New Year

After a rather quiet new years eve of hot wings and beer at the Native New Yorker... the New York Philharmonic on PBS public television... just my husband and I... I feel a kind of reprieve. 2009 is over. As the new year approached and the clock chimed midnight the neighborhood celebrated with the banging of pots and pans, firecrackers and backyard fireworks... and in my own mind I thought that everyone must feel as I do... thank God it's over... I celebrated the end of the year... not the beginning of a new one.

So... I did something new on the first day of 2010. I went to a chakra balancing yoga class downtown. I like being downtown amongst the buildings and bustle... I imagine myself in a grander city. I felt transcendent. For an hour and half I thought about all of the things I wanted for myself this year. I meditated on my list of resolutions... I grounded myself in the earth... I channeled all the world's energy into my core... and in the end, as the didgeridoo and gong moved every part of me, I felt at peace... and happy.

Some of my resolutions are small and some are ambitious. I have always made new year resolutions. This year is different... this year I am living with intention. I want everything I do... everything that I think and choose to be... intended... not merely defaulted.

Here's to a new beginning in 2010...

Subscribe to The New Yorker.

Read more Jane Austen.

Take a cooking class.

Eat more ethnic foods.

Become a member of the art museum.

Write to my sponsored child each month.

Choose a charity to give to.

Pay all superfluous debts.

Spend time in Seattle.

Get an intuitive psychic reading.

Designate a craft and hobby room.

Get organized.

Start a vacation fund.

Read the Dhammapada.

Blog often.

Lose 30 pounds and eat as organically as possible.

Keep an exercise routine of kickboxing and yoga.

Buy a wine journal.

Get Shaklee business off the ground.

My Happy

I thought it may be beneficial for me to include my happy throughout the course of my bloggings. Now, let me explain... each day I do one thing that makes me happy and I call it my happy. It can be anything... simple or complex... watching one of my favorite movies, taking a warm orange patchouli bath, a Starbucks white chocolate mocha, baking madeleines, kickboxing... virtually anything. Of course, there is always that possibility of having more than one thing that brings me happiness throughout the day, but I like to pinpoint as much as possible. In turn... I am grateful and it is an abstract form of motivation for me as well. And I am always grateful that I never really have to search for a happy... it is there even when I am not looking.

And so... to begin...

My Happy - playing Animal Crossing with my cousin Laura whom I love dearly...

Introduction Einleitung Introduzione Introdução 導入 Введение

Happy is the arising of the awakened... (Dhammapada)

Ahem...

I would like to begin by stating that I am a writer and an artiste in my own right, even though I may not have the royalties to prove it. I was born having a love affair with words. In the second grade, I won a cultural arts award for my short story about a little green alien and his UFO... or perhaps not a UFO to the little green alien, but just the same... the story led to more stories and poems throughout the years. Now... while I have the highest respect for those who write, I have also come to the realization that people who write do so out of pure surrender. The conscious awareness of ones own sanity could be the very thing that leads to insanity... and the world of a writer brinks on that very line between the two. Surrendering to it may be the only thing that can save you from it.

But alas... I was a reader before I was a writer. I believe that we read to know we are not alone to quote Anthony Hopkins as C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands. I cherish works that align with my heart and my voice... although I must admit that the occasional Janet Evanovich novel offers a different kind of refuge every now and again. I have chosen to blog for my own edification. If, in the process, I happen to come across something truly enlightening... well... I will be all the more grateful. Om namah shivaya, after all....

I feel as if I am always in transition in some way or another... I plan to write randomly. I desire an outlet of unpredictability but one that is intentional as well. My entries may be short or long depending upon my mood on any given day. I would rather not write it as a diary... today I was stuck in traffic for an hour and forty-five minutes... although some entries may sound like diary-like. I love the idea of making my bloggings a streamline of my thoughts, although I am not sure I can commit to that form either. And so... random blogging is the verdict. Oh, and just a quick note... the reader can always expect a great deal of ellipses in my writing since I cannot seem to write without them. I always welcome commentary.

To further practice gratefulness... I am grateful that I may write... un de mes beaucoup d'amours.