Happy New Year!

I love a new year. It's all bright and shiny, fresh and exciting, squeaky clean and full of promise and newness. It's like when I wake up every morning and tell myself that today is a brand new day with the chance to get it right, and how cool is that? It's like that, only bigger, because it's a whole new year, a chance to get a chunk of life right, and that's amazing.

Resolutions have never really worked for me, so I quit making them long ago. Instead I have a list of "let's work on these". It may sound like the same thing to you, but to me, it's vastly different. If I resolve to do something and then I don't, I feel disappointed. But my way leaves me some wiggle room, some space to let life interfere and have setbacks without feeling like I've failed. It works for me.

So this year I'm going to:

• work on being more consistent with getting up in the mornings and walking on the treadmill before work. I have been doing this about 2 to 3 times a week, and I want to make it 3 to 4 times. I'll start next week. LOL
• forge ahead with our financial plans to be debt free, except for the mortgage, by mid-2010. That's next year! I love that I can say that now that it's 2009: next year we will be debt free. We are following Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover plan, and for us, it works. It works well.
• try to cook more varied meal choices, although this one will be difficult. I do not like to cook, I'm not very good at it. But I can try.
• try to be more patient.
• continue stretching my knitting muscles and trying new techniques, styles, patterns. This one may be the most fun and exciting items on my list. Yay Yarn!

Anyhoo, I hope that 2009 is better to each of us, most importantly to the country. I pray the economy improves, that our troops come home safely, that the peoples of the world quit trying to blow each other up.

Happy New Year to everyone - let's give it our best.