Tags
being yourself, change, dreams coming true, end of the year, fear, friendship, goals, helping others, Hurricane Sandy, inspire, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, January, joy, relationship, teacher, writing
At last it is January! This is one of my favorite times of the year. The expectations of the holidays are over making it a time to focus on my own goals, the plans I am making that I am personally excited about. Because I actively try to shape myself the new year holds great promise.
This year I hope to give to others more regularly. And I say this selfishly because I know from experience that it feels good to get my hands dirty helping others. I am anxious to spend the day next week assisting folks whose homes were flooded by Hurricane Sandy, down in Atlantic City, with a group of like-minded people. It’s a chance to surround myself with others who feel strongly about putting in effort towards the improvement of us all. Being around those kinds of folks, and working together as a team, I know will send me home tired and satisfied, temporarily, that I have contributed. It is easier to accept help from others when I know I have offered my abilities already. When my sister and mother and father were dying, and my home had flooded at the same time, I had to accept the help of so many people. I owe back to the world at large many times over for this, and tearing out moldy drywall and flooring for someone else is a way to do it. This is one of the things I am looking forward to, genuinely, this year.
This year I hope to figure out how to share the story I have written about my childhood, You’ll Get Over It, Jane Ellen, and how I learned to create a new life to live today instead of continuing with the one I started out with. Recognizing that you can change who you are and how you live your life has been a profound revelation for me, and I am committing time daily to finding ways to share that idea.
This year I hope to build new friendships in the writing community locally and to participate in those more, being committed to following my strong inclination to write and be heard. I hope to be strong and fearless in that even though it is tricky taking steps down a lonely path, following my intuition just because I trust it.
So January is full of excitement for me because these are things I care about. There is enough new here to fill my time along with my husband and children, teaching introductory piano students, teaching high school students to write papers, running a beach property and speaking out about ideas I care about. January is just the start of all these days I can’t wait to live.