It's the beginning of a new year. Again. I love the new year. I revel in the holiday season that starts at Thanksgiving and ends on New Year's Eve. For me, it's all one big holiday celebration, that six week period. I listen to Christmas music during the whole time, I watch Christmas movies, I love the lights around my living room and honestly would love to leave them up all year (but somehow I cannot convince my husband that the lighted tree in the corner would be a nice touch year round). My husband and I take the last two weeks of the year off from work, because we are blessed to both work for employers who shut down the last week of the year, and we add a week of vacation to that and have a real time of relaxation and rest, time with family, time to recharge.
And once it's over, once the first day of the new year has arrived, I am filled with a sense of anticipation, of the promise of the new year, waiting to unfold before me. It's a chance to start over, to reboot, to make changes, to rethink what really matters. It's an unwritten chapter.
I don't make resolutions in the new year, because I know myself and I would make a list of unrealistic resolutions that I know I cannot keep, and then beat myself up because I failed to check them off my list (you've met me, right?).
But there are some big changes coming for my husband and I, changes to do with our faith walk. We are taking a huge leap into the unknown, because we feel God calling us there (more about that in a future blog). And so I have been doing quite a bit of introspective thinking, reading a book called Greater, and just generally pondering my life as it is, and my life as I'd like it to be. Not in a huge, paradigm-shift sort of way, but in the day to day moments that make up how I live my life.
So this year, I want to be more intentional in how I spend those moments. I have a habit of letting life carry me along, going from one obligation to another - work, household chores, paying bills, church responsibilities, family time, various social events - feeling like I have so many things that I "must" do that there is no time for what I want to do. Honestly, that's just a sad excuse I have built to keep me from feeling disappointed about all the things I don't seem to get around to doing. And I avoid starting things because I figure I won't ever finish them, so why bother. Pretty pitiful, and no one to blame but me. I am my own worst enemy.
There is a list of things I really want to do. Things like reading the huge stack of books I have amassed. Like making the lap quilt for my granddaughter, the supplies for which I purchased a year ago when making the baby quilt for her little brother when he was born. Like making a real effort at writing down the story that has been living in my head for a couple of years. Like printing and framing photos from our amazing beach vacation last summer. Like sorting hundreds of photos and putting them in albums or a least in photo boxes. Like cleaning out all the accumulated junk in our house and just having less "stuff."
All things that are important to me. All things that I tell myself I wish I could find time to do, but instead I aimlessly surf the web, read Facebook, read blogs (okay, I find some really great stuff on blogs), and watch more TV than I should. Nothing wrong with watching good TV, there is a lot of great stuff out there, but even when there is nothing on to watch, I surf. I mindlessly escape, because it's easier than actually starting something. Something that I probably won't finish or will fail at. It is this kind of thinking that is the real problem. Not so much the doing or not doing, but how I think about the doing.
So what's the deal? Why am I not doing? Because I have to make time, intentional time, for what matters to me. So that is my plan for this new year. And I will not hold myself to a list that can make me feel like a failure. I will instead stop and breathe and give myself some moments to think and dream and decide what I really want to do. I will still have to work, and clean, and pay bills, those things will never go away. But the rest of the time, I am making a promise to myself to spend some moments every week doing something that makes me happy, that I enjoy, that makes me grow, that makes me a better person, that feeds my creativity. I will live my moments intentionally as much as possible.
What is your intention for this bright, shiny 2013 spread out before you like a fresh, blank canvas, waiting for your story to cover it? What change or changes do you need to make in order to live your greater life?
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