I haven’t written a diary entry for over a year. Unfortunately this has not been because my life has been too exciting or busy or endlessly sociable. I wish this were the case. Really I haven’t written due to a lack of energy and self-esteem – two things I think that are required to write about oneself. Writing about my life, putting my thoughts and feelings and personality (debatable) and essence onto a page, requires me to spend more time with myself than I’d really rather do just at the moment. Well, not at the moment, more over the past year and continuing. And if I don’t want to spend time writing about me then who on earth is going to enjoy reading about me? So really, if this is not for my own entertainment or anyone else’s, then why should I bother?

Well, I miss writing. I suppose that’s one reason. But the main one is that I want to put down a list, a list of all the things that I think I want, in the hope that in writing it down I’ll actually become a bit more motivated in achieving it. I suppose this is one thing that I should be grateful for – somehow over the past 6 months or so I’ve discovered all of the things that I want. The flip side to this is that I don’t have any of them, which is both deeply frustrating and depressing.

So, my list as it stands goes like this:

1. I want a cute little cottage in the countryside, one that I’ve made my own, perhaps set over some hills, with beautiful views and walks right outside the door. I’m not a city girl and I never will be – going to Bolivia and living in London has made me realize just how much I love the countryside and how much I really belong there. Even though Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is an intensely irritating person, this is the reason why I’ve recently developed a deep love of River Cottage – because that is more or less exactly what I want.

2. In my cottage I want a husband and a kitten and a grand piano. I suppose that would be a logical order in which to acquire them, although I’m not so sure that a grand piano would actually fit into a cute little cottage. I also want a vegetable patch outside. And the potential to have children, if not the actual children themselves.

3. In short, I think that in a really boring middle-aged sort of way I just want to settle down.

4. I want to learn photography and take amazing photos of wildlife and landscapes.

5. I want to promote world music and get more of it into schools. I am a world music evangelist and proud of it. I also want to travel round the world and write a travelogue that focuses on all of the music that I will encounter.

6. I want to learn the kora.

7. I want to make part of a living from freelance magazine writing, writing about culture and the world and music and travel and the environment. Working at Rhinegold has made me think that this might be easier than I’d always thought. My first article is due to be published in the next few weeks or so, which is very exciting, and hopefully the first of many more to come.

8. I want to create a number of websites. One of these will be a website on travel advice for the Andes, another a little community where everyone can share their ambitions for life and all the little things that make them feel better about it along the way, and I’ve forgotten the third one. Oh yes, a website for music teachers on how to teach world music.

9. I suppose that really these are all just ideas to try to find a way to promote the world and how beautiful it is, and how interesting the people are that live in it. I think this is what I want to do with my life – if through all of this I can make just a few more people appreciate the world and its different cultures and landscapes and animals and beauty, then I will feel that I’ve done something incredibly worthwhile.

10. I have a sneaky suspicion that I should either move to America and work for the National Geographic, or retrain as a scientist and go into conservation.

You might ask me what the secret is in discovering such purpose and coming to such conclusions. I don’t really know. I think a lot working out what I want has been achieved through working out what I don’t want, which is a bit of a circuitous way of going about it and not entirely recommended.