What’s in Your 2010 Box?

What I like about a new year?

I like starting off the new year with purpose: deep commitments, long newfangled lists to check off, clean calendars, fresh ideas in pretty handwriting (ever notice how your handwriting looks completely different in December than it does in January?).

The new year represents a clean slate, after all, right?

What I don’t like…

I don’t like how settled we get when one resolution is broken… settled in to our bad habits again. So this year, I made it a point NOT to make my list before or on January first. I want my changes to not be tied to a date.

Now is as good a day to start making your life and yourself better as any.

So what if you don’t have a January 1st start date? In the long run, what does it matter? After all – there are a lot of great people out there that didn’t ‘start’ on January 1st, either. You start from where you are… TODAY. Think of it as more of a ‘birthday’ than a resolution date. It happens when the DESIRE is BORN to CHANGE.

So what’s with the mailbox photos, you ask? What does mail have to do with resolutions and the new year?

I have no idea.

I just wanted to post them. However, if you are vague enough, you could probably make them fit the theme.

When I think of mail, I imagine the PILES and PILES of paperwork on my desk. The bills. The junk. The sad LACK of personal letters we send because we are so busy (the stacks of pen pal and family correspondence waiting to be answered)…

This year I’m going to make a concerted effort to really get in to a better paperwork groove. Even if it means TRASHING STUFF that I normally would have horded until it was so dated that it was useless. I’m notorious for saving something “just in case I need it” and for transferring items from one pile to another and handling them MANY times instead of ONCE. There’s a resolution in this paragraph… but I don’t feel like paraphrasing it.

Simplify was last year’s ‘word’. This year, I thought I would do a ‘phrase’.

“Live on Purpose” is my motto for 2010.

Everything that isn’t getting me closer to a goal – is going to cease. It is hard to explain, but imagine a goal as a target… and the things you do as arrows. Are your arrows getting to the target? Or are they overshooting?

Some of my arrows have been going in completely WRONG directions. I want to get my bow lined up so that I’m not wasting my shot.

Life is going to try and pile up. The mailboxes are going to keep filling with stuff that needs to be sorted. There will always be “dirt on this side of eternity” as one twitter friend so eloquently put it… but with me busy working at perfecting my aim, I’m hoping that digging out from under it all won’t be as hard this year.

As a side note… these two mailbox shots were the very last photos my camera saw before it crashed to the ground after Christmas holidays. We were on our way home and stopped to do a “Chinese Fire Drill”. Kev was getting tired and wanted me to drive, so I took the wheel and snapped off these two shots before getting back in the car. Unfortunately, the camera bag was not steady and when we stopped a few miles down the road, the bag fell upside down out of the back of the lift gate on to the pavement… camera falling OUT of the unzipped bag. I lost a 50mm lens and possibly my Digital Camera – a Canon 40D. I’ll know in a few weeks if Best Buy is going to fix or replace it. After that fall, I would rather they replace it. Thankfully, I had accidental insurance on it.

It’s hard imagining life without a camera for three weeks. Or life without my 50mm lens for six months. I probably won’t be able to replace it until after our vehicles are paid off. It was my favorite lens because it lets in so much light. I take a lot of shots indoors because the baby is so little, so the 1.8 was a great lens that helped me not need my flash – and yet allowed me to catch more crisp pictures that didn’t have a lot of blur in low light. I’m just thankful that it was my cheapest lens (at around $100). If my other two had fallen out of the bag, it would have taken me forever to replace them. Both of them together are worth nearly as much as the camera body.

I guess I won’t be starting my 365 project on January 1st, either. Oh, well. I’ll be excited to jump right in when I have a working camera again. Who cares what day it is?!

More on the camera saga and the to-do list for 2010 soon… until then, I’m hoping you are resolved to have a great year – regardless of the bad days when it seems you aren’t keeping those ‘resolutions’. Just try and remember that there’s always ‘tomorrow’ to get back on track. You don’t have to wait until 2011.

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Quick Links:
The To-Do List Failure Continues
A New Year Hope
2009 To-Do List