Happy New Year!
I love a clean slate. I love new semesters, first impressions, crisp, clean notebooks, and fresh powder. Though the mistakes of the past year aren't wholly forgotten and gone (and they shouldn't be - how else would you learn from them?), the arrival of a new year has a fresh feel that reignites that little internal fire and inspires ambitious to-do list drafting with unbridled enthusiasm.
Undoubtedly, you'll read pieces encouraging you to set small, measurable, time-bound goals - to be cautious and practical in your approach. And I'm not saying that method should be ignored. Day-to-day, I use it all the time. I'm a big believer in writing down your goals and, when possible, breaking them apart into smaller, more manageable steps.
But I'm also saying it's okay to GO BIG this year. Write down the longest list of stuff you want to do or see or try. Small stuff. Boring stuff. Big stuff. Weird stuff. New stuff. Epic stuff. And even if you only check off one thing from that long long list all year, who cares?
Getting your hopes and desires out of your head and heart and down onto paper is a bold move. In doing so, you take that thing, whatever it may be, out of the realm of "wish territory" and move it into "goal zone." And that's a scary thing because it means you may not reach your goal, or you may fall short, or you may just completely and utterly fail.
But that's okay. You will survive. And not only that, but you'll probably have had a whole lot of fun and, at the very least, learned something. You may not see it until 2015 sneaks up on you, but you and your 2014 list will do one thing right: Love Life.
all images by Melissa Glynn Photography