Does your life have a _______ in it? A hole you find yourself struggling to fill with food or drink, sadness or anger, or maybe by spending, cleaning, or complaining?
I know how you feel. Ladies, we all know how you feel.
I also know that having a year-long goal that I can achieve by working at it in small daily increments is a wonderful way to fill that _____. An hour a day of walking, and you’ve burned thousands of calories by the end of the year. An hour (or a page) a day of writing, and you’ve got 365+ pages by the end of the year. An hour a day of cooking healthy soups instead of heavy casseroles…well, you get the idea.
If New Year’s Eve is a time for revelry, then New Year’s Day is a time for reflection. Since I’ve heard it said that what you do on New Year’s Day is what you’ll be going all year, I made sure I woke up without a hangover on January 1st, pulled up the window shade, got up on the right side of the bed, spent some time reading and writing, did a few sun salutations, and then set out for Round Valley Reservoir recreation area in Hunterdon County, New Jersey.
Snow, blue sky, fresh air, my family (minus one), and a reservoir so big it filled the horizon — everyone and everything was in perfect harmony for walk #93. The blue sky filled my blanks. Truly.
We had some uphills, some down hills, and some fanciful surprises. At the end of it all we had my mother-in-law Rosemarie and 101-year-old Nana at the table, some red wine, and a delicious shrimp scampi.
I sure hope that old adage about the first day of the year setting the tone and stage for the rest of the year is true. Because my 1/1/10 walk colored in some of my own blanks (it colored in blue for sky, white for snow, silver for ice) and was one of my best so far.
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My commitment to myself this year is to write a poem a day for 2010. I didn’t think of it until the 4th but so far I’ve got four and it feels SO amazing! I feel absolutely confident that I can do this! I don’t torture myself about whether what I come up with is the good, the bad or the ugly, I just trust all the reading I’ve done in my life, all the experiences I’ve had in my 62 years, all my love of poetry as a form of expressing my thoughts and feelings. If I choose to go back later and change something or expand on something that’s okay too ,,, the main thing is to put SOMETHING down on paper every single day. I have a notebook and pencil next to my bed and I write before I go to sleep, then in the morning I make a cup of tea, go straight to my computer, write up and print out my poem, put it in a sheet protector in a three ring binder, then get on with the rest of my day full of a sense of accomplishment. I feel so good about this! I’ve written on and off for years, but this feels different and permanent! Yay!