Happy New Year and new me (aka my decision to defy gravity this year)

New Year's Day...a symbol of a new beginning, a clean slate, another chance....We have all made our resolutions and try like crazy to uphold them. Can we do it? Will we do it? Am I brave enough to make myself accountable to others, to bare it all and share my successes and failures with others? This year I have decided to take a leap of faith, to trust my instincts, close my eyes and leap and defy gravity. The gravity of convention, of our rules and limits set by others. I am starting a few different things this year. Surprise....this is one of them...to share every day my successes, my failures, my moments of happiness. There are 366 days this year and I am bound and determined to find at least 366 moments of happiness to share with others. I will even be blogging about it every day on here.

This year I will deploy my awesome GI Joe one more time, this time to a new war zone. That scares the hell out of me. I will help my oldest child celebrate his 21^st birthday, seriously where the hell did the time go? I will watch my second child graduate high school, move away and start college (most likely), have my two babies both go to high school (again, seriously where did the time go?), and redeploy one unit only to deploy another at work. Wow, I just realized that none of that has anything to do with me. Yes, me! I have finally realized that I cannot completely care for others if I am not caring for myself.

 Somewhere along the way, I let Me fall to the wayside. Put my dreams, my hopes, often my needs on the back burner so that everyone else in the house and in my life was first. Well, that stops now! Dammit, I need, no I have to be first so that I can be all that I can be for everyone else. What does that mean? Not bringing as much work home at night so I can work on something else, whether it is reading a book, quilting a baby blanket, or vegetating in front of the television for twelve straight hours watching SVU marathons (don’t judge…it was an awesome day in my PJs: just me, the wine, and Elliott Stabler). Get my butt back to the gym on a regular basis, do more volunteer work, to let go of toxic relationships that I know will never get better because the other person will never see the issues and finally,  this is the big one: write every day. Years ago, my GI Joe told me I needed to write books not just read them. In the meantime, eighteen years have passed and the characters in my head are giving me a headache from all the pounding they are doing up there. Seriously, they want out! So….this year, I am evicting them. While I am doing all this and more (I haven’t even mentioned the baking but that truly is another story…actually another blog), I will be telling others about it on Facebook and this blog.

So this will make it official, I hereby resolve to make Me a priority during 2012, to write my book, blog every day, and to tackle everything that life and the Army throw at me and to tell others about my success and/or failure and to find at least one moment of happiness every day and share it with others. This year I will have twelve personal commandments to remember: Be Me. Let it go. Act the way I want to feel. Do it now. Be polite and fair. Enjoy the process. Spend out. Identify the problem. Lighten up. Do what out to be done. No calculation. And finally: to remember that there is only love. I am going to defy gravity this year because everyone deserves a chance to fly!

“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” ~Colette