It's Day 16 of March Meet The Maker and the theme is: Time To Relax.

This is something that's been on my mind a lot recently as I'm hopeless at taking the time to do this.

Yoga classes, meditation, cinema trips, massages, sleep, evenings off etc all get cancelled far too easily when I feel I have to work and I'm sure it's the same for all small business owners and self-employed people.

Even TV watching and relaxing baths turn into time to bead, answer emails or proof-read!

But in celebration of today's theme I'm finishing work early for the day (9pm) and winding down with a big glass of wine and a book- cheers!

Reading itself has also been on my mind a lot recently and I am determined to do more of it purely for pleasure. Ever since I can remember I devoured the written word. I remember reading the newspaper when I was about 8 and my dream job at that time was to own a newsagents so I could read all the papers, magazines and comics I wanted.

Fast-forward to my adult life and by the time I was commuting for a few hours to and from work on public transport it wasn't unusual for me to read a book a day.

But over recent years my book reading has dwindled down to a sad average of just one a year. Even magazine articles I would have hoovered up in minutes get spread over weeks as I read them a paragraph at a time.

One of my first symptoms when I developed Multiple Sclerosis was that my ability to concentrate on anything (reading, beading, films etc) for longer than a few minutes had gone kaput.

Add in the speed of the modern world and that fact I'm carrying all my work, emails etc with me in my hand on my phone and even though I frequently spend 4 hours plus a day 'reading' it's just emails, snapshots of articles or discussions on the Internet.

Then there's the 'I should always be working' dilemma of being self-employed and with customers in every time zone wanting immediate answers to emails I'm checking mine 24/7 trying to make sure I'm keeping up.

So when I struggle to concentrate on one thing I flit to the next and so on. This bad habit is one I'm determined to crack and I'm slowly training myself to walk away from my computer & phone and spend time relearning how to focus on one thing at a time.

Being away in Germany and not having great mobile access was a good lesson for me and wouldn't you know it... in one week I read two books - more than I have read the past 2 years.

Back home last week I resolved to work at it more and managed to read a whole book in a day and fingers crossed with a bit of work and patience reading for pleasure will become the norm again for me.

In work news I've been working like crazy as I'm about to head off for 2 big trips and will be away for the rest of March and pretty much all of April so frantic instruction writing, email answering, supplies buying and photography is taking place to ensure I can hit the ground running again in May.