My New Year's Eve

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.”

Edith Lovejoy Pierce

This is my New Year’s Eve.  On November 9, 1977, I started my first journal.  Every year, on November 8, I end the journal for that year and start a new.  So this is my New Year’s Eve.  Tomorrow will be my 37^th year of writing journals.  For most of those years I would buy a folder and put writing paper in it and write.  Some years I wrote a lot and other years I wrote much less.

Then came this year.  Then came my blogs.

To say that this has been the most amazing year of my life would be to understate it.  And, I believe, with all my heart, that these changes came about because I started writing blogs.  More specifically, these changes came about because I took control of the one part of my life I felt I could take control of – my writing.  Within months, I suddenly started taking control of other areas.

I’m not really able to go into the specifics because they’re personal and, honestly, they don’t really matter.  Yes, they were big, but what really matters is I took control of my life and that has made this year the most significant year I’ve had in a long time.

This doesn’t mean it’s been easy.  I’ve suffered pain, illness, loss, tears, financial struggles, incredible self-doubt, the loss of friendships, job changes and, worst of all, great fear.  Nothing has been easy.  It wasn’t a free ride, but it was definitely an interesting one.  Here are the more enjoyable things that have occurred this year:

·      Inner healing

·      More creativity

·      Working harder than I’ve worked before

·      A sense of purpose

·      A sense of structure

·      Moving forward in other, seemingly unconnected areas of life

·      Being happier and emotionally calmer than I’ve ever been.

So, for the next year, I see more writing ahead.  In fact, I see it for the rest of my life.  It’s been a good year, because I made it that way.  I finally learned how to Get Started and Keep Going.