There's no place like home in the new year

First, a quote from the fabulous Neil Gaiman:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Now we are home. It was a long day of travel on the first day of the new year. We started with an early taxi to CDG, and flew to Berlin... where after a few trips through security (they wanted to thoroughly check out my camera... might have been an incendiary device, you never know) we were finally able to board our plane for the trip home. I took some photos of the breaking dawn from above the cloud deck... beautiful...

Souvenirs from this trip: photos and memories, olives, gourmet mustards, a fairy necklace, and a cold. Oh well... they can't all be keepers. Hopefully this cold will disappear now that we're home.


For the new year, I have made some small resolutions. First, to write more. And more. And more. I am so close to finishing my first novel now that I resolve to finish it by February and begin the editing process on it... as well as moving forward on the second novel.


Second resolution is a bit more nebulous... to get a handle on my anxiety. I have trouble with guilt and feeling like I don't measure up or like I'm doing things wrong (things, yes, very explicit, I know... by things I mean anything from keeping house, to not writing enough, to drinking, to you name it, I have anxiety about it). My resolution is to find that calm, quiet, centered place inside that I can easily extend to others but that I can never extend to myself... to just be...


Third is, like my dear friend Beth, to start keeping track of what I read and hopefully read more. Lori and I are going to put a piece of paper on the cabinet to list our books, and perhaps I will make it a digital list at the end of this year.


And now I'm going to stop making resolutions for fear I won't keep any of them... :) I wish you all a happy and healthy new year, full of laughter, joy, and magic...