Good luck in 2008, from a sister in ennui.

May your new year be a massive improvement on the last, and hopefully we will be able to hang out and chat about more cheerful things this year. :) Hopefully I’ll run into you somewhere!

Pick something you’ve always wanted to do and do it - no excuses. 20 years ago when I got sold off (yes really) I made a list of things I’ve wanted to do before I died. It covered quite a broad spectrum. The only one I haven’t completed was to travel around the world (not as a tourest). I’ve covered half the world and almost got the opportunity to do the rest this year. It provides a great deal of satisfaction and avoids ever having to say ” If only …” Just make sure you don’t sacrifice anything important like family to achieve your goals.

Walk on the beach and enjoy some quiet time with the universe and god.

Ignore peoples (grin) advice a little and listen to your own heart. No one’s figured out the right way to live their lives yet. That’s why there’s so much advice about it. Somethimes it helps to list to how other people have struggled with things though. Maybe in some ways we are all alone but we all ultimately struggle with the same types of problems. We are all travelers on the same path and we can sing together as we hike along. I think that is the main purpose of literature. Don’t you?

Give up something important for just a little while to prove to yourself that you are in control of yourself and that your love of things doesn’t control you. I think this is what lent and other forms of fasting are about. I used to treat lent more as a joke like new years resolutions but several years ago I decided to give up playing video games for lent (oh no !! ). It was incredibly hard to do. Knowing it was only for a little while helped. The benefits were surprising in many ways.

Write us another story. That’s a scary one. A good honest original story reveals much more about ourselves than almost anything else. I was impressed by what you’ve written. Make sure to offer to share it with your family (even scarier). When my mother died a found a bundle of letters she had written to my father as she traveled from New York city to Utah to join him at his army base towards the end of WWII. It was a fastinating journal and provided me with a greater insite into the lives of my parents than all the time I lived with them as I grew up. It was written with no expectation that anyone other than my father would ever read it but she kept it and put it in a place where we were sure to read it after she died. What a wonderful gift to leave.

Now I’ve rambled on too much but you did ask for it 
Finally do have a good new year.
John

What pulled me out? The realisation that I wasn’t going anywhere with my goals, my career, my life.

I like having things to look back on, to point to and to say, “Look what I did!” and have someone other than myself be impressed.

Nobody is impressed by cruising by life, watching TV and surfing the net. I realised that deep down I wanted to impress a few people (nobody in particular), and that means getting my act together.

“But one shouldn’t be concerned with impressing other people,” the practical voice in my head says. “You’re the only person you need to impress.”

Well, no. Impressing people is a worthy goal for me. I need the feedback.