” Tim had kept the house when Kaley left. He’d bought her half, leaving him with all the space and her with all the money. Now she was able to travel, like she’d always wanted. He saw her pictures on social media, of faraway cities and beaches, while he sat in the same old city by the same old beach.

“I married you because I was supposed to,” she’d told him at last. “Not because I ever wanted…”

“You never wanted to be here,” said Tim. She didn’t disagree.

“Then it’s all sorted,” the strange shopkeeper was saying in the present, and Tim had a terrifying feeling that he’d missed some important context while lost in his memories. “Here are her winter supplements.” He heaved a burlap bag at Tim, which he lifted tentatively, surprised to find it lighter than expected. Some sort of grain? He supposed she would also eat his…grass?

“And this is for her bedding.” She heaved a second sack his way.

This was madness. He didn’t want a sheep!

“Baaa,” said Eunice, her nose moving closer to the burlap bag. He pulled it out of the way.

“How much is she?” he asked.

“Forty-nine kilograms,” said the shopkeeper. “Very healthy.”

“No, I mean, how much does she cost?” That eerie feeling strengthened again. Tim’s skin was full of goosepimples. Had there been a person in front of him? Had they disappeared?

So Tim found himself walking home with two sacks over his shoulders and a sheep on a leash. Once outside the Healthy Habits shop, he recognized a nearby street and recovered his bearings. Eunice trotted obediently along after him. He supposed he would need to build her a fence so she didn’t run off. And did she need a barn or something? Well, he had some space in the garage…

As he strolled homeward, passersby approached to comment. “Is that your sheep?” “What’s her name?” “Can I pet her?” A pair of small children reached out to touch Eunice while their father watched nervously.

“So, Eunice,” said Tim once they arrived at his place, “I guess this is your new home. Why don’t I set up a place in the garage for you while I figure out if I need to build a fence in the yard or what.”

Kaley used to keep a work bench in the spot where Tim set down straw bedding. He put some grain in a bucket and filled a salad bowl with water. As Eunice ate and drank with the garage door safely closed behind her, Tim frantically searched online for information.

He called his friend Billy, who worked as a contractor, to put together the fence and shelter the internet said a sheep needed. “A shopkeeper gave you a what?” exclaimed Billy over the phone. He drove over as fast as he could. Eunice ran over to greet Billy as soon as he got out of the car, acting as if he had treats. He did.

“Hello, cutie.” Billy scratched behind Eunice’s ears. He looked up at Tim. “Are you sure you’re up for taking care of her?”

“I… suppose,” Tim grumbled.

“Well, new year, new ewe, innit?” Billy chuckled. He got to work on the fence.

Everybody loved Eunice. Tim was almost jealous.

On New Year’s Day, he did his usual video call with his parents. He thought of it as a duty, a depressing affair since Kaley’s departure without producing grandkids and his own persistent singleness, which bothered him more in the abstract sense – the feelings of failure, the hit to his status – than it did in the concrete, day-to-day sense of not having someone around.

This time, though, he had something to talk about. He turned his phone camera on the sheep.

“Isn’t she precious?” Tim’s parents explained. They were so distracted by her “fuzzy little ears” that they neglected to ask their usual probing questions.

Still, Tim let out a sigh of relief when the call was done. He turned to Eunice and patted her nose. For the first time in two years, he wasn’t alone for the new year.

That week, he had a date lined up with someone he’d matched with on an app. “I have great expectations for this one,” he proclaimed to Eunice as he filled her water bowl. “Oh, who am I kidding? I don’t.”

But when Fatima the accountant asked about his hobbies as they sat and sipped their coffee, Tim finally had something to say. He showed pictures of Eunice on his phone and got Fatima laughing when he shared the story of how she’d almost knocked him down as he brought her food. She even ordered a second coffee.

We may or may not be a fit, thought Tim at the end of the date, but she seemed happy to be there, in a way Kaley never did. Did I know how to recognize unhappiness when I saw it?

And there he was, thinking about his failure again. It had stayed out of focus for the whole date, when usually, when meeting women, that was all he could think about.

He rushed back home and checked on Eunice in her enclosure. That was his routine now, apart from work. Feed the sheep, water the sheep, check on the sheep. He had nightmares sometimes where something terrible happened to Eunice and it was his fault.

But now… had it?

She lay upside down on the grass, legs in the air. Tim hurried over. Her head was stretched out to the side. Maybe she was just sleeping? Did sheep sleep like that?

His phone told him a dire story: she may have rolled over, but sheep on their backs are stuck. They can’t get up by themselves; their stomach gets bloated, and they’ll die. How long had she been like this?

Tim had never rolled over a sheep before, nor imagined he’d have to. Nervously, he opened the fence and approached her. Eunice gave a pathetic bleat. Her belly looked puffy, her legs cartoonish.

