Photo courtesy of  SheenZX @ flickr.com

Welcome 2009. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling, deep down inside, that this is going to be a good year. I have no doubt it is going to be a tough year (financially, for everyone) but I am prepared for that. And being prepared for it makes me feel safe and ready to take on all challenges, not with my fists up but with my arms wide open. And this is why – Christine Kane and her “Shout out Your Word and Create Your Year Starting Right Now” post.

I actually read of her musings on New Year’s resolutions before the beginning of 2008 but I was sceptical and so gave it a miss. But it managed to stay in the back of my mind all year. I wondered if maybe I had started my year off with real intent that maybe I would have had a year full of focus, purpose and good feeling. Instead a lot of 2008, to me, was worry, stress, nervousness and a general defeatist attitude and bad feeling. But no more! This time around I was choosing a word for myself, a word of intent with which I would take with me through 2009.

Learn. That is my word – “learn” and it feels good. I tried it on a few days before January 1st to see how it felt on me. It felt positive and that made it an instant winner. This will be a year of positive thinking, of purpose, of learning. The wonder of Christine Kane’s idea is that it can be as broad or as narrow as you like. I enjoy the fact that “learn” can encompass many things yet also brings it all together on a common thread. There are the basics, for example – I would like to learn a language, I would like to learn how to cook more things, I would like to learn how to sew, I would like to learn how to budget my finances in a way that is both safe and fun. And then there are other trails off the “learning” path that I would like to take but need time and courage to walk them – I would like to learn who exactly I am (as I constantly feel I am drifting through life and that is such a waste) and what I want out of life (because at this stage, I just don’t know), I would like to learn how to be a better partner, I would like to learn the right times to say ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and I would like to re-learn how to make friends.

So I have my word and I have my vague list of intentions for the year and beyond. And I made certain that I started off the year in the way I wanted. I am not from here. I am from somewhere else. This was the 4th New Years Eve that I have spent away from that somewhere else. Just before I left home to see the world I celebrated the dawn of 2005 with good friends in a place I loved. And now it seems that when a new New Year looms, I tend to get terribly homesick. I don’t drink very much, only on special occasions now. But the last 3 New Year’s Eve celebrations away from home have had me playing the drunken fool. Things generally start off ok, chatting with friends and what-not. And then something in me snaps and all of a sudden I can’t stop crying and my heart is in so much pain. This usually is the signal for my (wonderful, beautiful, amazing, gallant) husband to scoop me up, take me home (all the while listening to my ramblings and constant “sorry’s” for ruining yet another New Year’s for us) and lay me down to sleep the rest of the night in the bathroom (for some odd reason when I am sick {be it self-induced or not} I am most comfortable when I sleep on the bathroom floor, perhaps because of the cool tiles). But this year I said NO MORE! So we stayed in. He drank beer, I drank ginger beer. We had a simple meal, watched a movie, talked, laughed and went to bed in freshly cleaned sheets before midnight. It was perfect. I didn’t feel I missed out on anything and, even better, there were no tears and no pain in my heart. Instead I went to bed in 2008 with my heart smiling and when I awoke to 2009 that smile was still there.

This blog is really for posts on food and random, pretty things, not personal things. But this post is quite personal and I feel a bit exposed in posting it. But it was a ‘need to’ thing and I’m slowly learning about my ‘need to’s’. See, my word is working already! Welcome 2009!