Happy new year!

It's a new year! I've always loved the idea of a new beginning--new years, new school years, Sundays marking the beginning of new weeks, new notebooks and new pencils. Appropriately, then, I've spent most of my adult life making elaborate new year's resolutions, listed, color-coded and cross-referenced. I don't do that any more.

What I do now probably looks similar but is fundamentally different. I look for small ways to make big changes--points of leverage where small adjustments or additions to my systems or routines can have disproportionate results. For the past five years, I've found at least one and it really has been amazing to see what is possible.

Anticipating an absolutely insane winter and spring, I intended to take all day today for solitude and quiet, to focus on the possibilities of 2010. I guess you could say that I've had solitude and quiet today but it has mostly been in the bed, wishing I felt better. I haven't taken a day off to be sick in ages, so this was something new. I've learned that the daytime tv offerings on New Year's Day are pitiful but if all you want is distraction, it will do the trick. Other than that realization, today has not been productive at all . . . unless, of course, you want to count allowing my body to rest and heal, which I have decided to count.

One small change I want to make in 2010 is to blog 6 days a week. Since I post to 3 blogs, that shouldn't be hard except that some days, I have no idea what I want to say. Let me just go ahead and apologize in advance for the occasional drivel that I'm sure will result. But, as Anne Lamott says, you have to let yourself write "sh**ty first-drafts" if you want to be a writer, so I'm going to take it on faith that that's true. It certainly seems to be true in many other areas of life.

So, anyway, I'm rambling. Maybe when I feel better, I'll come back and edit. For now, I'm giving thanks for chicken noodle soup and for Sprite and for the son who went to get said Sprite even though he laughed at my firm belief in its medicinal properties. I'm grateful for my comfortable bed and my television with cable and I'm especially, especially grateful that I'm not throwing up. Next time I have a bad or stressful day, I hope I can remember what a wonderful blessing that is.