WHEN IS YOUR PERSONAL NEW YEAR?

You don't have one?? Are you sure?

When I was much, much younger, my personal New Year began in September, with the first day of school. I've talked about that many times. And, naturally, the date of my personal New Year changed, depending on the day school started--what school district I lived in--even the state or city I lived in. But my firmly held belief was this: When school started, so did my personal year. Period.

As you might have guessed, the start of the school year as a signal for my personal new year ran out of gas eventually. True, I had children in public schools into my late 30s; and I managed to continue my own schooling that long. Though I held onto that concept as long as I could, I had to gradually let go. New Year meant, in my neck of the woods, January 1st.

Okay, I've lived with that for lo, these many decades. Then a couple of days ago a phone visit with my son sent my thoughts out for a look around.

It went, sort of, like this:

Son: What have you been painting lately?

Me: Just finished a painting of silver birches at sunset. I'm going to start some simple practices--4-inch square "little paintings." Nothing formal, mainly just mark-making and trying out colors, things like that. I read about the "100 Days of Art Practice" online--think I'll start that.

Son: When?

Me: Oh, soon. Maybe the beginning of the month..................

You see what happened? I was nudged into thinking of a longer period of painting. And the next day, my brain woke up. "You dummy," it said, "today is the first day after your birthday. Start now!"

You guessed it! My personal New Year is my birthday. (Definitely a "duh" moment. How could I have missed that?)

So yesterday, Wednesday, the day I draft this blog post, I cut some 4x4-inch squares of mixed media paper, taped them to my painting board, and began. A little paint--let it dry--draw some doodles or words or just lines on top of the paint. Move on to the next one.

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The lesson here is this: Today is a perfect day to start something new. Doesn't have to be your personal new year. Doesn't have to be a big production. If you sing, try a new song each day. Look up lyrics to old songs. Play some of your CDs (or whatever you listen to). You cook? Great! Make something new--try a recipe you watch a chef make on the Internet. Gardener? You might have to wait for the ground to thaw, but now is the perfect time to read garden catalogs--you know, make your list, check it twice. . . .

Try a new author--one you haven't read before, old or recent. Find a movie (lots of free ones if you keep looking), one you missed when it was new. If you're a list-maker, start a notebook with lists of what you want/need/absolutely must replace. Then add the places you can find those items and their price. (Scary, huh?)

Or, your list could include new YouTube channels you want to look at. (I caution you--that list can take weeks of looking and writing it down.)

Important reminder: Your new practice, whatever it is, doesn't have to be every day--but do keep on with finding something new in your personal New Year.

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I hope you discover your very own personal New Year. It's like a gift you give yourself--a special day that's yours. Lots of people may have the same one--so what? Yours is special because--well, it belongs to you!

So, Happy New Year, whenever that is!

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

 WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THESE YEARS?

Something about a new year always makes me look back--kinda like a rear-view mirror gander at what's back there, you know, behind me, down the road, in the distance.

     As an aside: in my search for clip art on "looking back," most of the images were about NOT looking back. My question is: Why the heck not??

A few years ago I came across an idea that might be fun for us to do--if I could remember where and when I learned about it, I'd give credit to the person who first suggested it. But for now, just know that I didn't invent this, just, um, borrowed it.

It's a simple little exercise; goes like this:

• think back over your life in 10-year increments
• was there anything especially significant during that decade?
• if so, write it down
• go on to the next decade
• when you're finished, read what you wrote

When I first did this practice, I realized I wrote down too much detail. Really? It was amazing to me that I could remember all that stuff. But those were the more recent periods. Going farther back--'way back--I had little detail, but I did have memories. Outstanding events that stood up and waved, yelling, "Me! Me!"

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I'll give you a few of my own journey high points to get you started. Ready?

