New Years Day

December 31, 2020 Christmas Photo A Day!

2020 is on the way out. Wipe your slate smooth and clean. Be safe and healthy in 2021!

(To my email only subscribers, I hope you can see this video on your email…if not, do visit the website. It’s a cleansing breathe. AND, because why not, “I” can see the video playing perfectly well, if it doesn’t seem to be doing so … look to the right column on PC/laptop and view via Instagram, or find it on Instagram and follow me there..rteest42!

Word of the year….is ….(drumroll, please!)

The word, as usual , jumped out at me without my being conscious of choosing it.

(As is typical, I could not tell you what my word of the year was for this past year until I looked it upšŸ˜‹… hey, 2020 has been a LONG YEAR )

Past words:

2009-Deliberate

2010-Balance

2011-Weather

2012-Motion

2013-Choose

2014-Enough

2015-Connect

2016-Change

2017-Try

2018-Mindful

2019-Focus

2020ā€“Clarity

After this last year of Covid, (and who knows how much longer before life returns to whatever ā€œnormalā€ means)…the word satisfied jumped in my head, then the lyrics to Hamiltonā€”ā€œyou will never be satisfiedā€ and there I amā€”-singing to myself…. and…

…so the word wants to be SATISFIED, and it will not be satisfied if supplanted with any other word. (Hey, I donā€™t make the rules.)

…but, wow! What a word!

That idea may need to be turned on itā€™s head, to make it so that really the idea is ā€œTO BE SATISFIEDā€ (with life as it IS). To be satisfied with what you haveā€”(but not so much so that you accept things as they are, IF there is a desire and ability to change, it should not come off as a fatalistic acceptance and acquiesce, either). NB. I attempted to supplant it with Appreciate, but that was a non-starter.

…it should not be a settling for, but more an appreciation for what you have….being satisfied with life the way it is because this is what we have, and well there are a lot of things one can change in oneā€™s life, but a pandemic is not one of those things.

I have been one of the lucky ones, whose life has been constrained but not ruined, damaged or changed in any but the most surface ways…. no travel, no hugging, no visiting family, but also no job loss, no sickness, no loss of loved ones.

I have worked the entire pandemic and instead of doing things after work with friends or family, I come home to my husband and cats.

And satisfied means not being envious of bigger houses, better yards…. but loving where and what I have….

2011. WORD.

Itā€™s January 1st, 2011.

Itā€™s all about the resolutions:Winking smile Out with the old, in with the new; motivate, change, organize, fresh starts. Uh huh. Sure. Itā€™s Saturday, and itā€™s January, and I have to go to work. (But, I do not need to unbury the car first.)

It may be more about the fact that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, you will wake up like yesterday. There isnā€™t an on/off switch to change; the cats roam around the house, unaware of the portent of the calendar switch. Things usually donā€™t just change overnight. (Most change of the day/night variety is usually of the catastrophic kind anyway, and that seems a silly way to want to start a year.)

For the last few years, I have had a word of the year—does it get used enough? Do I live by it? Heck, do ā€œIā€ even choose it? Could I, in mid-October, even tell you the word?Ā  I am a member of an art quilt group; for the last week, itā€™s been all about the new word. And meanings attached—their own personal definition of the word, for their purposesā€”for the year.

I was reading their words, contemplating what would my word be. (Past words: Insight, Inclusive, Deliberate, Balance)

I loved some of their words. I thought of borrowing them, and giving them my own spin; heck, even swiping their own interpretations. However, another word forced itself into my consciousness. I canā€™t see how it is a word I can spend a year with, but on the other hand, I have spent my life with it.

No other word seems to be forthcoming, now that this word has settled: Weather.

