A New Year Resolution? NO. Just Something New.

PREFACE
It's New Year's Eve, 2011. Psh. New Years Resolutions. Did you make one? Blah. I don't make them. Ever. All hype and no action if you ask me. I can honestly say I don't know anyone who's ever followed thru completely on one. Made once a year, at the end of the year, to supposedly better ones coming new year, they are usually long forgotten by the time the conversation hearts start circulating. Not me!! It's not that I'm lazy or unmotivated, I just feel new years resolutions are gimmicky and silly. Come NYE I kick back with a glass of champagne and enjoy the fact I get to start afresh on Jan 1. Maybe I'll try something new or tweak a routine or two. Maybe I'll organize all the closets in my house (I always do). I like change and a new challenge. But it doesn't have to come with the heavy expectation of a resolution. SOOOO I’m sticking to that philosophy but I have decided to try something new in 2012. A blog. **SHRIEK, GASP, OMG** Not just a blog. A daily blog. My thoughts, opinions, emotions, interactions, observations, experiences, etc, on display, every day. I'm honestly at a loss at how to do this and I'm terrified. I'm so terrified in fact, that, instead of saying "Haaaay, I started a blog come read it homies!" I simply made a discreet mention to a limited audience on FB. If you are a FB friend and you are reading this, congratulations, you're quite the Facebook stalker and I hope you find that your efforts have paid off in finding this little nugget. Truly I'm doing this for me and me alone, as an outlet, and part of the appeal of an audience adds a sense of "therapy."  I don't care what anyone thinks of me in the end, you either know me or you don't and that's the bottom line. But I don't exactly want to go down as the girl who bored everyone to death with her blog, either. 

GOOD TO KNOW
People are annoying in general when it comes to sharing their personal lives. Don't act all offended by this, you know it's true. It's an overwhelming cesspool of TMI out there. I know I'm not alone in this opinion, and I know I'm not exempt either.  Facebook is a great example. I heart the "unsubscribe," feature. I use it religiously. When I can no longer take someones status updating 12 times a day with the same crap just worded differently. Unsubscribe. When someone posts the Chiefs play by play second by second. Unsubscribe. When someone feels they need to tell everyone exactly how many snowflakes just drifted past their window. Unsubscribe. When someone asks all their friends for help feeding their virtual newborn goat. Unsubscribe. When someone has posted the 18th photo of themselves in the same day. Unsubscribe. If I want an update on the weather I can look out the window and/or turn the tv on thank you very much. And I'm glad you have such ample time in your day to waste Farmvilling, but that doesn't mean my newsfeed needs to be littered with how many times your cow pooped a golden nugget and won you 50 magical chickens that you can trade for a basket of ruby crusted apples to buy more land for your golden turd laying cows. And don't even get me started on tagging. I have a zero tolerance policy for being tagged in illegitimate content. You will be unfriended. Period. How many times does it really take to learn that the link for 10 free MacBooks or to see Miley Cyrus doing something she shouldn't is a BAD LINK!!?!?!?! I've recently limited my own FB activity for this reason. More and more I found myself mid-update, stopping and thinking, "No one cares about this $#*!," deleting, and walking away. (I would be most surprised to find that someone hasn't unsubscribed from me, after my 700th photo post of my cat Hobbs, despite the fact that he is the definition of utter kitteh awesomeness.) Ok...back to my point after my little rant on FB there...sorry...my ultimate hope is that this blog won't share the same fate. (As if. A blog is a classy, intelligent alternative to a Facebook status update.) I have no particular content in mind, I'm going to wing it. If it takes a lot to entertain you, I may not be the best choice as your breakfast read. My life is pretty uneventful and generic. I'm a stay at home mom to a (almost) 4 year old daughter type person, I own my own photography business and my husband is a banker. I love cats, Harry Potter and David Duchovny. I'm not a Debby Downer nor am I Suzie Sunshine. I'm my own worst enemy and that should provide for some interesting posts. Hopefully you'll get a good mix of all the colorful sides of Becks, but I can't promise anything groundbreaking. Feel free to post comments, I'd love this to be interactive! (Tho whether or not I will clear them for live viewing is another story so be cool.)