• birth to age 10 - parents divorced, mother remarried; stepsister came to live with us one year; had measles and scarlet fever, both the same spring--started drawing while recuperating.
• teen years - 11-20 - kept moving (mother and stepfather always looking for better jobs); mother died; started college; got married, had my first child.
• twenties - had three more children; beloved mother-in-law died; returned to college; met some people who became lifelong friends.
• thirties - finished my degree; my little family moved to the country to live in an old farm house (could be described as dilapidated); felt odd not going to school so returned to work on my Master's Degree; tried writing but felt I didn't know how to write a story; got a job in a law office.
• forties - life unravelled--my divorce, children's marriages; became a grandmother; law office job eventually upgraded to paralegal.
• fifties - discovered some like-minded writers who wanted to meet regularly (another lifelong friendship discovered); learned to  make quilts; health began hitting speed bumps.
• sixties - discovered yoga as a gentle practice for heart patients who can't do strenuous exercise; played the organ at a few churches for several years; changed churches, made new friends; retired from my job.
• seventies - continued writing; began a blog in 2013; traveled a bit, but finally gave that up.
• eighties - where I am now--writing, painting, sometimes sewing. COVID made a huge difference in "life as we knew it" and my two experiences with that virus have impacted my own ability to function.

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Each decade went off in a different direction, it seems. Did I learn anything from all that change? No doubt I did. Did I know the significance of what happened at the time? Heck, no! Hindsight is one of the best weapons for surviving--look in the rearview mirror, see where you've been, and later on, figure out if it made a difference. I'll wager it did.

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Good luck with your decade-dive. If you're so inclined, you may get some ideas for memoirs. You don't have to publish them, just write them for your kids and grandkids. Your family members may not have a clue where you came from, or what you had to do to stay alive, or how you got to be the wonderful person you are. But they deserve to!

'Til next time,

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

IT'S STILL THE NEW YEAR . . .

We're eleven days into 2024! Eleven days!! 

Several years ago I wrote about New Year's Resolutions--I called mine Intentions for the new year.

Some people do their bah-humbug routine when resolutions are mentioned.

Then--I saw something new (to me)--New Year's Dissolutions.

That's right, dissolutions. All about--giving up.

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Okay, doesn't sound like much of anything, does it? After all, sometimes our resolutions or intentions were about giving up--coffee, alcohol, tobacco, sweets, games . . . .

But I think there's something in there for us. I came up with three levels of giving up:

• EASY
• MIDDLIN'
• CHALLENGING

Let's explore:

The easiest, seems to me, is about things. Stuff. Excess physical possessions.

Examples:

• clothing that no longer fits
• clothing that is out of style (though this bothers me not much a-tall)
• books I won't read again
• music books (not needed now that I've given up the organ)
• movie DVDs and music CDs that I haven't watched/listened to for years

You get the idea. You can make your own list.

The middlin' category gets a little closer to home--our activities and behaviors:

• too many appointments
• too many commitments (even good things, like fitness classes or courses in one of our hobbies
• too many "haftas"--as in, I hafta visit my friend every Saturday, or I hafta go to the nursing home and help out, or I hafta take my turn reading to little kids at the library (sometimes these are "shoulds")

Finally, the challenging category:

• ourselves--beyond possessions, beyond activities, beyond behaviors
• what is there about this self each of us inhabits that can be improved by giving up an attitude or a belief? Or a relationship? Or a job?
• how do we go about that? How would I know what to give up?

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As you have already figured out, there are no right-or-wrong answers here. And this is very definitely NOT a one-size-fits-all. There is no one size.

My excess physical baggage may be just what you want or need. Great! I'll take that stuff to the thrift store or the library and donate it. If I can't quite gift it, I'll put it on ebay or one of the other vending sites.

My excess behaviors and activities won't be yours. Maybe your tolerance for a busy life is higher than mine. My low-activity tolerance allows me time to think, meditate, work out stories to write or pictures to paint. But then, I'm not you.