Tim set his phone in the grass and tried to follow the diagram he’d found, placing his arms around Eunice’s shoulders and heaving her up. She was bulky and heavy. Sweat rolled down his back. But Eunice gave little resistance. After some awkward pulling and lugging, hands deep in her thick grey-white wool, he got the sheep right way up.

She wobbled at first, like a drunk. Her legs bowed. Tim worried there was something wrong with her, that he’d come home too late. But after a few staggering steps, she seemed back to normal.

Tim grabbed extra feed for her. “You could have died,” he said.

She was alright now. But what about tomorrow?

He checked on Eunice first thing in the morning and was relieved to see her standing upright. She ran toward him in greeting. “Baaa!”

“Baaa to you, too,” he said, scratching her chin. And wondering. And worrying. Had Billy been right? Was he not up to taking care of a sheep?

Did he even want to take care of a sheep?

There were so many steps he had to do that he hadn’t done yet. Registration. Veterinary care. Getting more food. Learning how to care for an animal from real live people, not his phone.

Eunice was loveable, but he hadn’t chosen her. He’d taken this sheep home in a sort of fever dream – perhaps because he was too polite to refuse.

Maybe that was how Kaley had felt about him.

But where else could Eunice go?

Every spare moment of that day, he looked for answers. He found a number of sanctuaries and rescues in the region, and began making phone calls. “I was given a sheep who needs a home,” he explained, “but I don’t think my garden is the right one for her.”

One sanctuary seemed especially welcoming and thorough. So Tim and Billy loaded Eunice in Billy’s truck and took a trip out to the countryside.

A black-and-white farmhouse sat surrounded by rolling green hills and tumbling fields where animals grazed. Horses nuzzled each other, cows chewed their cud, ducks milled about a pond, and a herd of sheep in many colors faced the road as their truck approached.

“Hello,” said a man in overalls and work boots as they approached. “I’m Michael, owner of the sanctuary.”

And he and Tim were shaking hands before Tim had realized he’d moved. Had he walked up, or had he floated?

“Let’s have a look at Eunice, shall we?”

Michael and Eunice took to each other right away, and the more Tim saw of the farm, the more he liked it. He knew the sheep would be safe and happy here, among a friendly herd.

Even if part of him would miss her.

“Do you take visitors?” he asked. “Or volunteers?”

So, to Billy’s amusement, Tim began spending every other Saturday at an animal sanctuary, tending to cows, chickens, and donkeys. He may not have had his own kids, but he looked after plenty – of the goat kind. He made new friends among the volunteers. And he always gave Eunice a fond scratch.

Then he drove home and rested, content in his own company.

January 1, 2021

Book Review: The Four Tendencies

My January blog posts attest to my fascination with New Year’s resolutions, the goals and intentions that some of us set each year in the hope of making the coming year (or ourselves) better. After the coronavirus pandemic dashed many of our plans for 2020, I wonder how many of us will make resolutions this year. Maybe some of us will focus on taking care of ourselves and each other during this difficult time, or on just being ourselves. But for those who share my perverse fascination with goal setting and change, I found a book this year that offered me some valuable perspective.

I first encountered Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies framework years ago, took her quiz online, and promptly forgot about it. Then, during England’s second lockdown this year, a mention of the book prompted me to look it up again. I was struggling with some changes I wanted to make in my new, working-from-home life, but I wasn’t making them. I didn’t know how. I asked myself, not for the first time, “Why can’t I change? Why can’t I get myself to do the things I know I should do? Why do I let myself down?”

Enter Gretchen Rubin, who has written books on happiness and habit formation, and maintains a popular happiness-focused podcast. She created the Four Tendencies framework after observing differences in how people respond to expectations. One of her friends was able to run with a track team but not by herself, for example.

The Four Tendencies book posits two different types of expectations: inner expectations, or the goals and standards we have for ourselves, and outer expectations, or the things that other people and external systems expect us to do. Rubin found that people respond to these different expectations in four different, and predictable, ways.

The people she calls Upholders meet both inner and outer expectations. Questioners meet inner expectations and question outer expectations, choosing to do what others expect only when it makes sense to them. Obligers (like her friend who wanted to go running) meet outer expectations but not inner expectations, while Rebels resist both sets of expectations. There’s a lot more detail about how these four categories work in the book, as well as on Rubin’s website.

Rubin’s book offers thorough chapters about what each tendency means and how it works, along with chapters on dealing with each tendency. Like books on the Enneagram, the personality system I’ve been using for over a decade, it can be read as a self-help book, and/or used to understand how to work with other people. Medical personnel, for instance, have used her work to motivate people with different tendencies to follow their recommendations.

