A new year and what it could be...

I'm now a new year older, and am so incredibly happy be be so. My last year of life was... a year of learning (according to Kyoko). Other people might call it bad or challenging. I don't think people would really call it good.

-Car repairs of over $1000

-Bell's palsy

-loosing my movie buddy as a casualty of maybe starting to date

-car accident resulting in totaled car

-needing to purchase a new car (which I LOVE!)

-work shit

-realizing my self confidence is not what I had thought it was

-Lawrence

All of this actually adding up to a year that was full of learning. Now, I love learning, but this was a bit much (and I feel like I might actually be missing something on there). I'm going to settle for my next year being one that is a little more calm. Learning how to build my self confidence up again so the next time I'm found lacking at work (I have to think there's going to be a next time, whether it is my doing or not) I'm not left in as sad a state as this summer. I also want to make progress towards figuring out whatever is next for me in life. I don't have any clue what it is. Lately I'm wondering if in fact it will not require a move out of state. I fell in love with Telluride this summer, and it reminds me of when I lived in Summit County for a summer. ...

Anyways, my first step towards stabilizing and building my self confidence is a journal of sorts. The intent is to put things in it that make me happy, and remind me of how awesome I am. I looked around a bit on the internet and can't find anything that really is a good example of what I am doing. It's not much of a journal because I don't do much writing in it. I'm one of those people who likes to cut things out of magazines. I'll often go through them before I toss them into recycling to find things to cut out. This habit has really paid off in the last year since I have been able to use these cuttings for activities with my GS troop, but also have been able to pull things out for this journal I'm working on. So it contains clippings from magazines that have caught my attention (and since I tend towards positivity, this really works!), random unison prayers from church that I liked, notes from friends and family that remind me how wonderful I am, quotes from people I admire or that mean something to me. Pretty graphics now and then, notes about meaningful conversations I've had with friends.

A great example is a conversation my friend Lisa and I had probably about a year ago. We were both griping to each other about work, and she came up with a brilliant idea to move us towards positivity. We each gave each other three compliments. The three she gave me were fantastic, and I've thought about two of them constantly over the last year. The first one she mentioned went right to the heart of something that has always frustrated me. I cry easily. She was able to see my tears as something that symbolizes that I'm highly empathetic. I think of it as her giving my tears to me as a gift. WOW! This realization really helped me these last six months to have those words in my mind, and probably saved me a lot of heartache. I have something in my journal about this experience with Lisa.

So, that's step number one. I think step two is to formulate a goal for this new year of life. What do I want to accomplish, what do I want this next year to mean...

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens this year!