Christmas Letter

Phfew deep breathe everyone! What a year!
I am not one to make new years resolutions but I do like to reflect on the year past and see what I learned and how I can make the next year even better! Plus it is so easy to focus on the negatives so this makes me see the positive too!
This year started out pretty low, I broke someone's heart pretty badly, I lived in a state I didn't want to be in, I hated my job and I was far away from all my friends and family!

So this past year has been about change, not just for me but for some of my friends and most of my family. I am hoping this up coming year is about setting new roots and enjoying the fruits of all those changes and staying settled.

I left my job and the state and even country I lived in to come back home, most people said that when you get to a certain age you always want to come back to your roots!
Normally there is something bitter and sour tasting that comes along with those words, "certain age:, it sounds old it sounds like you're now starting to go downhill after going up hill for so long. It's like to think I’ll stay flat a bit and enjoy all the wisdom and knowledge and relationships I have built over the past year before I start going down hill.
This past year was about change but also about learning; maybe it wasn't just learning but actually paying attention to my needs and how to make things I want happen.
So knowing I wasn't happy and was making bad decision I came home so I could reset, figure out where I was headed and what I wanted and it was the best decision I made in a long time.
It is good to be home with family, as crazy as they all are I am blessed to be back.

The good thing is it seems like a lot of my family members were also going through similar transitions my sister for example has made some very brave decisions this year up to the last month of the year and I am so proud of her. I used to be worried about what it would be like to turn 40 and thinking life is over it's all down hill, but seeing how beautiful and smart and confident my sister is, I am proud to be following right behind her.
My brother found a new love, they are so beautiful together and I can only hope to have the same thing.
My younger brother welcomed a beautiful strong smart little girl, I am so excited for him, and I never thought the day would happen when he became a father, he is so proud and doing a great job, and I cannot wait to meet her.
My mother bought herself a cabin on the lake, she is living the perfect city dweller dream lol, an apartment in the city and a home away from the city for long lazy week ends. So for Christmas we all were able to gather at the cabin and be together as a family, I have always wanted to be one of those people who get to say "This week end I’m going to my parent's cabin" yeah snotty but hey she worked hard for it and deserves every square inch ;-)

Making this move meant leaving some of my best girlfriends behind, I do miss them a ton. I do, however, get to be closer to Meryeme and even though we don't spend as much time together knowing she is just one hour away from me brings me a lot of comfort!!

Moving also meant starting a new job, which was hard after being at the same place for 10 years, I miss having the camaraderie with my old co workers and friends, and knowing so much and being involved in so many projects, it's difficult to find myself at the bottom again but some days I marvel at just coming in and going home without all the responsibilities :-) but knowing me that comfort will only last so long, I need to feel useful and have already started thinking about getting my Black Belt in six sigma and I am very excited about the thought of working in process improvement.

With all these changes I also met a wonderful sweet man, I guess I had to step back and really figure out what I wanted out of life to get there. I finally get what it means to find your friend, your partner and lover. We can talk for hours about everything and nothing and he always makes me laugh but he also is a great listener, he doesn't try to fix everything but always has great advice. He gets and appreciates who I am faults, quirks and my odd sense of humor I am really looking forward to this year and seeing where our relationship takes us.

So the New Year is about enjoying and making the most of all the decisions and changes I have made in 2011, enjoying my city, my love, my family and my friends. Becoming strong again and growing in my new career and believing in myself more knowing how much I am capable of, oh and adjusting to winters, yes it's dark and cold but I must fight the desire to hibernate! One of the best thing my mother said to me this year, aside from being thankful I am back home was that no matter how hard things get for me or how much is going on in my life I always keep a big smile through it all and she admires that about me, so I will keep smiling more!!!!

In your dreams baby!!!

When I was little I used to have this recurring dream that I came home from school and the clothes line was filled with brand new clothes for me. Being the youngest of 4 kids I didn't always get new stuff I used to think that if I only had a thousand dollars I could get all the clothes I wanted. Remembering this dream is pretty funny to me considering that I really hate shopping. However, I look back at those years and the innocence I used to have and now at my age I wonder what my dreams are and what I want to do with the rest of my life. From my previous post where I discussed my anxiety, I can say things are getting better for me; however I still have some anxiety about my future. You spend a great portion of your life wondering what you will do when you grow up and then you are grown up and wonder what happened to all those years past. For some of us it comes easy but for others it is not so simple, we don’t all get to live the traditional life path, for some of us our path is a bit rockier with hills and dips, while others have a perfectly paved road, lighted with beautiful street lamps to guide them. A year ago at this time I really thought I had it all figured out, I had an awesome boyfriend, I really thought we'd be getting married until I brought it up and found out he felt differently. I had a great career, I was moving up, I was a star at work, winning awards and taking on new challenges and really pushing myself and in charge of my destiny, until my new boss decided to take charge of my destiny for me which threw me into these anxiety attacks and so my career path was halted quite abruptly. I had a great son, who is so smart and independent and so different in his own way, until I found out he was slowly ruining his little life and had to quickly change gears in the way I deal with him, which was really hard. All in all I really thought I was set, romantically, financially, career wise and as a parent when all that got thrown to the wind in such a short period. The anxiety is really making me look at the rest of my life in a whole new light.

I made some very drastic changes to my life. I made the decision to quit my job after 10 years, I had to do it for my health. I made the decision to leave my boyfriend, knowing after all we weren't right for each other. I left Florida for Colorado, just when I started to learn to love Florida for the state that it is. Next you would think I would add that I left my son, but on the contrary, he and I left on an adventure together. When I started making all these changes I really thought my friends would tell me I was crazy, my friends being the aforementioned rhubarb pie, blueberry pie, lemon meringue and apple pie, but being the friends that they are they surprised me with an immense amount of support and love that I did not expect and it was so wonderful yet again to realize how important these girls are in my life. Some people said I was so brave and they wished they had the guts to do what I was doing, meanwhile I was terrified and yet excited of what lay ahead.

On New Year’s Eve I told the new love in my life "Happy new year, here is to a brand new fresh year just for the two of us". But what does that mean? What am I to do now? I have this new career, new boyfriend, new state to discover and learn to love in the same way I learned to love Florida with its excessive humidity; I have to learn to love Colorado with its excessive dryness! I have a brand new life ahead of me and I am excited to see what these dreams bring me! I now know it will take more then a clothes line full of brand new clothes to bring me immense happiness, I also know that I am strong and adventurous and I have a whole new canvas and appropriately enough a new camera to experience and capture it all. I am not looking for a perfectly paved road, I am not suited for that, but I am looking for maybe a pretty scenery on my rocky path. Maybe it can be lined with pretty flowers for the next part of my life.

While this post is not as funny or about food as my previous posts it is completely from the heart and this is me learning to open up and expose the rawness of feelings and emotions we all go through.

Here's to a new year and I am really going to try and resume my monthly posts!