“As we look back on 2011, realize what no longer serves you has actually been compost for your evolution. When we run from them screaming no more, they chase us into the next year trying to teach us what they are meant to teach. When we bow deeply to the gifts we no longer want to experience, we can truly let them go...There are gifts in what we’re now ready to walk away from and until we honor those gifts, they hold power over us. Much better to appreciate them and use them for the fertilizer they were meant to be in our life. Give thanks for it all.” — Daily Transformations.

Looking back…I will be spending some time in the next few weeks both composting the gifts (some painful, some bland) from the past while planting new seeds and tending to dormant ones.  Hopefully I will do this in such a way that the compost indeed feeds and nourishes my 2012, my family, my life.

There’s a lot to sort through from the past year:

• Miscarriage
• Pregnancy
• Parental drama, stemming mostly from my poor mother’s enmeshment issues coming at me and my siblings at full speed.
• 2 toddlers and their growing pains
• Tremendous success in the theater world while simultaneously realizing I wasn’t getting a lot of joy out of working with the people I worked with.
• My Father-in-Law becoming increasingly feeble
• Working on fostering good, healthy friendships with all of the new women I have met since moving to this town
• Waiting, listening, yearning for inspiration – for a sense of purpose and giving – that hasn’t yet come
• Self acceptance.

People mock and joke about New Year’s Resolutions. However hackneyed the concept, however silly the date, however many people fail to accomplish them, there is something human about wanting to better ourselves at certain milestones in our lives or on our calendars.

I have set certain goals for 2012, each of which I will detail more in the next few days.

I will:

1. Exercise in some capacity for at least 15 minutes 15 days a month
2. Write here every day for at least 5 minutes and for at least 2 minutes in my “Line a Day” 5 year journal
3. Have something I write/create be shared in a public space (a la performance, someone else publishing it, etc) by end of year.
4. Re-learn the piano, playing at least 5 times a week (emphasis on playing)
5. Make two new gal pals and/or strengthen relationship with 2 women I already know so I can consider us good friends and not just acquaintances
6. Figure out how to make turning 40 fabulous
7. Take one picture a day for the entire year.

The good news about continuing to reflect on these goals weekly should keep that ol’ saw sharpened. I don’t want rigid goals, but I want to think about my progress weekly, smudging some lines here, darkening others there. I will also use this blog to do that.

The format I’m thinking for this blog (but am not going to be rigid about) will help me reflect on some of these goals while still leaving me time for my usual silliness, navel gazing, social commentary, and bad punnery.

Sundays: Sunday shorts. (I liked writing these…my attempts at hit-and-run commentary.)

Mondays: Bumpdates! (Updates about the baby, pregnancy, and how my butt seems to also get pregnant more each week.)

Tuesdays: Free write

Wednesday: Baking and Burning (My culinary misadventures, half-assed attempts to clean the kitchen, and Huzzy’s continued efforts to find new ways of pretending to like my cooking)

Thursday: Free write (Gratitudes, Platitudes, Gripes, Pet Peeves)

Friday: GOAL! (Reviewing my 2012 goals)

Saturday: Highlights from my Year in Pictures series.

I work best and seem to be most creative when there is structure in place. I do wonder about Tuesdays and Thursdays…I am guessing those will be my most difficult and most rewarding writing exercises.

Thank you for taking this step with me.