Happy New Year!

It seems that the majority of people around me count New Year’s Day as the final day of the holiday season. Not me – I will continue celebrating until January 6, the feast of the Epiphany (for the non-religious: the feast day celebrating the Magi’s visitation of baby Jesus). In fact, we keep our Christmas tree up at least January 14, Mom’s birthday (and the tree we picked out in 30 seconds is still nice and fresh). It kind of saddened me to see so many discarded Christmas trees along the curbside tonight. Oh well.

Here’s to a brand new year. I used to make resolutions, until I was about 25. But I never seemed to be able to keep them and always wound up kicking myself over my failures. Really, all I need to do is focusing on bettering myself as a person and understand there’s going to be plenty of missteps along the way. So, no resolutions to lose weight, keep organized, take my vitamins every day, or get eight hours of sleep each night. Instead, I’ll continue to focus on smaller goals, like the ones on my 101 in 1,000 page. I made pretty good headway on that in 2011 and got more accomplished than I’d originally thought.

However, I will be printing this out and putting this above my computer desk as a reminder. The Internet says it’s a Swedish proverb, but who knows where it really came from. But it’s great inspiration:

Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours.

Today was an atypical New Year’s Day. Usually, it’s spent in my pajamas, noshing on last night’s leftovers, and watching the Tournament of Roses parade. Looks like Pasadena has some city ordinance that doesn’t allow parades on Sunday, so it will be on TV tomorrow. Guess I’ll have to DVR it instead.