My challenging category is something I've been working on for decades. The only lesson I've learned is this: I learn as I go along. I give up something; how do I feel about that? I explore new ways of thinking, new beliefs; I read biographies and memoirs (all kinds); I research the lives of writers, painters, poets, members of religious communities, and I struggle to understand what each person thinks, feels, understands, and then communicates. If there's something for me in that exploration, then I keep it, and go forward. If not, I walk on and look some more.

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Here's a happy thought: A new year can begin any time! In our culture, and in this present day, January 1st is the signal for a new year to begin. In reality, any day is the beginning of a new year. (Remember this saying? "This is the first day of the rest of my life." Cliche now, but once had some significance. Maybe it still does.) 

Bottom line: You can choose when to start your new year.

An artist I follow online has a mini-course in setting a creative brief. One of her first comments was this: You don't have to start this now. Your "new year" can start any time. You will be reviewing your own work, and that can start again and again.

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I wish you good fortune in your search for a new year. If you choose "dissolutions," I hope that works out for you.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

  THE BIG RESTART

January seems to be designated the time to Restart! 

[from Carolyn Tyger]

Restart your hobbies. Restart your regular activities.Restart your exercise program. Restart your life, even.

Every website I visit to learn about watercolor painting has one or more tutorials on how to get started again--the assumption being that we all took time off to celebrate the holidays and forgot all about our previously all-consuming interests.

Really?

I'll grant you: lots of folks go all out with decorating, entertaining, attending programs. And before they even got to that point, they dished out energy in tracking down that elusive "perfect" gift for You Know Who. 

Then there were all the things that had to be done before the arrival of whatever holiday was being celebrated: colored lights to be tested, possibly replaced; dinnerware that always graced the table for the holiday meal(s); candelabra polished; housecleaning or rearranging to accommodate family and guests who needed shelter during the season.

Shopping wasn't confined to gifts--there was also the search for ingredients (sometimes also elusive) to make Uncle Josiah's favorite holiday pudding. And woe betide the shopkeeper who no longer sold that one special addition to the mix--even if he said the company no longer made it so he couldn't order it even if he wanted to.

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As you can see--enormous amounts of energy could have been expended beginning 'way back in the autumn and continuing on into the new year. (In case you haven't experienced it, the energy drain takes on a life of its own; by New Year's Day, some folks have no bandwidth for what we used to call Normal Life Activities.)

Losing our bandwidth can create its own set of difficulties:

• forgetting how to manage the normal 24 hours per day we've always had
• losing track of simple stuff: how to make microwave popcorn without incinerating it, how long to allow for instant oatmeal so it doesn't turn into super glue, the process for thawing a frozen chicken/turkey/roast safely
• finding a bag of frozen vegetables ("it's gotta be here somewhere")

You get the idea.

So I can understand the thinking behind all the "let's get a new start" tutorials. The underlying assumption is: We've all been straining our brains and resources doing Other Stuff--we've forgotten how to organize a painting/quilt/family meal.

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Here's what I've learned by watching those tutorials:

• start small--allow 5 minutes, or 10, or maybe even 15; do the simplest part first
• start simple--no big projects, no complex designs, no 15-ingredient recipes or king-size quilts (Think: Less is More)
• when the 5/10/15-minute segments began to feel tedious, add a few more minutes
• when we get to the point we can feel our muscle memory returning and our mental acuity clicks on, we're probably ready to tackle the normal whatever-it-was we thought we'd lost

We could call it warming up the engine before starting out.

Or finding the thread again that we had to let go of when life got Too Busy.

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Two things to remember:

1. Restarting is NOT Starting from Scratch.
2. You didn't forget or lose all the experience and knowledge you  had before you took a break.
3. Okay, one more thing: Restarting is a process. Doesn't happen in a day, or a week--certainly not in an hour or two. Just go with it. You'll get there.

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I wish you well in getting your groove back. You're in good company, even if your friends won't admit they have the same situation. 

And if you want to change your habits--ideal time to begin! Just remember: start small and  let it build.

Up here in my neighborhood it's a windy winter day. Going out might be optional. Good time to get a new start!

Blessings,

Thursday's Child