OBJECTIVE

The goal of this blog is to find the good, positive, and wonderful things that each day brings in 2012.(Hence, my uber original blog title.) Personally, 2011 was a benchmark year for chart topping horror. I'll spare the details as they are lengthy and private. It was a year full of tragedy, pain, and a great deal of unrelenting stress and I've never been in a worse mood for such a stretch of time. I will most likely reference it as the Year of Darkness henceforth. When I was younger, good or bad days, I still always saw life as beautiful and the world as a magnificent place. I haven't felt that way for a long time. As I'm getting older I'm finding it harder and harder to get thru my day without some level of disappointment, dismay or disarray. (Something that unfortunately goes hand in hand with my high strung personality, something I'm never going to be able to change and that will inevitably seal my fate as a lonely old lady surrounded only by hundreds of cats.) I went thru the Year of Darkness with a chip on my shoulder for all of the bad luck that seemed upon me/my family. Sounds so selfish I know, but it's the truth and I'm not afraid to admit it. I was a zombie, I was horrid to live with, I was so angry. All. The. Time. I've never been a "poor me," type. I know my problems are only fleeting dots of sorrow in this grief stricken world. I know I have a great life full of joy and blessings and I used to be better at seeing the positive thru the gloom. But in 2011 I just couldn't help feeling I was paying off some sort of "Sin Debt," because it was just "always something." I couldn't catch a break. Of course, I know that's not the case, and I've come to terms with this past year and I've learned much about myself and how I deal and move on. To gain some perspective and re-gain the sanity I will need for 2012, I figured my options are to;  A) go to therapy full time or B) start writing it out. As B is cheaper and less invasive, I'll go that route first. I actually tried to keep a journal in the early part of the Year of Darkness, after the first (and worst) big thing happened, but physical writing just didn't do it for me. My hand cramped up and if I wanted to change something I had to scratch out and start over. I prefer the digital method much better. But I enjoy writing, I can't say that I'm great at it, but it feels good to dump the words onto the page and I think this will help me. At the end of 2011, I came to realize that life is going to be full of disappointment, frustration and sadness and that it's easier to expect those things rather than to try to avoid them. But each day, however challenging or stressful, is still a blessing and the good should always be taken from it. I know the positive seeking side of me is still in here somewhere and I'm hoping this blog brings her out. It's not always going to be easy, but I'm going to try to make lemonade (or a lemontini?) from the lemons I'm given each and every day.

I'm going to start by acknowledging all the lemonade that squeezed out of the Year of Darkness:

-We spent a beautiful 4 days in sunny Florida in February!

-We became DEBT FREE!

-We rang in my dad's 60th in style with lots of friends and family. I'll never forget the look on his face that day!

-Our daughter finally potty trained completely!

-Our daughter started pre-k twice a week!
-We watched The Complete X-Files Series (AH-MAY-ZING! I freaking heart Duchovny)

-We attended 3 live music concerts, one of which we got to take a trip alone to St. Louis for! (I freaking heart Adam Levine)
-We got to fly around the Kansas Speedway (in a 2012 Ford Taurus, ok not a Nascar, but still a great adventure!)

-I re-read Harry Potter and fell in love all over again! (Falling in love again is actually an understatement. I've garnered a greater respect and even a kin-ship with Harry et al. Besides supportive friends/family/husband, Harry is what ultimately pulled me thru the year. I don't know what I would have done had I not had those books to keep my mind occupied)

-my daughter and I had a great summer going to the pool!

-I had a great year for photography!
-Joe (hubs) had a great year at the bank!
-It was a busy year but we still managed to get some face time in with good friends! Thanks to one of my gals in particular for being such a huge support to me and listening to my tales of woe and not even batting an eye when I told you my "crazy" story. You are like a second sister to me, and most likely don't even know I'm talking about you.
-We've made some great progress on updating our house!

-Joe and I had more date nights than ever since our daugther was born, dinner and a movie are sacred things!

-We had two trips to Minnesota and hung out with my amazing family!
-As ever my husband has been my unwavering rock. Words cannot explain how much he means to me. He's picked me up and dusted me off (or talked me down) more times than he is even aware of. How he continues to live with me will be a question I'll probably never have an answer to. I love you Pook!

-We all made it thru 2011 with a clean bill of health and each other!

Now for that glass of champagne, I wonder if we'll make it to midnight? Talk to you tomorrow for some fresh squeezed lemonade (sounds like a bad SNL skit).