  • Whether the weather be mild or whether the weather be not,
    Whether the weather be cold or whether the weather be hot,
    We’ll weather the weather whatever the weather,
    Whether we like it or not.
    Aleksandra Lachut
  • Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of mercury in a barometer, indicate little else than the variability of the weather. David Hare
  • A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves. Marcel Proust
  • SunA friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often – just to save it from drying out completely.
    Pam Brown
  • Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. Rabindranath Tagore
  • Walking through puddles is my favorite metaphor for life. Jessi Lane Adams
  • The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event.Ā  You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?Ā  J.B. Priestley
  • To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.Ā  George Santayana
  • UmbrellaWeather is a great metaphor for life – sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, and there’s nothing much you can do about it but carry an umbrella.Ā  Terri Guillemets
  • Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Charles Dudley Warner
  • I get cold really quickly, but I don’t care. I like weather. I never understand why people move someplace so that they can avoid weather. Holly Hunter
  • I inherited that calm from my father, who was a farmer. You sow, you wait for good or bad weather, you harvest, but working is something you always need to do. Miguel Indurain
  • Storm cloudIf you send up a weather vane or put your thumb up in the air every time you want to do something different, to find out what people are going to think about it, you’re going to limit yourself. That’s a very strange way to live.Ā  Jessye Norman
  • It is only in sorrow bad weather masters us; in joy we face the storm and defy it.Ā  Amelia Barr
  • The true harvest of my life is intangible – a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched. Henry David Thoreau
  • RainbowAnd when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow. G.K. Chesterton
  • Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.Ā  John Ruskin
  • LightningNature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy – your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself.Ā  Annie Leibovitz
  • I am a contradictory mess but I see it as my prerogative to change my mood like the weather.Ā  Shirley Manson

How does this word become a theme for a year? Does it mean my photos, my quilting, will be more nature oriented? Or that simply I am to plod on, whenever I hit a bump in the road? Or is the word meant to be ā€œWhether“?Ā Ā  Hmmmmā€¦

In other news, resolutions:

Dad has the best of them, (stay out of the hospital, prepare for Christmas 2011) but mine are ā€¦

  • Focus on Friday—A photo a week, up on my photo blog, for conversation, critique and what-have-you.
  • Revisiting the 27-Thing Fling, the big de-cluttering attempt of 2010. I know some of you joined me. How did it go? Did you finish, stick with it?
  • Work on getting my photography out there! You can helpā€”send people to my site, become a fan on facebookā€¦.
  • Finish some of those quilt projects I swore I would finish in 2010ā€¦.

Yeah, thatā€™s about it. Resolutions are tricky things, if you are not with them, you are against themā€¦.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!Ā  MAY 2011 BE THE BEST YEAR OF YOUR LIFE!

New Years Day 2009

If you are a sometimes reader of my blog (And, indeed as I am only a sometimes WRITER of said blog; I canā€™t ask more of YOU than I do of myself) you may recall that about 11 months back, I made some late entry ā€œNew Years Resolutions.ā€

Well, yeah, that worked well. No, really it did. In a way. I DID get a good deal of Genealogical stuff scanned. But, I discovered a great deal more, and inherited a small collection of Nanaā€™s photos, AND I never did get them all clean and shiny and up on line, soā€¦

Letā€™s call it a wash, ok? No harm, no foul.

Tomorrow is a new day, and all that rot. I played with some the other day, and discovered that at least four generations of us have the same mouth. (What do YOU think?)

I could spend all my time editing them, bringing them back to life. Itā€™s fun and keeps me from housework. Right there is reason enough, if you ask me.

However, it keeps me from quilting. (Somewhere in the studio are a few dozen unfinished projects) And from editing MY OWN photographs, burning CDā€™s, getting them on line and trying to sell some. Oh, and writing ā€“ It keeps me from writing –(Iā€™ve a Fan Fiction story Iā€™m 150k into, my hero is lying, gravely injured in a hospital bed, yet, here I am, goofing off. Itā€™s no wonder my muse has up and leftā€¦)

So, do I do the New Years Resolution thing again? Or do I put my money where my mouth is with the whole Reduce, ReUse, Recycle theme and recycle LAST YEARS RESOLUTION(S)?

One ā€˜goalā€™ is going to be not taking plastic bags. I sew. I can make bags. For a buck I can BUY bags at the store. And do I NEED a bag for a roll of THREAD?? (thanks Kerin, for the inspiration)

Hmmm. Ok, that is a selfless resolution. Onto some selfish ones.

I will QUILT!!! I will try very hard to buy only SOME fabric. And I will even try to make said fabric have a plan! Not just become part of my Fabric 401k, (which by the way, despite the economy, is holding steady. A yard is a yard is 36 inches)

I will get off my duff and try to get some of my photographs SOLD. (wanna help?)

I think thatā€™s enough. Donā€™t want to overdo the whole planning my life thing.

Another year over, a new one just begunā€¦.

And what have we to show for it?

New friends were made,

Old friends re-discovered.

Goodbyes were said,

But greetings were offered.

We experienced vast Historic days.

We strove to laugh in many ways.

New places were discovered;

Old places once again uncovered.

Happy news out weighed the sad;

On balance, it was a good year.

With more of the same to come! Happy New Year 2009!!

(Oh, I do have an interactive part to this New Years Resolution thingā€¦ I want YOU to resolve to leave me COMMENTS!!!!!)