Happy New Year

I love the new year because it is just that - new. It is like a do-over for everything, a mulligan for your life. Today I am powerful, it is up to me to determine the course of 2010. How will I steer my life from 1/1/10 to 12/31/10? I have 365 days to navigate. Will I be a good helmsman? The possibilities have no boundaries. Where will I go in 2010?

I could eat healthier, exercise more, lose a few pounds. I could take up a sport, tennis anyone? Or horseback riding or running? I could train for a marathon, or a half-marathon, or maybe a 5K, or maybe I could just get out and walk a little everyday?

I might learn a foreign language, Italian, then I could travel to Italy where I could buy a ramshackle villa in Tuscany and cook for the motley crew of workmen while they restore my beautiful home. (Oh, wait - that's already been done by Frances Mayes!)

I may learn to play a musical instrument. In my housecleaning/purging process I have come across a violin, a flute, a saxophone and a guitar. 2010 might just be the year I form a rock band and tour the country (and Italy since I'll be fluent in Italian).

Maybe 2010 will be the year I get published. I'll finish my novel, or my memoir, or my short story, or my poem, or my blog will get picked up and made into a best-selling novel and a major motion picture. I'll sign with a major New York publishing house and go on the Oprah Winfrey show. She and I will become best friends and she will invite me and my dogs to spend the summer at her home in Hawaii. While there I could put in an organic garden for her and take cooking lessons from her chef. Then I could write a book about it and title it, Travel, Plant, Cook.

Hobbies are nice. I could learn to sew and go into a purse making business and sell them to over-indulged pre-pubescent daughters of the rich and famous at bohemian boutiques in California, New York and London. I could learn to paint and do plein air watercolor landscapes of my beloved lake and canyon. I could have a show at a gallery and be on the First Friday Art Walk where I would become an instant celebrity and Oprah would collect my work and I'd be a guest on her show and we'd become best friends.

I might practice daily meditation and yoga and become all balanced and zen-like. I could find a spiritual guru and travel to an ashram in India. I would come home wearing saris and go barefoot and speak in gentle, dulcet tones and everyone would love me and want to be my best friend (even Oprah, or at least her current best friend, Gail).

I could learn to tap dance or to cut hair or to weld. On 1-1-10 there is very little I mightn't do.

Or I might just try to keep the same boring resolutions I make every year:

1. be healthier - diet and exercise and lose weight
2. spend more time with friends and family
3. get finances in shape
4. write and publish something
5. clean house
6. travel
7. learn something new
8. find a balance between work and home
9. be a better person
10. be happy

If I can keep getting #10 right, then everything else somehow falls into place. This year, as every year, I just hope to stay the course without a major life crash. Happy New Year!