Helpfully, the book begins with a quiz for identifying your tendency. From there, if you’re an Upholder, you’ll discover ways to manage “tightening up” and learn how following rules can paradoxically bring freedom. If you’re a Questioner, you’ll find tips for overcoming analysis paralysis and finding reasons for doing those irrational things you need to do. If you’re an Obliger, you’ll learn about how outer accountability is key for you – and how to build it into different areas of your life to do the things that you want to do, rather than burning yourself out by doing what others want. And if you’re a Rebel, like me, you’ll learn about motivating yourself by following personal desires and identity, and how to cultivate a sense of freedom in meeting goals rather than obligation.

I love how the Four Tendencies is a practical and focused framework for change. The book offers strategies that work with our “autopilot settings,” and thus it might be called ego supportive. Yes, we can all be more mindful and present, but the book’s suggestions don’t require that. It meets us where we are and gives us how-to’s for accomplishing what we want to accomplish.

As useful as the Enneagram has been for me, it’s a descriptor, not a toolkit. It suggests that as someone whose personality follows the Type Four “Individualist” pattern, I benefit from bringing discipline and structure into my life, but it doesn’t give any nuts and bolts about how to create structure, or how to get myself to follow it. The Four Tendencies actually gave me some of those nuts and bolts.

When it comes to change management, different people have different needs. I’ve spent a lot of time hoping to find a perfect source of accountability to get me to act differently, so it’s a relief to learn that accountability isn’t an effective strategy for me – it just feels like pressure, which I then resist. I’m equally recalcitrant with myself, declaring that I’m going to do something while an internal voice intones “Yeah, yeah, I’m not gonna.” Since reading this book, I’ve focused on taking power back into my own hands. Rubin writes, “Rebels can do anything they want to do.” The key for me is to focus on wanting rather than having to. When a sense of determination drives me, I know that I’m going to get that thing done. When I hear “Oh, yeah, yeah, sure,” I either let myself off the hook or dig deeper until I find that sense of determination.

2020 brought a lot of events we had no control over, and 2021 is looking to unfold in much the same vein. If you’re looking for a book about making changes that are within your control, The Four Tendencies is a good one.

January 6, 2020

This New Year, Be Yourself

Every year around late December and early January, I see posts on social media about new year’s resolutions. I’ve made a bit of a tradition of writing about this phenomenon, whether it’s giving tips about setting effective goals by being more specific or reflecting on the need for baby steps toward change rather than planning to overhaul one area of your life all at once. There’s something about the process of resolution-making that both inspires and annoys me. Here are my thoughts for this new year’s rant: How many of us are setting goals based on the person we are, and how many of us are making resolutions that we hope will transform us into someone else?

Over the holidays, I watched a documentary about Mister Rogers. One of the songs featured on his iconic children’s TV show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and explored in the film, began like this:

“I like you as you are
Exactly and precisely
I think you turned out nicely
And I like you as you are.”

He said that every child needed to hear that message, because it’s not something that children are told. I realized that adults don’t hear this either. No matter your age, this message has an impact.

A lot of new year’s efforts have the noble goal of adding value to our lives. Health-related habit changes can bring us energy and vitality. Ambitious goals can help us achieve the things that we wish to. At times, though, these efforts are inspired from without instead of from within. We’re told to be this way or that way, and we take the things the world tells us to be and turn them into our yearly aspirations for self-improvement, which we may or may not carry out. Rather than being accepted and accepting ourselves exactly as we are, we treat ourselves as things that must change.

What if we took this decade as a time to be more ourselves? We could set goals that take who we are and accentuate it. Goals that celebrate the best parts of us. Goals that nourish parts of ourselves we know are there but don’t always express. Or we could set aside goal setting for the time being and take time to be.

There are things I’d like to do in 2020, but I’ll take my old self with me as I do them. No “new me”… just a new year, a new decade, and whatever they happen to bring.

December 4, 2019

2019 in Review

It’s nice, at the end of the year, to look back on the last 12 months and celebrate accomplishments big and small. Time passes so quickly that it’s easy to wonder where the year went. Taking time to reflect on the last year helps to remember and appreciate that the time went to good use. Here are my highlights from 2019. What are yours?

2019 publications round-up

This was a big poetry year for me.

Hashtag Queer: LGBTQ+ Creative Anthology, Volume 3 published my sequence of “Tacit poems”. Qommunicate Publishing has been a great supporter of my work, including the more experimental pieces.

Haiku Journal published my rain haiku in issue 63. (You can read individual issues of the journal online here, and there is a lovely print version as well.)

Lift Every Voice is a lovely new anthology that published my poem “You, the shadow you cast”.

My personal essay “Learning to Paint” was also published by Heart and Humanity in February.

I have three more publications forthcoming as well. Among them, Qommunicate’s Geek Out! II anthology will be publishing my poem/script hybrid geeking out about performance and semiotics, and House of Zolo’s first journal of speculative literature will include one of my poems when it’s released in January.

