Hello 2013....

2013 is here, hoorah!

Without fail, I always feel excited all day long on January 1....

For some years now December 31 has found me literally longing for midnight to arrive & the new year to start.

Of course, I do know that you don't need a new page, a new term, for it to be a Monday or every single duck to be in a row to make a brand new start....

but there is something special about the new-ness of the first day of the year.

For me it's simply about two things....

hope & possibility

I am impossibly hopeful & relentlessly positive.

I accept the charge & fully admit that I just don't know how to be any other way.

My husband thinks of what will go wrong - 

I am convinced that nothing could ever ever possibly go wrong.

We meet somewhere in the middle, just as it should be.

We balance each other out. Mostly ;)

I've been writing my blog for well over three years now so each year I take a look back at what I hoped, wished, dreamt of & planned the previous January.

All my posts are packed full of hope & plans.

I think that as that as life progresses you begin to realise that it does not come with a set of boxes which you check as each year passes and then one day, you are done.

If anything - or at least if you are anything like me - each year you simply add more boxes to the checklist.

And isn't that the beauty of life....that you are never "done"?

There are always places to go, things to learn, things you can do better & so many things you want to do more of.

I think that the key is instead of being overwhelmed & overawed by it....

is to be excited & invigorated by it.

There is nothing as exciting as a new challenge or opportunity....

even if saying yes in itself is part of the challenge. 

Every January for the last few years, I've made a short list of things I'd like to do during the coming year....

not necessarily resolutions, maybe more list of things I need to do & that I'd like to do.

They invariably include those things that most people have on their lists....eat better, drink more water, go to the gym, do more of this & less of that etc.

This year I made a list of aspirations.

My wise & accomplished friend Kim chooses a word for the year ahead - an idea I really love.

I am deciding between three words :

FLOURISH

FOCUS

MOVE

I want all of these words to shape 2013 for me.

I have a plan. I always have a plan. And a list. 

Maybe I'll stick with not one but three words....after all, we do make our own rules.

Leslie has been following my blog for a little while and this led, fairly recently, to us emailing each other a couple of times (I love it when that happens!) 

She wrote a fabulous & really inspiring piece here yesterday....

"in pursuit of a life that matters"....

I think she's an exceptional writer & I've read and re-read it several times.

Not only is it full of wisdom but it's full of thoughts that I am sure so many women can relate to.

  

   Last night we had dinner together as a family - just the four of us.

I had prepared small slips of paper for each of us & after dinner we wrote out 10 wishes for the year ahead....

we placed them in a sealed jar and plan to open them next New Year's Eve.

Thank you so much for following my blog thus far....

I wish you a wonderful 2013, may it bring you all that you wish for.

Simone XX

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