Happy New Year

Happy 2011 Good Readers.

I hope this entry finds you all in good cheer and good spirit.

There was a time when I stressed the end of a year and the celebrations that surrounded it. Panic always set in after the candy cane dust of Christmas settled and the last week in December arrived. This last week of the dying year reminded that I had left much of the previous year's resolution undone.  Instead of seeing the week between winter celebrations and the new calendar year as a quiet time to reassess and reaffirm my direction and intent I saw it as a reminder of opportunities and time wasted and as an exercise of transferring many of my goals and resolutions from one year’s list to the next year's list. Somewhere along the way that changed. 

I no longer stress the New Years Eve celebrations. Give me some family, a few close friends, good food and wine and a warm room and I am happy to welcome in another year. In the end I think that all the parties, pretty dresses and dancing until dawn were a search for what had always been with me - the love of those I cherish and the reassurance that they had the same desire to move forward with me in their company and them in mine.

I no longer see reviewing the to-do lists of the year gone by as a reminder of what I have yet to achieve. It is because of these yearly assessments that I have come to know myself in ways I am extremely grateful for. And it is that gratitude that allows my ego to accept that many of my goals are long term and without true time constraints and that many of my achievements are small incremental steps towards those full life goals. And even when I decide to let go of a specific intent I am not lost because the yearly review has allowed me to see the me, myself and I while still maintaining a view of a journey that far out sizes the scope of my expectations. Because I have been given this gift in the end I understand and accept that regardless of what goals I set or what resolutions I fail to achieve I am as I need to be in this here and now. 

Here's to a New Year of opportunity and knowing that despite a list of resolutions and goals that you are perfect as you are!

Welcome 2011!