New Year; Fresh Start

2017 has gone and 2018 is here and fresh.  (And for many of us brutally cold.)

The New Year tradition is to start fresh.  To make resolutions that hopefully will hold out through the year (or at least through the first month of the year.)  Though I have nothing against resolutions, I didn't make any formal ones this year.  I plan to continue on working towards a "goal weight" by eating "better" (healthier?) and continuing to exercise regularly.  (I will freely admit that I gave up all semblance of weight watching during the week of Christmas.  To be honest I pretty much gave it up the Friday before when I match batches and batches of my traditional chocolate cinnamon sugar cookies.  If there is one thing I have learned it is that if I make the cookies I WILL eat the cookies without stopping until the jar is at last empty.  Which means I shouldn't make them at all.  But since I did...well, reality returns tomorrow with the advent of a school and work week and along with it will be my dedication to taking those pounds off and maintaining a healthier lifestyle. )  

I also want to continue on the path of being a more compassionate and less judgmental person (https://bfthsboringblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/dont-say-merry-christmas-and-other-year.html).  I have found that I can talk the talk, but it is so much harder to walk the walk.  It is perhaps time for me to come up with a method of reminding myself of such.  Not easy at all.  Gentle reminders from friends and family MIGHT help...or I just might snap and become what I am trying to move away from.  (Any thoughts on how to better do this are always appreciated.)

The near year is the perfect time to start anew.  To work towards being a better person.  (The definition of which depends completely up to the individual.) But it doesn't have to be that regimented; with each day we have the opportunity to start fresh.  There is nothing that locks us in to only "starting out" on a goal on the first of the year, the first of the month or the first of the week.  Each day gives us opportunity.  Truth be told, every minute of every single day we have the opportunity to BE better; to change for the better.  All it takes is the resolve and the self-resolution to change.  

Sounds easy, but it is not.  Becoming the people we want to be is a life long journey.  Scrooge may wake up one Christmas morning a completely changed person, but for most of us that's not a reality...or at least not a long term one.  Taking a new path or changing course is a long and often slow process.  Not unlike weight loss which does not happen overnight, but is a slow, and sometimes painstaking process.  

So if you do make any resolutions for this New Year or any time, may your resolution be to stick to it.  To let the process be a process.  And when you slide off the path of good intentions (as we all do; it's called being HUMAN), to accept the slip with grace and find your way back.

Here's to 2018!  Resolution or no, the year can be a great one IF we want it to be.  IF we plan it to be.  If we work with what life has in store for us with courage and grace.  Then 2018 WILL be a Happy New Year!