New job

I had a wonderful time working at RUSI, but moved on at the end of the year to the role of Development Editor at ICE Publishing. I’m excited to be working on books and taking a bigger-picture position.

Enneagram corporate training

Last spring, I was invited to my old city, Edinburgh, to do an Enneagram-based corporate training for Turnitin. This company makes a program I used in my old university teaching job! The leadership team purchased copies of my book, The Modern Enneagram, for all the attendees. They were a delightful, engaged group, and it was fun to spend time in Edinburgh again (despite the rainy weather). It was my first time leading a corporate training where I traveled out of town.

Work-life balance

With a new job and new financial opportunities, I’ve been able to say no to work that hasn’t been a good fit. I’ve moved into a new flat that’s nicer than my previous one. I’ve taken some time to travel and am appreciating the value that’s placed on holidays in the UK. I’m grateful to see improvements in work-life balance after a 2018 that involved a lot of “hustling”.

What was your 2019 like? What big and small things do you appreciate about the past year?

January 1, 2019

New Year, New You? Think Baby Steps.

It’s that time again: time for New Year’s resolutions. January rolls around and you make plans for the year ahead. You envision your best self and create resolutions hoping to make that person real. Sometimes your goals pan out. If you’re anything like me, though, all too often the following year arrives and the idealized self remains a distant dream, with resolutions left behind somewhere along the way. Many of my editing and coaching clients share my experience – a fairly common one – of having big dreams but struggling with practical goal-setting.

For a couple years, I made resolutions to do things I was already in the habit of doing, as I was confident that these goals would be fulfilled. Indeed they were, but while these easily achievable resolutions showed that I could continue on a positive course of action, they also added nothing new to my life. Later, I tried setting short intentions, choosing an overarching word or phrase, such as “making money,” to guide my year, and I set goals that were concrete but out of my comfort zone. These measures helped. But as 2019 brings in a new crop of enthusiastic articles about changing your life with the shifting of the calendar year, I think a change in philosophy is called for as well. Below are some measures that have helped in my own goal-setting and in my work with clients.

Think big if you want – as a starting point.

Lots of us find it fun to imagine the best version of ourselves. How can we know who we might become if we don’t allow ourselves to dream? Go ahead and make that vision board if you enjoy doing so, or that wild list of things you want to do in the future. Map out all the books you want to write or the countries you want to travel to. Your dreams will serve as fuel for your daily life. As the next steps suggest, though, be mindful that you can’t do everything at once.

Then bring the dream down to earth.

This is where practical goal-setting measures come in. The big dreams we have about our lives may not be realizable all at once, but if we think things through and plan carefully, we can create realistic outcomes that we wish for. Getting in shape, for instance, becomes easier if we don’t just purchase that gym membership but set a schedule, join an exercise class, and/or commit with a friend to exercise together. Writing a novel becomes easier if you set yourself a daily word count and working time. In 2017, Kacie Berghoef and I blogged about setting SMART goals. Try out this method of practical goal-setting by making your resolutions specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Hold yourself accountable.

I mentioned setting a schedule and finding a gym buddy. Once you’ve created a goal for yourself that moves in your desired direction and works with the life you have now – something small, not too time-consuming, trackable, and concrete – put measures in place to hold yourself accountable to it. Pencil (or type) commitments into your calendar. Set up a mutual support system with someone else where you check in periodically with each other about your goals. Many of my editing clients have found it useful to set deadlines and have check-ins. In some cases, working with me as an editor/writing coach and having that external cheerleading provided motivation for them to finish their projects. Make sure that you are committed, that your progress is being observed, and if possible, that someone besides you is invested in your achieving the goal.

You don’t have to do everything now.

You may have noticed the use of “goal,” singular. The key in achieving goals is not to set too many all at once. Rather than climbing that mountain right away, commit to baby steps by starting the training process. If you tend to make long lists of resolutions, set yourself fewer goals than you think you can realistically accomplish: that way your efforts will be focused. If you have a big vision and aren’t sure where to start, pick one step in that direction that you can get started on right away and commit to regularly. The key is just to get started. The fruits of a beginner’s effort will bring you more satisfaction than a dream unrelated to your actions.

If you get closer to where you want to be, that’s a win.

We don’t always fulfill our new year’s resolutions. As I looked back on my goals for 2018, there was one that stood out as uncompleted. I hadn’t made the progress that I’d hoped, and felt disappointed looking back – until a loved one pointed out that I’d improved. I could see then that even if I hadn’t been 100% successful, setting and working towards that goal had still been a success. Maybe it’s the same for you. Are you in slightly better physical shape, for instance? Did you start that novel, even if you didn’t finish it? At the end of each year, look on your progress and celebrate. After all, no one says that you have to complete a goal in a year – you can keep going for as long as you like!

Good luck with your goal setting, and happy 2019!