Happy New Year

That was me attempting to write 2012 with sparklers in the first hour of this year.  HAPPY NEW YEAR!  

Time to set some goals (like going to bed with a tidy apartment each night), change over the calendar and diary (I went for a floral themed calendar this year with some beautiful photography), and enjoy the public holiday (going to the beach - woohoo!).  

As I heard in talks/lessons at church today, the New Year is a time for looking forward and not looking back.  The apostle Jeffrey R. Holland said a few years back: "As a new year starts and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives."  Good advice to not live in the past.  The future - the glorious, clear future - is ahead of us!  I really like the comment someone made: Every day is the first day of the rest of your life.

One of my favourite songs is "Unwritten," sung by Natasha Bedingfield.  It includes the lyrics "I'm just beginning, the pen's in my hand - ending unplanned."  It's so true that each new day is yet to be lived, it is up to us to write the story of our own lives on the new blank page each day.  I actually remember it best from a scene in Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, where the girl is running on the beach.  I think I like that imagery because she is exerting her energy and doing something proactive, and that's exactly what we need to do - take action!  Life is about making choices, so get out there and make the best ones!

Here's to 2012, a fresh new year.