Category: Happy New Year

A New Year

The new year has begun. The excitement of Christmas has passed. The baking, cooking, wrapping, decorating, celebrating, all finished. The anticipation of the new year’s start is over, as well as the very first day of 2013. Hopes and wishes for good health and happiness extended to family and friends.

I’m not one to make resolutions like many people like to do at the new year. However, I do enjoy making lists of goals to accomplish.

A New Year  ©Dora Sislian Themelis

Resolutions.

The word feels like a defeat from the start. We resolve to…something. As if we were delinquent, not up to par, and we need to get a slap on the wrist by resolving our bad behavior?

I’ll pass on the resolution to be a better person thing.

I want to DO better. Meet a challenge. Cross items off a list. Feel a sense of accomplishment.

Goals are upward moving. So I’m making a list of goals to meet in the year ahead. The list evolves as I move along in time. Here’s a start:

  • Walk every day
  • Start, and finish things
  • Schedule each day and block out hours of activity
  • Make better use of computer: web site, email list, contacts, etc
  • Continue working on art making
  • Participate in more events to show my work
  • Relax
  • Connect, network, smile
  • Expect abundance and be grateful

It’s a beginning. As I said, the list can, and will, change.

Last year, some goals I planned to meet ended up being abandoned. Others I decided not to act on at all. A few I met with flying colors.

I have no expectations other than to review the list each day, each week, each month, and revise, cut, add, change.

Things are going well so far. Today I walked.

It’s a start.

Resolve to Reach Goals in the New Year

The new year is well under way now. What do we think of resolutions? Do you make resolutions for the new year? Are they possible to keep anyway?

Some people love making resolutions, mostly in the form of losing weight or exercising more, things which we all should be conscious of anyway. I am not a fan of resolutions. Maybe a better word to use is “goals.” Now I can get behind something that feels like I can reach for and attain it.

But don’t we need to RESOLVE to find a way to reach our GOALS? Maybe that’s a better suggestion. It makes me think of my process, as in HOW will I reach my goal? With what trick will I help myself move forward?

My brain hurts from all the thinking.

Last year I decided to try painting 100 paintings in the year with the goal of developing a painting habit, building a current body of work, and testing my skills in watercolor paints. I am at painting #44 in the challenge, not anywhere near 100 works. Okay, so I started the challenge a couple of months into the year. If I’m going to get there I need to step it up, pronto.

This year’s goals are much the same as last year: Keep working at it. Push the process. Stay in the moment. Plan. Prepare. Paint. Cruise.

Hour by hour, day by day is the best I can hope to do. If I push myself too hard I end up backward into the wall. I want to gently guide my inner-child-artist forward. Paint almost every day, remember to take a short weekly Artist Date, keep calm and stop whining about not having enough time for everything.

There’s plenty of time, and no time like the present. And time will march on without us if we let it.

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas..

Finally, all the holidays are done. Today was clean up day around here. I need to get ready to really begin the new year in earnest. Out with the old, in with the new, right? I thought how interesting it is to clean up after Christmas with an air of “I’ve had it” over the sentimentality and anticipation there is while putting out each decoration. Where’s the lilting music to go with taking down the tree? Ho Ho Ho.

Now it’s done. Besides the new year on January 1we have the feast day of St. Basil, like a holy Santa Claus. Remember I had to bake the sweet bread with the hidden coin? That was his modis opperendi. Then later in the week, we celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, and January 7 is the day of St. John the Baptist, big holidays on the Greek Orthodox calendar. Some say that the wise men visited the newborn Christ on January 6. Others believe this is the true day of His birth. However, in the Greek Orthodox tradition it is the day Christ was baptized and…

“…according to tradition, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River by St. John the Baptist marked one of only two occasions when all three Persons of the Trinity manifested themselves simultaneously to humanity: God the Father by speaking through the clouds, God the Son being baptized in the river, and God the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove descending from heaven (the other occasion was the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor). Thus the holy day is considered to be a Trinitarian feast.” Wikipedia 

We usually attend church services where we are blessed with holy water which we can take to bless our homes. Some communities visit local waters or boating areas where the priest throws a cross into the water for blessings. Usually a bunch of young guys are ready to jump in after the cross to retrieve it and have luck the rest of the year. Cold, wet, but lucky.

St. John the Baptist is known as the Forerunner and is celebrated the next day after the Epiphany because he was the main character at this baptism. He is celebrated other days in the year as significant periods in his life unfolded. Needless to say everyone named with any form of John is remembered and sent well wishes. Variations of the word Epiphany in names are also celebrated as in Fay, Faith, Fotini, and so on. You get the picture? Like I’ve said, we have a name and a celebration for everything and everyone.

Anyway, now it’s really over and I can clean up. Ho Hum.

A New Year Ahead Without Resolving Anything

I apologize, once more, for the delay in posting here. It’s been a rough few weeks of holidays and it isn’t over yet. Soon, soon.

And so what about resolutions for the new year? Who is and who isn’t doing them? I can tell you that I’m opting out. No resolutions for me. Why? Because I never do them. Everyone wants to lose weight, exercise more, be a better person, and on. I could try to do so many things and fall flat a month from now so I’m not going to bother thinking about it.

The one thing I will do is break my day into 15 to 20 minutes chunks of time. As this past year has shown me, I can do anything for 15 minutes. Whether it’s organizing/cleaning my space, painting, or some other activity, I can slowly get something done and finished if I make tiny goals. The huge to-do list will be tackled that way. One thing at a time and in small bites.

Last year I read Walking in This World, by Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way. I loved every minute of reading the latter, never walked with the former, which I had hoped would become a habit. Nope! Didn’t happen. So forget it. If I start walking it will be a miracle. And I would have to wake up at 5A.M. to get everything in before my granddaughter comes for the day. I read somewhere that I could walk out of my house for 7 minutes and return, making the trip 15 minutes of walking. I can’t get to do that either. I know, I’m a slug. I own the next installment of this series of anti-resistance courses so let’s see where that goes.

Same thing with painting, but I think I need to move on past the 20 minutes I had allotted myself. Maybe I can try it on a larger work? Ugh, I don’t even want to think about it. Twenty minutes was working out well and maybe I will just keep it just like that.

If I can cross off some things from the to-do list once a month I’ll be thrilled. Small goals, one at a time should become my mantra.

Like posting here on the blog. I have so much to put out here, but by the time I have time I realize I didn’t take photos, forgot my thoughts, I’m too tired to type or think. But if I could be awake for 15 minutes, maybe something can show itself here.

As far as being a better person? I think I’m the best I’m going to be right now. Maybe when I grow up I’ll decide to be someone else, but for now you’re stuck with me.